On Wednesday 26 May 2021 from 16.00-17.00 CET, the Asser International Sports Law Centre, in collaboration with Dr Marjolaine Viret (University of Lausanne), is organising its fifth Zoom In webinar on the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) from the perspective of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

We have the pleasure to be joined by Prof. Helen Keller, former Judge at the ECtHR and a prominent dissenter to the majority’s ruling in the Mutu and Pechstein case.

The ECtHR decision in the Mutu and Pechstein case rendered on 2 October 2018 is widely seen as one of the most important European sports law rulings. It was also the first decision of the Strasbourg court dealing with a case in which the CAS had issued an award. The applicants, Adrian Mutu and Claudia Pechstein, were both challenging the compatibility of CAS proceedings with the procedural rights enshrined in Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court famously declined to conclude that the CAS lacked independence or impartiality, but did find that, insofar as Claudia Pechstein was concerned, she was forced to undergo CAS arbitration and, therefore, that CAS proceedings had to fully comply with the procedural rights guaranteed in the ECHR. In particular, the court held that the refusal by CAS to hold a public hearing, in spite of Claudia Pechstein’s express request, was contrary to Article 6(1) ECHR. Beyond this case, as highlighted by the recent decision of Caster Semenya to submit an application to the ECtHR, the decision opens the way for a more systematic intervention of the Strasbourg court in assessing the human rights compatibility of CAS awards and more broadly of the transnational sports regulations imposed by international sports governing bodies.

Prof. Helen Keller will discuss with us the implications of the ECtHR’s Mutu and Pechstein decision and the potential for future interventions by the court in the realm of the lex sportiva.

The webinar will take the form of an interview followed by a short Q&A open to the digital public. 

Please note the discussion will NOT be recorded and posted on our Youtube channel. 

Register HERE!

Editor’s note: Stephen Weatherill is the Jacques Delors Professor of European Law at Oxford University. He also serves as Deputy Director for European Law in the Institute of European and Comparative Law, and is a Fellow of Somerville College. This blog appeared first on eulawanalysis.blogspot.com and is reproduced here with the agreement of the author. 

The crumbling of the ‘SuperLeague’ is a source of joy to many football fans, but the very fact that such an idea could be advanced reveals something troublingly weak about the internal governance of football in Europe – UEFA’s most of all – and about the inadequacies of legal regulation practised by the EU and/ or by states. This note explains why a SuperLeague is difficult to stop under the current pattern of legal regulation and why accordingly reform is required in order to defend the European model of sport with more muscularity. More...

The mercato, or transfer window, is for some the most exciting time in the life of a football fan. During this narrow period each summer and winter (for the Europeans), fantastic football teams are made or taken apart. What is less often known, or grasped is that behind the breaking news of the latest move to or from your favourite club lies a complex web of transnational rules, institutions and practices.

Our new intensive two-day Masterclass aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) to a small group of dedicated legal professionals who have the ambition to advise football clubs, represent players or join football governing bodies. The course combines theoretical insights on FIFA’s regulation of the transfer market with practical know-how of the actual operation of the RSTP distilled by hands-on practitioners.

Download the full Programme and register HERE.

The Team:

• Dr Antoine Duval is a senior researcher at the Asser Institute and the head of the Asser International Sports Law Centre. He has widely published and lectured on transnational sports law, sports arbitration and the interaction between EU law and sport. He is an avid football fan and football player and looks forward to walking you through the intricacies of the FIFA transfer system.
  

• Carol Couse is a Partner in the sports team at Mills & Reeve LLP , with extensive in-house and in private practice experience of dealing with sports regulatory matters, whether contentious or non-contentious.  She has advised on many multi million pound international football transfer agreements, playing contracts and image rights agreements on behalf clubs, players and agents.

