Sunder Katwala

16 September 2000 £9.95, plus £1 p+p. Buy it on CentralBooks.co.uk

Global sport has never been bigger. But a host of sporting scandals - from Olympic bidding scandals to cricket corruption, 'bungs' in football to drugs in the tour de France - have shaken major sports to their foundations. Sport is now a major global industry, but can it handle the pressures of the age of accountability?

Sunder Katwala rejects the argument that big money is to blame for all of sport's ills and the idea that we must choose between sport's values and its commercial viability. Instead, Democratising Global Sport sets out a constructive new agenda for modernising sporting governance, and shows what this would mean in practice - in institutional reform, and on the issues from doping to match-fixing, TV rights to tournament hosting which have done most to damage sport's credibility.

Democratising Global Sport

by Sunder Katwala.

£9.95 (vii + 104pp)

Order from Central Books

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Responses to the report

" Democratising Global Sport does much to rectify the severe shortage of informed and challenging debate on contemporary issues of sport policy and governance. Closely and, at times, passionately argued the book deserves to be read, not just by policy-makers, but by all those who value the contribution that sport makes to communities and to the lives of individuals"

Barrie Houlihan, Professor of Sport Policy, Loughborough University

"I very much welcome the report and hope that many of its recommendations are listened to seriously. The central thesis about the governing structures within sport is well made. We are seeing this at a domestic level as well where we are trying to encourage the modernisation of governing bodies - not without complaint! Governing bodies are taking some time to come to terms with new standards in public accountability".

Derek Casey, Chief Executive, Sport England

A timely contribution to the debate on the future of sport

Sir Paul Condon, Director, International Cricket Council Anti-Corruption Unit.

"Congratulations on having succeeded in analysing and proposing solutions to the most important issues in sport".

Mesut Ozyavuz, Council of Europe, DG - IV Department of Sport.

Global sport has never been bigger. But a host of sporting scandals - from Olympic bidding scandals to cricket corruption, 'bungs' in football to drugs in the tour de France - have shaken major sports to their foundations. Sport is now a major global industry, but can it handle the pressures of the age of accountability? Governments, businesses and international institutions increasingly realise that they need to respond to public and media pressure, but those governing sport resist any outside 'interference'. They have become synonymous with all that is worst about international bureaucracy, inertia and corruption.

Sunder Katwala rejects the argument that big money is to blame for all of sport's ills and the idea that we must choose between sport's values and its commercial viability.

Democratising Global Sport sets out a constructive new agenda for modernising sporting governance - to run the business of sport effectively and give all of the key participants a stake. And it shows what this would mean in practice - in institutional reform, and on the issues from doping to match-fixing, TV rights to tournament hosting which have done most to damage sport's credibility.

Contents

1. Introduction:

The Crisis of Confidence in Global Sport

2. Global Global:

How sport was transformed - and the shallow revolution in sporting governance.

3. Legitimacy in global sport

• a new basis for reform

4. Fair play and clean sport

• sport's anti-doping challenge

5. Hosting major tournaments

• a level playing-field

6. Match-Fixing and Corruption

• protecting the integrity of sport

7. TV Rights and the Communications Revolution

8. Conclusion: Can sport be reformed?

Introduction:

The Crisis of Confidence in Global Sport

When Juan Antonio Samaranch extinguishes the Olympic flame in Sydney on October 2, he will close an era in sporting history. When he tells the people of Sydney that they have hosted truly "the best Games ever," his customary accolade – denied only to troubled Atlanta in 1996 – will this time mean something more. For it closes the final Olympics of the 80 year old's twenty year reign as the most powerful man in sport – his sixth and final term as President of the International Olympic Committee. And Samaranch follows from the stage his contemporaries and collaborators Joao Havelange, who bossed world football from 1973 to 1998 and Primo Nebiolo, who ran international athletics for eighteen years after 1980. Together these visionary and charismatic autocrats seized the opportunities of the global age to change the face of sport. Their successes and their failures cast a long shadow for those chosen to succeed them. We shall not see their like again.

