Keynote Speaker: David Conn
The Guardian's David Conn.
David Conn is an award-winning writer for the Guardian newspaper and author of two acclaimed books chronicling English football’s commercial transformation: The Football Business (1997) and The Beautiful Game? Searching for the Soul of Football (2004).
He has earned a reputation as the foremost journalist critically investigating football’s structure and governance, as well as ownership and takeover sagas at individual clubs. David has been a key critic of the Premier League’s free market approach, which has opened clubs to speculation by investors looking to make personal fortunes, and he has argued for collective principles in football. He has always been a strong advocate of supporter representation at clubs, and continues to argue, in the era of billionaires, that clubs should ideally be mutually owned by their supporters, and be primarily community organisations.
David qualified first as a lawyer before embarking on a career in journalism. He has written for all England’s broadsheet newspapers on a range of issues including football, and made documentaries for BBC television and radio. He wrote a weekly investigative column for the Independent for six years before moving to the Guardian in 2005. He was last year voted UK sports news reporter of the year by the Sports Journalists Association, an award he also won in 2005. He has been named football writer of the year by the Football Supporters Federation three times, in 2002, 2005 and 2009.
Paper givers (Ordered by panel, please scroll down)
Research Panel 1 – 30th June 1120-1235
Chair: Karen Petry
Theme: Towards a Common Debate on EU Sport Politics
Germany – Heterogenous Debates in a Complex Sport System
Jürgen Mittag (German Sports University, Cologne)
Due to its federal structure and the vertical division of powers collective players in Germany intervene at different levels in the political system. In general, Germany’s sport system is marked by the considerable autonomy of sport and by the principle of subsidiarity. Despite these structures the Federal Ministry of the Interior has taken on some additional tasks in the field of sport, such as representing the Federal Republic in European and international sports bodies and proving financial support for top-level sport. Most relevant for European sport at the governmental level are the ministers in charge of sport in the Council and the meetings of the sport directors. Germany will be represented in this body by a head of department of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and by a delegate from the Länder. These two representatives can be considered as the gateway of national and European sport politics. Hence, their communication and positions will be scrutinized in detail.
The German Olympic Sports Federation (DOSB) that was founded on 20 May 2006 is one of the largest sport federations in the world. Though the DOSB gave support to the Lisbon treaty in general the organisation has not developped yet any concrete positions on the potential of the new Lisbon treaty provisions on sport. It will be investigated if – and what kinds of – debates on EU sport policy have taken place in the framework of DOSB and of other non-governmental stakeholders.
Poland: A vision from central and eastern Europe
Jolanta Żyśko (University of Physical Education, Warsaw)
The Polish elite sport management system should be termed interventionist, centralised and bureaucratic with typical for interventionist model, sport-specific legal regulations and following them legal-formal procedures. Current sport policy in Poland is created by State and law. The dominant and intervening role plays public sports administration, notably of the central administration body – the Ministry of Sport and Tourism. The organisational structure of Polish elite sport reflects a division of authority and responsibilities between the state (represented by the governmental sector), civil society (the voluntary sector) and business (represented by the commercial sector). The structure and the policy is not very stable. The nature and characteristics of this system depends much more on internal considerations, such as political, social, economic and cultural inside the country. Of course we can also observe the global and European impact to the Polish sport system. Global changes, which are taking place in all countries, were deemed to comprise professionalisation, commercialisation, pressure on quality management and new managerialism in the public sector.
The key role of state structures in managing elite sport in Poland stands in contrast to European sport policies described by the ‘European model of sport’, as well as to one of the key principles of European Union policy – the subsidiarity principle. Conflict is also to be observed in the vertical dimension (transfer of power to the lowest level of management), as well as in the horizontal dimension (transfer of competence to non-governmental structures in all domains of state agency is not strictly necessary).
Sports Policy in the UK: post New Labour Realities in Sports Policy
Ian Henry (Centre for Olympic Studies and Research, Loughborough University)
This paper considers the impact of the emergence of the Coalition Government in the UK in 2010 for sports policy. It argues that the direction of travel of sports policy historically has been from a bureaucratic to an entrepreneurial model in the 1970s – 1990s, and towards a social model in the New Labour form the 1990s-200s, has been countered by the actions of the Coalition, which has not only been constrained to reduce public expenditure in sport as in other policy areas but has also taken the opportunity to dismantle partnership projects constructed by New Labour during its term of office.