• Jacques Blondin is an Italian lawyer, who joined FIFA inundefined 2015, working for the Disciplinary Department. In 2019, he was appointed Head of FIFA TMS (now called FIFA Regulatory Enforcement) where he is responsible, among other things, for ensuring compliance in international transfers within the FIFA Transfer Matching System.

• Oskar van Maren joined FIFA as a Legal Counsel in December 2017, forming part of the Knowledge Management Hub, a department created in September 2020. Previously, he worked for FIFA’s Players' Status Department. Between April 2014 and March 2017, he worked as a Junior Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut. He holds an LL.M in European law from Leiden University (The Netherlands).
• Rhys Lenarduzzi is currently a research intern at the Asser International Sports Law Centre, where he focuses in particular on the transnational regulation of football. Prior to this, he acquired over 5 years of experience as a sports agent and consultant, at times representing over 50 professional athletes around the world from various sports, though predominantly football.
  

Editor’s note: Thomas Terraz is a L.LM. candidate in the European Law programme at Utrecht University and a former intern of the Asser International Sports Law Centre

1.     Sport Nationalism is Politics

Despite all efforts, the Olympic Games has been and will be immersed in politics. Attempts to shield the Games from social and political realities are almost sure to miss their mark and potentially risk being disproportionate. Moreover, history has laid bare the shortcomings of the attempts to create a sanitized and impenetrable bubble around the Games. The first blog of this series examined the idea of the Games as a sanitized space and dived into the history of political neutrality within the Olympic Movement to unravel the irony that while the IOC aims to keep the Olympic Games ‘clean’ of any politics within its ‘sacred enclosure’, the IOC and the Games itself are largely enveloped in politics. Politics seep into the cracks of this ‘sanitized’ space through: (1) public protests (and their suppression by authoritarian regimes hosting the Games), (2) athletes who use their public image to take a political stand, (3) the IOC who takes decisions on recognizing national Olympic Committees (NOCs) and awarding the Games to countries,[1] and (4) states that use the Games for geo-political posturing.[2] With this background in mind, the aim now is to illustrate the disparity between the IOC’s stance on political neutrality when it concerns athlete protest versus sport nationalism, which also is a form of politics.

As was mentioned in part one of this series, the very first explicit mention of politics in the Olympic Charter was in its 1946 version and aimed to combat ‘the nationalization of sports for political aims’ by preventing ‘a national exultation of success achieved rather than the realization of the common and harmonious objective which is the essential Olympic law’ (emphasis added). This sentiment was further echoed some years later by Avery Brundage (IOC President (1952-1972)) when he declared: ‘The Games are not, and must not become, a contest between nations, which would be entirely contrary to the spirit of the Olympic Movement and would surely lead to disaster’.[3] Regardless of this vision to prevent sport nationalism engulfing the Games and its codification in the Olympic Charter, the current reality paints quite a different picture. One simply has to look at the mass obsession with medal tables during the Olympic Games and its amplification not only by the media but even by members of the Olympic Movement.[4] This is further exacerbated when the achievements of athletes are used for domestic political gain[5] or when they are used to glorify a nation’s prowess on the global stage or to stir nationalism within a populace[6]. Sport nationalism is politics. Arguably, even the worship of national imagery during the Games from the opening ceremony to the medal ceremonies cannot be depoliticized.[7] In many ways, the IOC has turned a blind eye to the politics rooted in these expressions of sport nationalism and instead has focused its energy to sterilize its Olympic spaces and stifle political expression from athletes. One of the ways the IOC has ignored sport nationalism is through its tacit acceptance of medal tables although they are expressly banned by the Olympic Charter.

At this point, the rules restricting athletes’ political protest and those concerning sport nationalism, particularly in terms of medal tables, will be scrutinized in order to highlight the enforcement gap between the two. More...