In many ways, global sport has never been more successful. The Sydney Games will be simply the biggest show on earth – 10,300 athletes from 200 countries, over $600 million in sponsorship, and up to 3.7 billion people watching. When Samaranch took over as IOC President, the Olympics faced an uncertain future – threatened by boycott politics and financial insolvency; discredited by the hypocrisies of the long age of 'shamateurism'. The Games have survived, even thrived – but the sporting spirit faces new challenges today, and many doubt whether sport can handle the pressures of its global transformation. For it has also been the worst of times for sport. Sporting scandal has replaced political sleaze and sexual shenanigans in the headlines. Every major sport has been shaken to its foundations by scandal – from Hansie Cronje in the dock to Olympic hosting bribery, from the "tour de dopage" to baseball strikes, and 'bungs' at motorway service stations taking European club football into the realms of the spy thriller.

Just when governing sport has never been more complex or important, trust in how sport is governed has never been lower. Some sporting bodies – notably the IOC – have become synonymous with all that is worst about international bureaucracy, corruption and inertia.

Sporting governance is in the spotlight as never before. But, despite the astonishing scale and range of these apparently never-ending crises, they are usually assessed as separate and discrete with each sporting scandal filling the newspapers for a few days until the next crisis takes over. There are few attempts to link or address them comparatively – except with the observation that this is the inevitable consequence of sport "selling out." But what is most striking about the Cronje case was how little he could be bought for – perhaps cricket is not yet commercial enough. The common thread linking sporting controversies is less a crisis of commercialism than a crisis of governance. We will see that there is a deep-rooted common governing culture across sport. While sport's old amateur and aristocratic elites failed to adapt to the modern age, and were removed to pave the way for sport's global transformation, their informal governing structures and closed cultures have largely survived – despite their decreasing ability to cope with the big business of global sport today or with the pressures of an age of accountability.

And the way in which sport is governed matters – because sport is a public good with wide-ranging public policy implications. Of course athletes want to know that their competitors aren't getting away with cheating; fans need to have confidence that the Test Match we are watching isn't fixed; everybody who cares about sport wants Olympics and World Cups to be festivals which celebrate the sporting spirit, not tarnish it. Only effective sporting governance can deliver this trust. But sport's cultural and commercial power – today greater than ever – also make it an important force in the world, for good or for bad. Sport can be a tool of dictatorship or a symbol of democratic change – it can help to start wars or promote international reconciliation. Sport can't bring about social change by itself – but it can be a powerful symbol and catalyst for changes in national identity, gender roles and race relations. Almost every government around the world commits public resources to sporting infrastructure because of sport's perceived benefits to improving health and education, to creating jobs and preventing crime, and perhaps even more for sport's intangible impacts on social cohesion and the nation's image at home and abroad. Sport matters to people – and the competing notions of identity, of internationalisation and national traditions, which are contested within sport matter far beyond it.

What's going wrong with sport?

The integrity of sport: can we believe what we are seeing?

Sporting scandal is now commonplace – but we don't expect effective responses to it. And the "shock revelations" usually just confirm what everybody already suspects: how many people were surprised when the outgoing IOC Vice-President spoke out about how Olympic votes could be bought with lavish favours? There have been serious concerns about cricket corruption for years – yet repeated half-hearted inquiries could find nothing at all wrong. In 1998, Wisden, not known as a hotbed of radicalism, called upon the ICC to "set up a credible international investigation to discover the truth, not what everybody wants to hear". The Tour de France scandal of 1998 did not arise from action by cycling's governing body – no cyclist failed their drug tests – but through seizures and investigations by the civil authority under new French criminal laws. Those at the apex of governance are often at the centre of sporting controversies – and the pattern of evasion and denial, shocked declarations of determination to act, but then prevarication and failure to tackle the causes has become too familiar. When real reform is promised, the critics increasingly ask what reason there is to believe that anything will be different this time.

Under pressure – can sport survive public scrutiny?

