Banff National Park is the largest park in Canada, and one of the nation’s, and the world’s, premiere destinations for rock climbing. Climbing and mountaineering are advertised on the park’s information page, and there are over one thousand established climbing routes in Banff. However, the legislation governing national parks in Canada does not expressly permit, nor contemplate, rock climbing as an approved activity for park visitors. The nature of climbing, particularly sport climbing where permanent bolts and safety anchors are installed into cliff faces, inherently disturbs cliffside ecosystems, contravening one of the primary purposes of Canadian parks legislation to protect the environment. Without a dedicated management plan or inclusion in legislation, climbers risk possible sanctions or prosecution if enforcement authorities interpret the legislation as prohibiting climbing. In this paper, we analyze the existing statutes and regulations to determine the legal status of climbing in national parks. We also turn to existing case law to determine likely outcomes of potential prosecutions relating to climbing within national parks. We find that the current status of climbing is precarious, and a reworking of management plans is overdue to provide certainty and consistency to climbers and parks enforcement authorities alike.
Illegal broadcasting of live sports content has been a challenge that remains unresolved. Considering the dynamic nature of such unlawful activities, tackling illegal sports broadcasting in a timely and effective manner is of utmost importance for IP enforcement on the Internet. In addition to its adverse effects on the sports industry, these illicit activities undermine various interests, including viewers’ data integrity and cybersecurity. Therefore, the Turkish legislator has been pressured to utilise novel means to combat illegal broadcasting. Consequently, and in an original fashion, the Turkish Football Federation was directly empowered to render decisions concerning the blocking of websites allegedly engaged in piracy. This progressive legislation, bypassing traditional and ineffective mechanisms, aimed to provide immediate measures against illegal football broadcasting on the Internet. This mechanism received several criticisms from scholars. In line with these criticisms, the provision establishing this mechanism has been annulled by the Turkish Constitutional Court in a judgment rendered in June 2025 and effective as of July 2026. This article begins by examining the inherently unique nature of football broadcasting with particular emphasis on its financial significance. Following this, traditional content removal and access blocking mechanisms foreseen in Turkish law are analysed. Subsequently, first, a critical analysis of this original mechanism and the rationale behind the Turkish Constitutional Court’s judgment is assessed. Informed by comparative law, the final section of the article proposes alternatives and constitutionally compliant mechanisms for the Turkish authorities’ efforts to combat online sports piracy.
This article critically examines the evolution of FIFA's (F & eacute;d & eacute;ration Internationale de Football Association) regulatory framework on the protection of minors, focusing on Article 19 of the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) and its interpretation by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Employing a doctrinal legal analysis of Article 19 of the FIFA RSTP since 2001 and CAS jurisprudence between 2001 and 2022, this article traces the evolution of key exceptions such as parental-move, European Union (EU) or European Economic Area (EEA), cross-border transfers, humanitarian grounds, and academy regulation and situates these developments within the normative framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The findings reveal that Article 19, introduced in 2001 as a restrictive measure to combat trafficking and exploitation, has developed through a series of reactive reforms driven by public developments, disciplinary actions, and judicial interventions rather than by a coherent child-protection strategy. Across diverse strands of CAS jurisprudence, panels have gradually incorporated child-rights reasoning and, at times, urged FIFA to amend its rules. Yet FIFA's selective implementation of such reasoning has reinforced structural imbalances within its regulatory framework. Limited transparency and significant access-to-justice barriers further constrain the effective protection of minors in global football. The article argues that a more systematic integration of UNCRC principles into FIFA's regulatory architecture, combined with enhanced transparency, improved access to adjudicatory mechanisms, and the incorporation of child-rights expertise within CAS proceedings, is essential to shift from reactive adaptation toward a proactive, rights-sensitive model of global football governance.