Editor's note: Michele Krech is a JSD Candidate and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow at NYU School of Law. She was retained as a consultant by counsel for Caster Semenya in the proceedings before the Court of Arbitration for Sport discussed above. She also contributed to two reports mentioned in this blog post: the Report of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,  Intersection of race and gender discrimination in sport (June 2020); and the Human Rights Watch Report, “They’re Chasing Us Away from Sport”: Human Rights Violations in Sex Testing of Elite Women Athletes (December 2020).

This blog was first published by the Völkerrechtsblog and is republished here with authorization. Michele Krech will be joining our next Zoom In webinar on 31 March to discuss the next steps in the Caster Semenya case.

Sport is the field par excellence in which discrimination
against intersex people has been made most visible.

Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe
Issue Paper: Human rights and intersex people (2015)

Olympic and world champion athlete Caster Semenya is asking the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to make sure all women athletes are “allowed to run free, for once and for all”. Semenya brings her application against Switzerland, which has allowed a private sport association and a private sport court to decide – with only the most minimal appellate review by a national judicial authority – what it takes for women, legally and socially identified as such all their lives, to count as women in the context of athletics. I consider how Semenya’s application might bring human rights, sex, and sport into conversation in ways not yet seen in a judicial forum. More...

On Wednesday 31 March 2021 from 16.00-17.30 CET, the Asser International Sports Law Centre, in collaboration with Dr Marjolaine Viret (University of Lausanne), is organising its fourth Zoom In webinar on the recent developments arising from the decision of the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) in the case Caster Semenya v. International Association of Athletics Federations (now World Athletics), delivered on 25 August 2020.

Background
The participation of athletes with biological sex differences to international competitions is one of the most controversial issues in transnational sports law. In particular, since 2019, Caster Semenya, an Olympic champion from South-Africa has been challenging the World Athletics eligibility rules for Athletes with Differences of Sex Development (DSD Regulation), which would currently bar her from accessing international competitions (such as the Tokyo Olympics) unless she accepts to undergo medical treatment aimed at reducing her testosterone levels. In April 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected her challenge against the DSD Regulation in a lengthy award. In response, Caster Semenya and the South African Athletics Federation filed an application to set aside the award before the Swiss Federal Tribunal. In August 2020, the SFT released its decision rejecting Semenya’s challenge of the award (for an extensive commentary of the ruling see Marjolaine Viret’s article on the Asser International Sports Law Blog).

Recently, on 25 February 2021, Caster Semenya announced her decision to lodge an application at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) against Switzerland on the basis of this judgment. In this context, we thought it important to organise a Zoom In webinar around the decision of the SFT and the pending case before the ECtHR. Indeed, should the ECtHR accept the case, it will be in a position to provide a definitive assessment of the human rights compatibility of the DSD Regulation. Moreover, this decision could have important consequences on the role played by human rights in the review of the private regulations and decisions of international sports governing bodies.

Speakers

• Michele Krech (New York University)
• Lena Holzer (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies)
• Prof. Frédéric Bernard (University of Geneva)
• Prof. Antonio Rigozzi (University of Neuchâtel/Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler)

Participation is free, register HERE.

Dear readers,

If you missed it (or wish to re-watch it), the video of our third Zoom In webinar from 25 February on the CAS award in the World Anti-Doping Agency v. Russian Anti-Doping Agency case is available on the YouTube channel of the Asser Institute:

Stay tuned and watch this space, the announcement for the next Zoom In webinar, which will take place on 31 March, is coming soon!

In the past couple of years, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) made remarkable steps towards embedding human rights into their practices and policies. These developments have been discussed at length and in detail in this blog and elsewhere, but a short overview at this point is necessary to set the scene. Arguably, most changes were sparked by John Ruggie’s report from 2016, in which he articulated a set of concrete recommendations for FIFA “on what it means for FIFA to embed respect for human rights across its global operations”, using the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as authoritative standard.[i] As a result, in May 2017, FIFA published a human rights policy, in which it commits to respecting human rights in accordance with the UNGPs, identifies its salient human rights risks, and acknowledges the potential adverse impacts it can have on human rights in general and human rights of people belonging to specific groups. In October 2017, it adopted new bidding regulations requiring bidders to develop a human rights strategy and conduct an independent human rights risk assessment as part of their bid. In March 2017, FIFA also created a Human Rights Advisory Board, which regularly evaluated FIFA’s human rights progress and made recommendations on how FIFA should address human rights issues linked to its activities. The mandate of the Advisory Board expired at the end of last year and the future of this body is unknown at this point.