Like all decision-makers today, those governing sport make their decisions under fierce scrutiny. While multinational corporations are learning to adapt to media and public pressure, those governing sport have frequently been caught out. Take the hosting of major tournaments – which have gone from being expensive burdens to glittering prizes which bring real economic benefits. Today FIFA and the IOC are putting themselves in the dock by choosing to televise the announcements – their biggest moment in the spotlight outside the tournaments themselves – without modernising the murky system. Political machinations, corruption and the bumbling amateurism of delegates are exposed – bringing into disrepute decisions like that for Atlanta over Athens for the centenary Olympics or against South Africa for the 2006 World Cup. But sporting bodies have continued to regard enquiries from outside as illegitimate. FIFA President Sepp Blatter's response to allegations about cash hand-outs in envelopes the night before the vote was fairly typical: "The referee has blown his whistle. The players have left the field. The game is over".

Sports' governing bodies were created to serve the needs of a different age.

Governing sport used to be simple. National and international bodies were created to codify the rules, to create the first organised tournaments, to encourage and to facilitate international exchange. But the rapid globalization and commercialisation of sport involves a whole host of competing interests. Increasingly key questions in governing sport can not be solved domestically or even by international sporting bodies alone. Globe-trotting talent means that the African Nations Cup affects Leeds United fixtures. Effective action on drugs needs unannounced testing during training – that means international agreement from keeping track of athletes to special visa regimes for the IAAF's "flying squad" drug-testers. The headline controversies feed into a wider debate about whether sporting bodies have the capacity to deal with the new challenges – of agents and player power, the growing role of the courts, with sponsors, new media rights and technological advances both fair and foul.

But the critics are stuck in the past too.

It is not just sporting governance that needs to be modernised. We simply don't have a debate which can bring about constructive reform. There is a great deal of cynicism and defeatism – and the focus of debate is still most often about whether sport should be commercial or not, debating the pros and cons of modern sport against the myths of some Corinthian golden age. Nostalgia for flat caps on the terraces and wooden rackets – the aesthetics of sport in the days before the sponsors' logo – too often crowds out the key questions about how the business of sport must be governed better today. A plethora of books with titles like The Great Olympic Swindle; How They Stole The Game and Betrayal: The Selling of Cricket's Soul do capture and speak to the real concerns of many fans and observers.

Yet the argument is too often that scandal is only to be expected with big money sport – that if modern sport wants to have a commercial base then it can not aspire to represent values any more than Gladiators or the staged brawls of the WWF can. This argument oversimplifies sporting scandals like the Cronje case, overlooks the previous legitimacy crisis of amateur sport and fails to provide a viable basis for modern sport. Most importantly it freezes the debate about sporting governance, allowing those running global sport unaccountably – but bringing the money in – to argue that only they can enable sport to prosper. At the same time, their often monarchical style of governance hands plenty of ammunition to their most virulent critics. So much-needed reform will depend on building a new consensus about what the governance of sport is for – how the business of sport can be governed effectively and accountably, how all of those involved in sport can have a stake in the decisions that affect them, and how these objectives can be achieved in a market economy and increasingly democratic global society. Both autocratic commercialism and nostalgic romanticism have had their day. Nobody would want to return to the days of top sports stars selling medals in retirement to survive – even if athletes, and their agents, would allow it. But sport will not be able to deal with the pressures it faces today until we manage to move the debate on.

Governing sport in the 21st century

– how can the post-Samaranch generation cope?

Sport's governing bodies are independent and autonomous: for some, this simply means that global sport can never be reformed, that the self-interest of oligarchies will prevail. A primary goal of sporting federations has been to protect their autonomy and power – it is almost as if international sporting bodies, wedded to an absolutist conception of their own sovereignty, want to be the last vestiges of unaccountable power.

But both the politics of sport and of power are changing. The rising power of global sports has also increased their vulnerability. The fact that the IOC owns the Olympic Games does not end questions about how its power is exercised. The shape of global governance and power is changing – increasingly educated, assertive and networked citizens expect to have a say on issues which they care about. They might often be contradictory and confused, be acting on questionable and unverified information, or to claim to speak for people who might actually want very different things – but they can not be ignored. Protest politics is just one symptom of much deeper value-shifts in post-industrial societies – while the values of democratisation, human rights and the aspirations of civil societies to have their voices heard continue to gather pace across the world. Today's 'over-mighty' multinational corporations like Shell and Nike have never been more vulnerable to pressure from the media, NGOs and citizens – and have realised that responding effectively is crucial to maintaining the legitimacy, social trust and licence to operate on which their businesses depend.