An area in which the Coalition Government has felt constrained is that of Olympic investment where despite a rhetoric of tight fiscal control, existing financial commitments are largely to be honoured. Thus the budget for the Games of £9.3 billion, despite some minor paring has been confirmed. A comparison of the legacy aims for the 2012 Olympics of New Labour and of the incoming government suggests relatively slight shifts in nuance.
However one major change has been the abandonment of the Labour government’s commitment to increase the level of sports participation in the general population. This reflects an acceptance of the failure to impact upon participation rates despite almost a decade of intensive policy focus, both before the Olympic bid and after the award of the 2012 Games on policy interventions and detailed monitoring of participation at national and local levels.
Elite sports policy which is significantly funded via the National Lottery as well as directly by Exchequer funding from the public purse, has also been protected. The approach adopted in terms of constructing and promoting élite success was reinforced by Britain’s performance at the Beijing Games where the GB & NI team had unprecedented success. The features of the élite system which produced this success were largely put in place following Britain’s disastrous performance in Atlanta 1996, though accelerated and / or magnified by the provision of additional funds in the light of preparation for the London Games. The introduction of cuts to elite programmes in the post-2012 era is considered highly likely, though the level of reductions might well be mediated by public support if GB performance promotes public support.
The paper concludes with a consideration of the Conservative Party’s attempt to define its policy programme less by reference to financial necessity than by reference to the reconstruction of society around the concept of the ‘Big Society’. Though the operationalisation of the Big Society idea has been relatively under-determined in government policy statements, some comparison is attempted with the communitarian roots of roots of New Labour’s attempt to develop the third sector in the context of partnerships across policy domains and across the three sectors.
Research Panel 2 – 30th June 1400-1515
Chair: Geoff Pearson
Theme: Member states and EU sports policy
The Role of the EU Presidency after Lisbon: Reflections from Belgium
An Vermeersch (Project Manager, Belgian EU Presidency for Sport and Visiting Professor Sports Law at Ghent University) and Ivana Petričević (Policy Officer, Belgian EU Presidency for Sport)
Before Lisbon, the EU Presidency had a minor role in shaping the EU sport cooperation. The European Commission and the Parliament were the two institutions which were considered to play the leading role, as in the case of the White Paper. The Presidency did organise informal meetings, which provided useful input for further action and cooperation.
On the other hand, the Presidency, together with the MS, showed its influence during negotiations on several Treaty modifications, in particular the Lisbon Treaty which brought about the new competence for sport.
In the beginning of 2010, the expectations were concentrated on the Commission to continue to play the main role by adopting the Communication on Lisbon and sport. As the expected Communication was not adopted in 2010, an opportunity was given to the Presidency to act.
Presidencies held by Spain and Belgium have shown that the Council is eager to lift the new competence off the ground. Spain has set up the Working Party on Sport and chaired the first formal Sport Council. Belgium has adopted two sets of Conclusions and one Resolution.
Based on the experience of Belgium, this paper argues that the role of the EU Presidency after Lisbon has gained considerably more importance. Furthermore, the balance between the institutions has shifted in favour of the Council and the focus has moved to issues which could bring added value based on concrete actions. In conclusion, the paper will also deal with the role of the Hungarian Presidency after the adoption of the Communication.
Effective State Support for the Citizens Sport Activities in the Light of the Lisbon Treaty: A Comparative State Insight
Simona Kustec Lipicer (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana) and
Renata Slabe Erker (Research Fellow, Institute for Economic Research (IER))
The cultural field of sport faces significant challenges from societal and economic perspectives, from its own internal structures and through the influence of national regulation and supranational actors such as the Lisbon Treaty. Sport is increasingly regarded as an important factor of societal and state competitiveness, but at the same time it remains a very complex phenomenon that underscores the goals and expectations of various target groups and correlates with other fields of human life such as health, education, employment.
Successfully managing all these influences and perspectives requires reasonable and effective (self) regulation. However, one questions whether the state and increasingly also the EU, as a supposed guarantor of public interest, can effectively reconcile these competing concerns and, if it can, how ‘public interest’ in sport can be defined. In particular, if it is a legitimate goal of the state and/or the EU to promote effective sport participation among its citizens, what kind of goals, approaches, activities and measures are best able to achieve this aim? Has the Lisbon Treaty made some changes in the exposed understandings and approaches? What patterns of citizens’ sport activities, their participation practices and also expectations in this regard can be actually disclosed and classified in the EU-27 in relation to the state and EU institutions?
Founded on the basis of a research project on “Effective state support for the citizens’ sport activity” (financed by the Slovenian Research Agency and the Ministry of Education and Sport and conducted by the authors) the statistical analysis of ISSP data set and the analysis of various policy measures for citizens sport activities in EU -27 will be made with the aim to discuss the above exposed issues.