While some of these steps can be directly connected to the recommendations in the Ruggie report, other recommendations have largely been ignored. One example of the latter and focus of this blog post is the issue of embedding human rights at the level of national football associations. It outlines recent steps taken by the German football association “Deutscher Fussball-Bund” (DFB) and the Dutch football association “Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond” (KNVB) in relation to human rights, and explores to what extent these steps can be regarded as proactive moves by those associations or rather spillover effects from FIFA’s human rights efforts. More...

On Thursday 25 February 2021 from 16.00-17.30 CET, the Asser International Sports Law Centre, in collaboration with Dr Marjolaine Viret (University of Lausanne), organizes a Zoom In webinar on the recent award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in the case World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) v. Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), delivered on 17 December 2020.

Background
In its 186 pages decision the CAS concluded that RUSADA was non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) in connection with its failure to procure the delivery of the authentic LIMS data (Laboratory Information Management System) and underlying analytical data of the former Moscow Laboratory to WADA. However, the CAS panel did not endorse the entire range of measures sought by WADA to sanction this non-compliance. It also reduced the time frame of their application from four to two years. The award has been subjected to a lot of public attention and criticisms, and some have expressed the view that Russia benefited from a lenient treatment.   

This edition of our Zoom in webinars will focus on assessing the impact of the award on the world anti-doping system. More specifically, we will touch upon the decision’s effect on the capacity of WADA to police institutionalized doping systems put in place by certain states, the ruling’s regard for the rights of athletes (Russian or not), and its effect on the credibility of the world anti-doping system in the eyes of the general public.

To discuss the case with us, we are very happy to welcome the following speakers:

• Michele Verroken (Sporting Integrity Limited, Independent Anti-Doping Expert)
• Herman Ram (CEO of the Dutch NADO/Dopingautoriteit)
• Prof. Jean-Loup Chappelet (University of Lausanne)

Participation is free, register HERE.

Expressions of interest are invited from colleagues who would like to contribute to an edited book on Sporting Succession in Selected Jurisdictions. Interested colleagues are invited to send their abstracts jointly to laura.donnellan@ul.ie and klausjacob.kornbeck@gmail.com. If you are unsure about how your research would fit in, please feel free to reach out to us via email before writing your abstract. Abstracts received will be included into a book proposal to be submitted to a major English-speaking publisher. Colleagues will be notified by us once we have received the reaction of the publisher, at which point we shall decide about further steps to be taken in the process. 

The book will be edited by Jacob Kornbeck, BSc, MA, LLM, PhD, DrPhil, Programme Manager in the European Commission (but acting strictly in a private capacity) and external lecturer at the University of Lille, inter alia, and Laura Donnellan, LLB, LLM, PhD, Associate Professor in the School of Law, University of Limerick.

The following incorporates the most salient ideas from a presentation made by Jacob Kornbeck at the Sport&EU Conference in Angers (June 2023). 

The concept of sporting succession permits making claims against sporting entities which can be considered as sporting successors to previously existing sporting entities, even where the previous entities have been wound up and have been dissolved under normal bankruptcy and succession rules. No fault is required for sporting succession to be invoked and considered, and the concept may even apply in certain cases where the previous entity has not even been dissolved legally (CAS 2023/A/9809 Karpaty FC v. FIFA, Cristóbal Márquez Crespo & FC Karpaty Halych. 18 July 2024). While the implementation of the relevant FIFA rules by national FAs has been documented comprehensively in a recent edited book (Cambreleng Contreras, Samarath & Vandellós Alamilla (eds), Sporting Succession in Football. Salerno, SLPC, 2022), no known book or article addresses the overlap, interplay and potential conflict of norms between the lex sportiva of sporting succession and the public law or successions, etc. 