This article argues for a renewed focus on athletes’ attitudes towards legal and banned performance enhancing substances, considering the dual roles of law and science in shaping these attitudes. The article begins by setting out how the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) determines which substances are banned, before considering the so-called grey areas of the law which open the door for athlete moral and sporting opinions to determine how they act in relation to these substances. The research employs a qualitative methodology using structured content analysis, focusing its scope specifically on the sport of athletics. It is underpinned by a range of legal theories on international law and regulatory science. The article ultimately argues that, despite WADA’s efforts to gain and maintain epistemic control over the Prohibited Substances list and the line between clean and dirty in anti-doping, there is an inherent subjectivity to the laws which creates the opportunity for athlete agency to fit individual perceptions of morality into a malleable legal system. It concludes that anti-doping organisations may be able to regain control over this subjective system in individual sports by taking a more proactive approach to promoting legal performance enhancing substances/supplements, reducing the opportunity for athletes to use their agency but risk their careers by taking uninformed decisions in pursuit of improved performance.
This paper aims to revisit the question of the independence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Its main argument is that the CAS plays a key accountability function in the context of transnational sports governance which requires that it be strictly separated from the executive and legislative powers of the Sports Governing Bodies (SGBs) of the Olympic Movement. Yet, when assessing the independence of the CAS, European courts (the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, the German Bundesgerichtshof and the European Court of Human Rights) have failed to seriously consider the implications of this accountability function in their assessment. They have adopted an arbitral lens instead of a judicial one. The article advocates for shifting the lens used to assess the independence of the CAS and suggests building instead on the existing case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union on the independence of national courts. This leads to the conclusion that the current institutional structure of the CAS is characterised by a relation of dependence vis-à-vis the SGBs of the Olympic Movement, which jeopardises its ability to act as an independent check on the transnational governance of international sports. The paper concludes by offering some concrete reform proposals aimed at cutting this Gordian knot and at ensuring that the CAS can trustfully discharge its responsibility as the independent global judiciary of the lex sportiva.
The paper explores the relationship between the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards and the recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The CAS’ embeddedness within the legal framework of international arbitration has recently been challenged amidst a general backlash against sports arbitration from Europe. CAS arbitration featured prominently in the CJEU’s recent judgments in International Skating Union and RFC Seraing. Following these decisions, the paper examines how the 1958 New York Convention and EU law interact in the sports arbitration context. It argues that compulsory arbitration agreements providing for CAS arbitration fall within the scope of application of the 1958 New York Convention. According to the jurisprudence of the CJEU, EU Member States are required to review arbitration agreements and arbitral awards for violations of EU public policy. The paper concludes that this duty is reconcilable with the obligations of EU Member States as Contracting States of the 1958 New York Convention.
Iura novit curia – or iura novit arbiter in the context of international arbitration – is a procedural principle that plays a crucial role in defining how tribunals ascertain and apply the law. In the context of international sports arbitration, its relevance is particularly pronounced in the case law of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, where all tribunals are bound to apply Swiss lex arbitrii. Under Swiss law, judges (and by extension, arbitral tribunals seated in Switzerland) are obliged to apply the law ex officio. This entails an automatic duty to ascertain and apply the correct legal rules, even if not invoked by the parties. However, a balance must be established between said duty and the parties’ right to be heard. This dichotomy has impacted the jurisprudence of the Swiss Federal Tribunal, which establishes that tribunals are not required to request comments on every legal consideration they may adopt, but only on those that may be “surprising.” The Swiss law notion of “surprise” is therefore central in arbitrations before the CAS, highlighting the delicate balance between a tribunal’s obligation to apply the law independently and the procedural rights of the parties to participate meaningfully in the determination of their case.
This article examines player transfer restrictions in Nippon Professional Baseball from the perspectives of competition law and labour law. For decades, rules established by professional baseball clubs and their central governing organisation have severely limited player mobility, despite its recognition as a fundamental labour right. These restrictions, embedded in the Baseball Agreement and the Standard Player Contract, operate as coordinated practices that suppress competition between clubs. While such conduct ordinarily falls within the scope of Japanese Antimonopoly Act, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has historically declined to intervene in professional sports, treating transfer restrictions and related rules primarily as labour relations issues and leaving them largely unregulated for decades. A turning point came with the 2018 report published by the Competition Policy Research Centre of JFTC. This development reopened the possibility of antimonopoly scrutiny in a field that had long been insulated from competition law. In contrast, the United States has developed extensive case law under the “non-statutory labour exemption” clarifying the boundary between labour law-based restraints and antitrust prohibitions. By comparing Japanese and American approaches, this article identifies the absence of a clear balancing mechanism in Japan—similar to the U.S. exemption doctrine—and evaluates the implications of the 2018 policy change for future regulatory certainty. It also considers prospects for reform aimed at reconciling contractual freedom with the principles of fair competition in professional sports.