Language Matters
Jutta Prochaska (University of Bielefeld)
This paper, part of my PhD thesis, proposes a new approach to the ongoing process of implementing a common sports policy in the EU since Lisbon. Its framework is a Discourse Analysis. The fundamental thesis of the Discourse Analysis is, that language and the social construction of political problems are deeply interconnected. This constructivist approach helps to reveal the social and cultural factors lying beneath the facts and arguments presented by the actors. The Discourse Analysis is a very promising analyzing tool enabling us to reach a new understanding of and a better knowledge about the power relations between actors. Therefore this method can give us an insight to the process of policy in the EU. I am focusing on determining how actors use metaphors, storylines and narratives by analyzing interviews, documents, and press articles. It is shown that actors use terms like “autonomy of sport” as part of a storyline to accomplish certain aims (e.g. to enforce derogations from EU Law). Also the socially constructed, rarely scrutinised attribution of values to sport can be found used in this way in some actors` discourses, e.g. to get a piece of the cake — or in this case an amount of the future EU-Sport Budget. This PhD thesis proposes a better explanation for why and how certain actors are accomplishing their aims.
Research Panel 3 – 30th June 1530-1645
Chair: An Vermeersch
Theme: Challenges of modern sport and the Lisbon Treaty
The Winners and Losers in the Football Pubcasting Cases: Some Interesting Implications
Daniel Geey (Solicitor, Field Fisher Waterhouse)
With the Advocate General’s Opinion on the referrals to the ECJ of the QC Leisure and Murphy decoder cases expected in the first half of 2011, a number of interesting legal and policy issues will rear their heads. At the forefront will be the battle of rights holders to allocate their rights on a territorial basis versus the European Union’s overriding objective to remove barriers to restrictions on the free movement of goods and services.
The repercussions of the eventual ECJ answer to the English court questions will go some way to either alleviate rights holders fears about their valuable rights or open up a potential Pandora’s box of tricky questions for lawyers, politicians and legislators alike. Should the ECJ believe that the Premier League’s distribution model falls foul of the EU free movement and/or competition rules, new selling arrangements like a pan-European rights auction may have the unintended effect of consolidating Sky’s grip (due to its scale, resources and European wide reach) on the European sports broadcasting market. The Bosman of the sports broadcasting market may almost be upon us.
The ‘list of major events’ mechanism in the digital media landscape
Daniel Geey and
Katrien Lefever (ICRI-K.U.Leuven, IBBT, Belgium)
The ‘list of major events mechanism’ is embedded in the regulation of the audiovisual sector as a reaction to the development of new media: pay-television. In order to protect the public’s right to information with regard to sports events of major importance for society, it should be guaranteed that those sports events could only be broadcast exclusively on free-to-air television reaching a substantial proportion of the public. Digitalisation offers broadcasters the possibility to broadcast different digital-only channels alongside the traditional, ‘primary’ channel. The question that needs to be answered is whether the coverage of listed events on digital-only channels infringes the ‘list of major events’ provision. In doing so, a comparative analysis of different national initiatives will be touched upon. In Flanders, for example, digital-only channels do not yet reach the required penetration percentage and, thus, are not allowed to broadcast listed events in an exclusive way. However, some listed events were broadcast on digital-only channels without any intervention of the media regulator. In Australia, digital-only channels are allowed to broadcast some listed events, particularly regionally iconic and nationally significant events (Tier B events). The Australian Government hopes to convince the remaining part of the population to make the switch to digital television.
Cheating to Win / Cheating to Lose – Structural Responses to Match-Fixing: Lessons Learned in the Fight against Doping
Jean-Patrick Villeneuve (Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration),
Madalina Diaconu (University of Neuchatel) and
Jean-Loup Chappelet (Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration)
Sport has an inherently transversal nature in our societies. It is almost natural therefore that the threats and challenges faced by sport in general and sport governance in particular, also be transversal and international. Two such challenges are currently threatening the very foundations of sport: doping and match-fixing. Each has its own specificities and dynamics; the former is cheating to win, while the latter is cheating to loose.
The first has been tackled through the development of binding sport-wide international instruments, notably the World Anti-Doping Agency. While the process leading to the recognition of doping as an issue has not been an easy one, it is now being tackled in a coordinated and open manner. Match-fixing, when it is recognised, is still being addressed in a fragmented, sport by sport approach. An overall agreement as to a common strategy has yet to emerge. In fact, for many sport bodies, match fixing and sport related corruption is still seen as an issue that should be best dealt with internally.