Provisions on sporting succession were first inserted into the FIFA Disciplinary Code 2019 with the effect that, whenever a sporting entity declares bankruptcy or is otherwise wound up, the notion of sporting succession applies to its unpaid financial liabilities and may be imputed to a so-called sporting successor, even if that successor is an entity legally distinct, according to the usual rules under public law, from the previous entity. Article 14 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code 2023 governs ‘failure to respect decisions,’ understood as failure to ‘pay another person (such as a player, a coach or a club) or FIFA a sum of money in full or part, even though instructed to do so by a body, a committee, a subsidiary or an instance of FIFA or a CAS decision (financial decision), or anyone who fails to comply with another final decision (non-financial decision) passed by a body, a committee, a subsidiary or an instance of FIFA, or by CAS.’ Article 21(4) extends the scope of the provision to the ‘sporting successor of a non-compliant party’ who ‘shall also be considered a non-compliant party and thus subject to the obligations under this provision. Criteria to assess whether an entity is to be considered as the sporting successor of another entity are, among others, its headquarters, name, legal form, team colours, players, shareholders or stakeholders or ownership and the category of competition concerned.’ Further provision is made in Article 21(7). In practice, this means that a club which carries on the legacy on a previous club, drawing on its cultural capital, fan base, etc., may be liable to paid unpaid debts of that previous club. These arrangements seem unusual prima facie.

Organs of FIFA have power to enforce these rules and to hear appeals against such decisions, while their decisions may be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and/or to the Swiss judiciary (see Victor Piţurcă v Romanian Football Federation & U Craiova 1948 SA (CAS 2021/A/8331) (2023) as well as well as the rulings of the Federal Tribunal in the cases Youness Bengelloun (2022) and Júlio César da Silva et Souza (2022) based on Article 190 LDIP (Federal Act on Private International Law). 

While the concept of sporting succession offers a striking example of a provision for specificity enshrined in a sporting regulation and applied within the sports community, its pertinence under public law remains largely unaccounted for. With the (apparent) exception of one Swiss PhD thesis (Derungs, 2022), the issues which it raises seem so far to have failed to trigger the scholarship which they might deserve, especially in a comparative legal research perspective. The aim of the envisaged edited book is to explore the issue in a comparative perspective, not only across jurisdictions but also across different branches of the law. We hope in particular to receive abstracts on the following:

• Examples from the most representative European (and possibly extra-European) countries of overlap, interplay and potential conflict of norms between the lex sportiva of sporting succession and the public law or successions, etc. Ideally, the book should include chapters from and about the biggest European countries which are most relevant to the football industry while, at the same time, it would seem crucial that the most important legal traditions (French and German civil law, common law, Nordic law) should be represented. 
• Perspectives of players and other stakeholders.
• Examples from other sports than football, if appropriate.
• Examples of overlap, interplay and potential conflict of norms between the lex sportiva of sporting succession and other branches of lex sportiva, if applicable.
• Examples of overlap, interplay and potential conflict of norms between the lex sportiva of sporting succession, on the one hand, and new developments in sports such as AI and esports, on the other.
• If we have overlooked a meaningful nuance, please feel free to flag this in your submission and make corresponding proposals to us. 

Please send us your abstracts jointly to laura.donnellan@ul.ie and klausjacob.kornbeck@gmail.com no later than 1 October 2025. 

