SUNDAY 6 MAY, 2018 – UWI TODAY
9
“Sport is now an industry in its own right
andworth
more than 3% of world trade. It is not surprising
therefore, that a specific body of sports law – a so-
called Lex Sportiva – is developing to deal with this
global phenomenon. There is now so much at stake,
on as well as off the field of play. This has led to
pressures – sporting and financial ones – on sports
persons and teams to compete vigorously and, in
some cases, to do so at all, or any costs, including
cheating in its various forms, such as doping, match-
fixing, illegal betting and other forms of corruption
that are undermining the integrity of sport.”
These are comments by Professor Ian Blackshaw,
the feature speaker at the UWI Faculty of Law’s
first sports law workshop. Prof Blackshaw gave two
presentations: “Sports Governance and the Russian
Dilemma: Welcomed by FIFA, banned by the IOC”
and “Sports Disputes Resolution: The Role of the
Court of Arbitration for Sport and Lessons for the
Caribbean.”
Prof Blackshaw is a Solicitor of the Supreme
Court of England and an international sports lawyer
with over 30 years’ experience. He is a prolific author
of books and articles on sports law, including his
latest book entitled International Sports Law: An
Introductory Guide published by the Asser Press
in The Hague, The Netherlands. He is a member of
the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where he
specializes in sports mediation and conciliation. In
many respects, he is a pioneer in the practice and
teaching of sports law, which, he says, is an ongoing,
developing and ever-challenging branch of the law.
He touched on several sports issues, including
the controversies surrounding the granting of the
World Cup to Russia (coming up in June this year),
and later on, to Qatar in 2022.
He gave several examples of fraud in sport, such
as doping –a form of cheating that is anathema to the
ideals of fair play. In the sport of cycling, he noted that
“mechanical doping” or the concealing of motorized
equipment in the frames or wheels of bicycles was an
issue of technological fraud. A recent example from
cricket was the issue of ball tampering by Australians
in the Third Test Match in Cape Town. And even the
genteel sport of tennis is also under the microscope
for being lenient with people alleged to be using
prohibited substances, he said.
So what are international sports bodies doing
about these issues?
He discussed the International Olympic
Committee’s introduction (following the 2002 Salt
Lake City bidding scandals) of an independent Ethics
Committee, which has now been divided into two
bodies following the allegations of systemized doping
by Russia in relation to the 2014 Winter Olympic
Games in Sochi.
In the wake of FIFA’s corruption scandals, he
noted that FIFA has established its own independent
ethics committee, with investigatory and adjudicatory
arms. He commented on the demise of Sepp Blatter
as president of FIFA, and the fall of Michel Platini
(who in 2015 was banned from all football-related
activities for eight years for accepting a payment of
two million Swiss francs from Sepp Blatter).
Professor Blackshaw presents Dean of the Faculty of Law,
Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine with a copy of his latest
book, International Sport Law: An introductory Guide
associations around the world, and between 2011-2014,
FIFA distributed a minimum of US$2.05 million to each
of those sporting organisations. Yet 81% of them had
no publicly available financial records, and 85% of them
published no activity accounts of what they did.
He said public sporting bodies should have financial
reports, an organizational charter, an annual activity
report, and a code of conduct. But as of November 2015,
he said T&T had published none of those. The results of
this, he said, was: “Very much the consequences for any
offence committed in TT – nothing. It will be in court,
and continue.”
“Sport is a global phenomenon engaging billions of
people and generating some US$150 billion annually. And
yet we continue a laissez faire attitude to it still,” he said.
He said that sports can powerfully influence social
values, allowing people to experience great emotion, learn
the importance of rules, and develop respect for others.
Those at the top of sports therefore have a duty to set high
standards and lead with integrity, he said.
Murray mentioned other important issues affecting
sports: conflicts of interest, trading and influence and
insider information, cronyism and nepotism, sale of TV
rights, venue and hosting arrangements, sponsorships
and hospitality, remuneration and bonuses, payments
to officials, ticket sales and distribution, procurement,
the role of agents and intermediaries, and elections to
governing bodies. He later praised sporting bodies for
continuing to have sports despite all the issues.
Murray was of the opinion that international
organisations such as FIFA, the International Olympic
Committee, and the International Cricket Council hide
behind the “non-interference rule” as a pretext to defend
national associations (or in the Caribbean case, regional
federations) from legitimate demands for transparency
and accountability in the spending of public resources.
“We say governments must not interfere in the
running of sports. But of course, we want the government
to fund every sport across the board. If my taxpayer’s
dollars go to some association running sport in T&T, or
in the region, am I not entitled to know what they are
doing? Bodies must be answerable, whether it is to the
Court of Arbitration in Switzerland, or to local courts.
But they must be specific to what our circumstances,
our laws are. Private bodies cannot be allowed to operate
with impunity.”
He referred to the recent March 2018 cricket ball
tampering scandal in the third Test Match between
Australia and South Africa in Capetown in which three
Australian players were banned. For him, the important
thing about that was that the first meaningful call for
action came from the Prime Minister of Australia – not
to interfere, not to hand down a judgement, but rather to
say to the Cricket Board of Australia that it had to take
strong and decisive action for making Australia look like
a country of cheats internationally.
In a later comment, Murray clarified that he does not
advocate for a Government taking over any sport. And
with regard to the role of the West Indies Cricket Board
(which rebranded itself as Cricket West Indies in 2017),
he commented: “When the West Indies Cricket Board
registered itself as an incorporated company, to me, it
has to be treated like Clico, and Clico can be treated in
different territories in very similar ways under corporate
law. The WICB and other sporting organizations cannot
have their cake and eat it… They must be treated as a
corporate body, and therefore answerable to somebody.
The shareholders of the TT cricket board are the public.
And now that we have the introduction of franchises, we
have a maze of companies designed to obfuscate the real
issues of good governance.”
On the issue of illegal betting, Prof Blackshaw
noted that on May 9, 2011 FIFA signed a 10-year
collaboration agreement with Interpol to try to
identify illegal betting patterns: FIFA has put 20
million Euros into this collaboration, he said, which
was significant, because Interpol has almost 200
member countries around the world.
He also spoke of several bodies set up to police
or regulate different aspects of sports, including the
ESSA (European Sports Security Association, based in
Brussels, Belgium, set up to identify irregular sports
betting patterns); and the ICSS (International Centre
for Sports Security, based in Doha, Qatar, which does
event security design, and provides services in good
governance, investigations and intelligence).The ICSS
aims to galvanise international support for integrity
in sport globally, he said.
Prof Blackshaw also spoke of SIGA (Sport
Integrity Global Alliance), formed in November
2015, a not-for profit international private-public
partnership aimed at fixing many governance
challenges in sport.
In his second presentation, he discussed the
work of CAS, which has played an important
role in developing the field of sports law since it
began operations on 30 June 1984, having been
specifically set up to settle sports-related disputes
outside the ordinary courts’ system, in other words,
“extra-judicially”. Such a form of alternative dispute
resolution, Prof Blackshaw pointed out, saves time
and money and enables disputes to be settled “within
the family of sport.”
(Shereen Ali)
HIGH STAKES
and
TEMPTATIONS CORRUPT