Several important voices are now pushing forward proposals for the establishment of international mechanisms involving governments, sport associations and betting providers, to discuss and address this issue. This paper proposes to explore, from a governance point of view, the lessons learned from the anti-doping fight and their relevance for the current discussions on the establishment of a more coordinated response to the issue of match-fixing at the European level.
Research Panel 4 – 1st July 0930-1045
Chair: Richard Parrish
Theme: The regulation of the player market
FIFA Rules on Player Registration and the Lisbon Treaty
Gareth Farrelly (Edge Hill University)
In March 2007 Irish football club Cork City contacted FIFA requesting an exception to the rules constituted at the time placing restrictions on player registration. The player in question, Gareth Farrelly, had already played in official matches for two different clubs during the period between July 2006 and March 2007 and so would be ineligible to play for his new employers until July 2007. In this paper Gareth Farrelly discusses the subsequent proceedings brought before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He draws parallels with the case of Mascherano’s transfer to Liverpool and reflects on the operation of the current FIFA rules regulating player registrations particularly in respect of the objectives of protecting the regularity and proper functioning of competitions and maintaining contract stability in football.
Sporting Nationality and EU Law: Towards the next Bosman? The Issue of Naturalised Athletes in National Teams
Yann Haffner (University of Neuchatel/Nottingham Trent University)
Sporting governing bodies generally agree that the primary criterion to determine an athlete’s eligibility for a national team is state nationality. Indeed, for a long time the possession of the nationality of a certain state was sufficient to verify a link between athletes and the country they were representing. However, athletes and states engaged in “nationality shopping” have endangered this link.
Consequently, each international federation has adopted its own rules governing the parameters allowing athletes to represent a country and to modify their eligibility if they acquire a new citizenship. Frequently, these rules provide for a waiting period ranging from one to three years before an athlete may represent his new country, when they do not prohibit simply a change in eligibility. Sometimes, certain federations, especially in team sports, only allow national teams a limited number of athletes who have changed their sporting nationality. Naturally these sets of rules and their application raise interesting legal issues, particularly from the standpoint of their compatibility with state and EU law.
Indeed, since the Meca-Medina ruling, it is understood that rules regarding the composition of national teams are not anymore immune from the scrutiny of the European Court of Justice. Hence, in light of the above and taking into consideration the Auer jurisprudence, a legal challenge of sporting governing bodies regulations regarding quotas of naturalized athletes may lead to these rules being declared void, which could result in a new Bosman case. The effects of which may possibly deregulate international competitions.
What Bernard tells you about Bosman
Antoine Duval (European University Institute, Florence)
Almost 15 years ago the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJ) delivered its landmark Bosman ruling in 1995. It has since then lived up as one of, if not, the most well known decision of the Court. The Bosman case has been widely commented and criticized. The post-Bosman years have seen an inflation of the number of sport cases in front of the CJ, and also of the policy and political initiatives of the European Union (EU) concerning sport.
This trend culminated with the introduction of an EU sport competence inserted in the Treaty of Lisbon, enshrined in Article 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
It is necessary to have a close look at the latest judgement of the CJ on sport, the Bernard case, in order to understand the evolution of the legal dialogue between the sport world and EU law. The aim of this presentation will be to highlight both the similarities and the differences between the two cases and to analyse how the introduction of the notion of specificity of sport has modify the existing balance between EU law and sport private regulation in the case-law of the Court.
Research Panel 5 – 1st July 1100-1230
Chair: David Allen
Theme: The Europeanisation of Football
England, a liberal model under challenge?
Wyn Grant (University of Warwick)
Spain, parochialism or innovation?
Borja García (Loughborough University)
Alberto Palomar (Carlos III University, Madrid) and
Carmen Pérez (Carlos III University, Madrid)
Spanish football has been transformed in the last two decades both structurally and financially. This transformation has featured a strong implication of the national public authorities through legislation. This paper identifies the main transformations of Spanish football as being: The working conditions of players, the transformation of clubs into plcs and the transition from central marketing of TV rights to individual selling. In the first case, one can find a clear top-down direct Europeanisation that, however, does not go beyond what was strictly necessary. The Spanish transfer system is of special interest because a system transformation was implemented 10 years before Bosman. The motors of that transformation were the demands of the players’ trade union and the role of the government imposing legislation The transformation of clubs into plcs shows the importance of the regulatory powers of the Spanish state. The National Sports Act forced clubs to undergo a profound structural This was enforced through legislation as a trade-off for a financing of the clubs’ public and private debt. Finally, the transition to individual selling of TV rights presents some indirect top-down europeanisation, but once again national political factors overshadow the European level. Overall, the Spanish case brings to our attention the extent to which national structures and traditions mediate in very clear and strong top-down Europeanising forces.