This article critically examines the evolution of FIFA’s (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) regulatory framework on the protection of minors, focusing on Article 19 of the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) and its interpretation by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Employing a doctrinal legal analysis of Article 19 of the FIFA RSTP since 2001 and CAS jurisprudence between 2001 and 2022, this article traces the evolution of key exceptions such as parental-move, European Union (EU) or European Economic Area (EEA), cross-border transfers, humanitarian grounds, and academy regulation and situates these developments within the normative framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The findings reveal that Article 19, introduced in 2001 as a restrictive measure to combat trafficking and exploitation, has developed through a series of reactive reforms driven by public developments, disciplinary actions, and judicial interventions rather than by a coherent child-protection strategy. Across diverse strands of CAS jurisprudence, panels have gradually incorporated child-rights reasoning and, at times, urged FIFA to amend its rules. Yet FIFA’s selective implementation of such reasoning has reinforced structural imbalances within its regulatory framework. Limited transparency and significant access-to-justice barriers further constrain the effective protection of minors in global football. The article argues that a more systematic integration of UNCRC principles into FIFA’s regulatory architecture, combined with enhanced transparency, improved access to adjudicatory mechanisms, and the incorporation of child-rights expertise within CAS proceedings, is essential to shift from reactive adaptation toward a proactive, rights-sensitive model of global football governance.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund’s coordinated acquisition of four Saudi Pro League clubs, combined with transfer expenditure exceeding £800 million in a single window, has exposed a structural collapse at the heart of global football governance: existing financial sustainability frameworks were designed to discipline clubs, not sovereign states. This paper advances a doctrinal argument in three movements. First, it maps the jurisdictional void within the global regulatory hierarchy from FIFA through the AFC to the SPL, demonstrating that UEFA’s Club Licensing and Financial Sustainability Regulations, widely regarded as the gold standard of financial control, are structurally inapplicable to sovereign actors deliberately operating outside their jurisdictional reach. Second, it anatomizes the legal mechanisms through which the PIF exploits this void: corporate separation, sovereign immunity doctrine, and systematic jurisdictional arbitrage between continental confederations operating under irreconcilably different regulatory baselines. Third, it evaluates the doctrinal limits of available reform, engaging critically with the Meca-Medina proportionality framework, the structural weaknesses of CAS enforcement architecture, and the fundamental inadequacy of lex sportiva as a regulatory response to loss-insensitive state capital. Against this diagnosis, the paper proposes a tripartite governance blueprint: mandatory sovereignty waivers embedded within FIFA’s transfer regulatory framework, strategic deployment of the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation as an extraterritorial enforcement backstop, and a Reverse-Assurance Guarantee mechanism requiring sovereign beneficial owners to submit to independent financial oversight as a condition of participation in the global transfer market.