In this age of accountability, sporting bodies also need to respond to their critics – to protect not just their values but their profits too. And the need for real and verifiable reform is becoming increasingly urgent, as a new generation takes over in sporting governance. Holding things together after an era of such concentrated charismatic power may prove as difficult as it was for John Major – already the failure of Havelange's protégé Sepp Blatter to take football's World Cup to South Africa seems likely to mark a rare one-term presidency. The next generations to govern sport need to realise that business as usual will not restore their legitimacy – which will depend on being seen to make decisions "for the good of the game" – or deliver the trust they need to govern well.

And the end of this era in sporting governance is also the end of a longer period – the turbulent first century of international sport. But the central issues in sporting politics are different today – they are less about the use and abuse of sport by demagogues, dictators and democrats, or about east-west clashes and anti-apartheid protests. The post-1989 age of democracy and accountability may have found the Achilles' heel of sports' traditional structures – even if these seem as well entrenched as the Berlin Wall or the post-war Italian elite. The focus has shifted from the impact of global politics on sport to issues about the governance and politics of sport itself. It may in fact have been easier to govern sport in the age of extremes. Now that it is over, those governing sport have lost their political cover. Sport's global transformation has put them in the spotlight: they are no longer seen as (relatively) innocent pawns in the global political game.

Just as amateurism could not be preserved without public support or acceptance, the age of autocracy is coming to an end too. So those governing sport need to find a new basis for reform which would allow modern sport to be run effectively, accountably and in accordance with the values which it proclaims. Only genuine, inclusive reform will have the credibility to deliver. Minimalist reform will fail to restore legitimacy and confidence. Paternalistic claims that everybody's best interests are being looked after will not be believed either – unless the key groups are actually involved in the process. For reform to stick, it will have to be inclusive – giving sport's key stakeholders a central role in the reform and decision-making processes, seeking to reconcile their vital interests on the basis of the values of sport as a whole. The following chapters will look at why sport's transformation has brought sporting governance into question, set out a new multi-stakeholder model of reform which would enable sports to rebuild their key relationships, and look at what this will mean on the issues – from tournament hosting to drugs, match-fixing to TV rights – which have done most to bring sporting governance into disrepute. The conclusion assesses the forces which can build coalitions for change – asking how they can bring about the reforms which sport needs.

Of course, sports organisations will not be able to transform themselves overnight. Working comprehensive reform through will require courageous leadership and political skill in order to deliver extensive changes in organisational culture. Despite the global revolution they have unleashed, sporting organisations have remained highly resistant to change. It may well take yet more crises before some respond – but we can be confident that no change will mean new crises erupting. And there are positive signs of an emerging new agenda in sporting governance – for example, in the way that the English Football Association is seeking to transform itself, in the lessons to be learnt from southern hemisphere rugby's confidence in adapting to change, and in the reformist manifesto of UEFA President and defeated FIFA candidate Lennart Johansson. But reform will not be easy – and all of sport's stakeholders have a responsibility to work out how they can best contribute constructively.

Even successful and comprehensive reform will not end "sporting scandals" in the Sunday tabloids – after all, who can regulate Gazza's kebab habit? And sport may continue to face more serious challenges. But governing sport better isn't about changing human nature – preventing any athlete from trying to cheat, or any administrator from seeking to abuse their public role for private profit. It is just about putting in place structures which can give those who play and follow sport more confidence that those in charge are doing the right thing. The global era presents fundamental challenges for sporting governance – but also the opportunity for sport to become the force for internationalism which it dreamt of being at the start. If we can find better ways to work together to protect and promote sport's core values we will be able to renew and pass on the magic of sport to future generations.

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"A timely contribution to the debate on the future of sport" Sir Paul Condon
"Excellent, timely and stimulating" George Walker, Council of Europe
"Does much to rectify the severe shortage of informed and challenging debate on contemporary issues of sport policy" Professor Barrie Houlihan, Loughborough