Europe, the transformation of football
Richard Parrish (Edge Hill University)
Football, a Europeanised game?
Borja Garcia (Loughborough University) and
Wyn Grant (Warwick University)
Research Panel 6 – 1st July 1330-1445
Chair: Simona Kustec Lipicer
Theme: The societal role of sport
‘It’s Just an Old Boy’s Club’: The Under-Representation of Women and Institutional Discrimination in Football Governance in Europe
Steven Bradbury (Institute for Youth Sport, Loughborough University)
This paper will report on findings drawn from a wider research project commissioned by UEFA to examine issues of representation and structural discrimination in football in Europe. The initial research project featured analysis of existing academic and policy based literature and extensive semi-structured interviews (n=20) with sports academics, NGO’s and senior administrators at national football federations across Europe and at UEFA.
This paper will begin by outlining the low levels of representation of women in key leadership and decision-making positions at professional football clubs and at the national and European level of football governance. The paper will then offer analysis which equates these patterns of under-representation with processes and practices of institutional discrimination. In doing so, the paper will illustrate the ways in which a series of relatively closed recruitment procedures to senior positions within the sport have tended to favour men already positioned within the dominant hegemonic networks of the football industry. The paper also identifies some cultural resistance amongst key stakeholders within the game to wider efforts to encourage more equitable change in this respect.
The paper will conclude by evaluating the applicability and potential benefits of establishing quotas and encouraging positive action approaches as a means of redressing gender imbalances and increasing the functioning and legitimacy of football governance at the national and European level. In doing so, the paper will draw on some examples of good practice in football and in other sports and will examine the increasing emphasis of European sports policy makers to encourage the implementation of measures of this kind across sports more broadly.
All for Sport for All: Perspectives of Sport for People with a Disability in Europe
Matthias Guett
The relationship between EU policy-making and sport is gaining momentum due to the growing convergence between sport and social areas of activity (Groll, Guett & Mittag 2008) and the Lisbon Treaty is providing the European Union with a soft competence on sport. In this regards also sport for people with disabilities becomes more important for and attracts notice to political players dealing with sport at EU level.
Citizens with disabilities represent around 10% of the population of the EU and in this regards the European Union sees disability as a rights issue and not a matter of discretion. The EU promotes active inclusion and full participation of disabled people in society, in line with the EU human rights approach to disability issues. This approach is also at the core of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, to which the European Community is a signatory (EC 2010).
In this regards, the ‘All for Sport for All: Perspectives of Sport for People with a Disability in Europe’ project aims to assess the perspectives of sport for people with a disability in Europe. The project is funded by the European Commission within the 2010 Preparatory Action on Sport in the area of intervention ‘Promoting European fundamental values by encouraging Sport for Persons with Disabilities’.
The envisaged paper will focus on the sport political background of sport for people with disabilities at the European level, and will show selected research outcomes regarding 1) policy, 2) participation, 3) events, 4) infrastructure and 5) work force related to a mapping of the status quo of the sector.
The European Dimension of Sport as a medium for enhancing participation and inclusion
Seema Patel (Nottingham Trent University)
The author is currently undertaking a PhD which seeks to investigate the socio-cultural and regulatory balance between inclusion and exclusion in competitive sport. It recommends that in order to strike a balance between inclusion and exclusion in sport across the areas of sex, gender, disability and race, sports governing bodies must engage in a “Sports Audit” within which they must be publically accountable for their eligibility rules and selection criteria to ensure that they proportionately pursue a legitimate aim, instead of being arbitrarily restrictive to athletes on the basis of historical misjudgements and conventional wisdoms.
The aim of this paper is to explore the legal mechanisms through with the Sports Audit can be enforceable. It is concerned with identifying the appropriate level of accountability for these rules whilst respecting the specificity of sports competition (i.e. the balance). At an EU level, the current position of this balance is one where sport’s specificity is recognised through a “conditional autonomy” approach to regulate sports governing bodies.
The notion of “specificity of sport” is clarified in the White Paper on Sport 2007. This paper opines that the definition appears to protect the very characteristics of sport that the author argues are founded upon conventional wisdoms and historical misjudgements. When it comes to eligibility rules and selection criteria, this definition presents itself as a “cop out” and another example of the law essentially escaping their responsibility to directly address aspects of sport that are not always focused on matching ability as they should be.