Participation in the Olympic Games undoubtedly represents the pinnacle of athletic excellence. However, as the number of child athletes continues to rise across successive editions of the Games, important questions emerge regarding the adequacy of the legal and human rights protections afforded to them under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This paper contends that Olympic child athletes occupy a complex dual status: they are both elite performers and children entitled to specific legal protections under international law. As such, it contends that the participation of children in the Olympic Games must be understood as a matter of children’s rights, carrying substantive legal and operational implications. Drawing upon existing scholarship on sport, human rights, and the Olympic Movement, the paper argues that current IOC frameworks exhibit significant shortcomings in embedding key CRC principles. Through a three-part analysis, the paper calls for the explicit and systematic incorporation of children’s rights into the IOC’s governance and regulatory structures, asserting that genuine adherence to international human rights norms necessitates the full recognition and protection of child athletes within the Olympic framework.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which governs anti-doping globally, is an international organisation that may be described as a hybrid public-private entity. Given that public entities are bound to act in the public interest, this article explores the extent to which WADA is bound to, or ought to, incorporate a public interest test in the exercise of its discretionary decision-making. Models assessing the nature of WADA and anti-doping often focus on its structure rather than its practical activities. Because WADA’s structure is unusual, the anti-doping literature has primarily used Benedict Kinsgbury’s conceptualization of “publicness” to analyse the grey area between private and public that WADA occupies. Literature on the publicness of anti-doping predates several International Standards and does not reflect WADA’s evolving role in anti-doping fields such as education. In this paper, using a novel holistic understanding of publicness drawing from the works of Kinsgbury, Armin von Bogdandy et al. and Letitia Lo Giacco, we argue that WADA is sufficiently public in nature to require a public interest consideration. By embedding a public interest test, as is required of prosecutors in criminal justice systems worldwide, WADA decision-makers would be held to a common standard in articulating the rationale for their actions. This, in turn, would lead to greater consistency in decision-making and the embedding of procedural justice principles in anti-doping processes. We identify WADA’s current roles in anti-doping as well as situations of discretionary decision-making in the World Anti-Doping Code, and illustrate how a public interest test would impact decision-making using case studies.
The article examines the principle of contra proferentem (the interpretation of unclear provisions against their drafter) through the lens of CAS and FAT/BAT jurisprudence. It distinguishes between the interpretation of contracts and that of sports regulations. For contracts, the article argues that the contours of the principle should be defined by the applicable law, and that no automatic presumption in favour of athletes is required: a properly applied national contract law can still yield balanced outcomes, allowing ambiguity to be resolved, where justified, in favour of athletes. By contrast, in the field of sports regulation, given its complex and often unilateral nature, the article suggests that there are good reasons to recognise a distinct contra proferentem sportivus principle as part of transnational sports law rather than any single national regime. Where sports regulation functions as a quasi-statutory framework, combining association-law and contractual elements and sometimes taking the form of instruments detached from any one national system, it raises complex issues of characterization and applicable law. In this setting, the contra proferentem principle, firmly anchored in jurisprudence, can operate as a safeguard for ensuring sports justice. This transnational variant is primarily grounded in considerations of legality and proportionality. In both settings, however, the article shows that the principle is not overused in practice and suggests that its application should remain carefully conditioned and clearly justified.
Sport can both advance and harm human rights. Recent high-profile cases show that traditional sport dispute resolution systems have not been designed for substantive human rights claims involving discrimination, abuse, privacy, labour rights, and fair trial guarantees. Existing internal (sport body) and external (state and international) mechanisms are slowly adapting, but access to remedy for affected persons remains fragmented and often inaccessible. This article maps the current sport and human rights remedy landscape and discusses the gaps in relation to “effective remedy” under international human rights law and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It also advocates for a “remedy ecosystem” approach that focuses on enabling remedy through mutually reinforcing processes and institutions. We then analyse a series of public and quasipublic inquiries into structural and spectacular harms in sport, examining how they are established, how they function, and what remedial value they offer. The article concludes by assessing how inquiries can fill gaps in the present remedy ecosystem and by outlining practical recommendations for designing inquiries that respect the right to remedy and centre affected persons.
Sport federations occupy a unique space of quasi-sovereignty, exercising normative and adjudicatory authority through transnational legal systems. This article examines the internal adjudicatory structures of 39 federations through a socio-legal lens, developing a typology of their justice architectures into three distinct models: externalised, centralised, and multi-tiered. Drawing methodological and theoretical inspiration from constitutional frameworks, the study constructs a dataset that facilitates both comparative analysis and theoretical reflection. Yet, this is not a paper solely about institutional form. Rather, its theoretical framework reflects on how the architecture of sporting justice obscures and reveals power. Empirical correlations between model type and publication levels, doping adjudication, or gross income reveal partial truths, but also highlight systemic opacity and the limits of formal structures. The paper argues that internal justice systems are less about neutral dispute resolution and more about the institutionalisation of authority under the guise of procedural justice. These systems, which mimic constitutional orders, operate without the democratic legitimacy or public accountability typically found in public spheres. Thus, the paper makes a dual contribution: it maps the adjudicatory infrastructures of international federations and offers a critical reading of their role in sustaining transnational private power. The findings suggest that adjudicatory form should not be mistaken for function, and that justice in sport requires not only better design but deeper scrutiny.
This study examines the potential for transnational criminal networks to deepen their infiltration into Canadian soccer. Other high-risk industries, such as gaming, real estate, luxury goods, and horse racing, have strengthened anti-money laundering and anti-corruption safeguards, making it harder for illicit actors to operate. Because Canadian sport lacks comparable protections, it has become a relatively unregulated avenue for illicit activity, a vulnerability underscored by the first widely documented global match-fixing scheme, uncovered in Germany in 2009. Using Institutional Theory as its analytical lens, this study examines how weaknesses in Canada’s sport governance structures, anti-corruption measures targeting match-fixing, and related regulatory frameworks enable vulnerabilities to persist. It also explores how institutional structures and norms influence behavior and shape outcomes in the fight against corruption in Canadian sport. Drawing on policy and judicial documents, case studies, and academic literature, the study highlights the urgent need for government-led reforms, including enforceable governance standards and regular independent reviews, to restore transparency, accountability, and public trust, and to safeguard the integrity, safety, and security of Canadian athletes, the public, and the sport system.
The FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar was marred by controversy. Unlike previous tournaments, these disagreements were not limited to referee decisions and calls made during the match. The tournament saw widespread human rights violations against migrant workers who had arrived in Qatar following FIFA’s announcement of Qatar hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2022. Despite the reforms introduced in Qatar, including abolition of the kafala system, the flaws in such reforms and the failures to enforce these reforms left workers exposed to wage theft, forced labor, and limited mobility. These abuses highlight the broader concerns about the accountability of international governing bodies like FIFA and their commitment to upholding all internationally recognized human rights under its Human Rights Policy, which was implemented in 2017. This paper critically examines the contractual leverage with FIFA under the Organizing Association Agreement (OAA). As per this contract, the leverage could have been utilized to compel the host nations to comply with the international labor standards and human rights obligations. The paper argues that FIFA had both the leverage and the precedent to enforce labour reforms but failed to exercise its authority under the agreement. By comparing the intervention of FIFA in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil to compel the nation to introduce reforms in its alcohol laws, the paper contends that FIFA’s selective application of such leverage prioritized the commercial benefits over the welfare of the workers. This paper adopts a doctrinal and comparative legal approach, combining analysis of international labour conventions, contractual instruments, and NGO reports with case studies of Qatar, Brazil, and Russia. This is done by examining the relevant international labor standards, including International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions No. 29 (Forced Labour), No. 87 (Freedom of Association), and No. 98 (Collective Bargaining), as well as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The analysis demonstrates how both state actors and non-state entities like FIFA bear responsibilities under international law for transnational labor abuses. Finally, the paper offers forward looking recommendations for significant reforms, advocating for binding human rights clauses in FIFA’s bidding and hosting agreement, abolishment of the kafala system, the establishment of independent oversight mechanisms, enforceable remedies for the workers, and structural changes to increase transparency and accountability in the process. By proposing such enforcement models, the paper shows the global sports institutions how to align their operations with their human rights obligations.
Mediation in sport has long been recognised as a process aligned with the values of fairness, respect, and integrity that underpin athletic competition, yet its practical use remains limited. This article explores why mediation—despite its proven success in other sectors—has yet to gain meaningful traction within international sports dispute resolution. Drawing on original empirical research with twenty-three senior mediators across ten jurisdictions, it provides the first practitioner-based snapshot of mediation’s role in sport today. The findings reveal a field rich in expertise but constrained by low case volumes, weak referral pathways, and entrenched adversarial culture. Settlement rates of around sixty-five per cent on the day and eighty per cent within a month confirm mediation’s effectiveness where it is used. The analysis identifies three core themes: sport-suitability, the need for tailored procedural design, and the systemic value of mediation within sport’s governance architecture. The article also considers whether mediation might complement formal adjudication in disciplinary and doping matters through structured facilitation and restorative processes. It concludes that mediation already works in sport—it is the system around it that must evolve to embed it more fully within the international sporting order.