Editor's note: Saverio Paolo Spera is an Italian qualified attorney-at-law. He holds an LL.M. in international business law from King’s College London. He is the co-founder of SP.IN Law, a Zurich based international sports law firm. Jacques Blondin is an Italian qualified attorney, who held different roles at FIFA, including Head of FIFA TMS and Head of FIFA Regulatory Enforcement. He is the co-founder of SP.IN Law. The Authors wish to disclaim that they have represented Ms. Nayoka Clunis before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne in the context of the proceedings which led to the Award of 31 July 2024.

Every four years since more than a century,[1] a spectacular display of sportsmanship takes place over the course of a few weeks during the summer: the Olympic Games.[2]

         For thousands of athletes around the globe, the Olympic Games are “the pinnacle of success and the ultimate goal of athletic competition”.[3] In their quest to compete in the most important stage of their sport, they endure demanding and time-consuming efforts (often including considerable financial sacrifices). These endeavours occasionally lead to everlasting glory (the exploits of athletes of the calibre of Carl Lewis, or more recently, Usain Bolt[4] still resonate among sports’ observers), more often to a shorter gratification. Whether their gestures end up going down the sport’s history books or last the span of a few competitions, athletes are always the key actors of a magnificent event that continues to feed the imagination of generations of sports fans. 

And yet, situations may occur when athletes find themselves at the mercy of their respective federations in the selection process for the Olympic Games and, should the federations fail them (for whatever reason), face an insurmountable jurisdictional obstacle to have their voice heard by the only arbitral tribunal appointed to safeguard their rights in a swift and specialised manner: the Court of Arbitration for Sport (the “CAS”).[5]

This is the story of Nayoka Clunis, a Jamaican world class hammer throw athlete who had qualified for the Olympic Games of Paris 2024 and yet, due to no fault of her own, could not participate in the pinnacle of competitions in her sport. Though eligible in light of her world ranking, she was failed by her own federation[6] [AD1] [SPS2] and ultimately found herself in the unfortunate – but legally unescapable – vacuum whereby neither the CAS Ad Hoc Division in Paris nor the ‘regular’ CAS division in Lausanne had jurisdiction to entertain her claim.  

The aim of this paper is not to discuss whether Ms. Clunis would have had a chance to successfully prove her claims and compete in Paris had her case been heard on the merits, nor to debate about the appropriateness of a national federation’s selection process (also because Ms. Clunis never challenged it, having been eligible ‘from day one’).[7] Retracing the story of a sportswoman’s dramatic misfortune, this paper aims at providing an opportunity to reflect on how effective the safeguard of athletes’ rights in the context of the Olympic Games actually is. More...

The University of Inland Norway and the Asser International Sports Law Centre invite the submission of abstracts for a workshop in Lillehammer on 4 and 5 December exploring the role of long-term contracts in sport and their characteristics through a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses.

Contracts play a crucial role in the world of sport, particularly long-term contracts. Contractual agreements form the foundation of transnational sports governance, SGBs are all formally the product of a specific time of contract (be it in the form of an association or corporation) often justifying the autonomy of sport and its private governance at a (more or less far) distance from the state.

Moreover, contracts establish long-term commitments between the parties involved, raising a variety of questions regarding the asymmetry in their positions, the scope of party autonomy, contractual mechanisms for addressing uncertainty, and their interaction with domestic and international mandatory regulations, among others. In short, it is impossible to fully understand the operation and limitations of transnational sports law and governance without investigating the many ways in which it is embedded in long-term contracts ruled by a variety of contract laws.

This workshop proposes to explore the role of long-term contracts in sport and their characteristics through a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses.

We welcome proposals touching on the following issues/case studies:

• The concept of time in sport and the definition of ‘long-term’ in sport-related contracts;
• The function of long-term contracts in transnational sports governance;
• The function of long-term contracts in the operation of private dispute resolution mechanisms (CAS, BAT, FIFA DRC);
• The transactional nature of long-term contracts in sport;
• The relational nature of long-term contracts in sport;
• The conflict between private autonomy and long-term contracts in sport;
• The intersection between private and public in the operation of long-term contracts in sport;
• Specific contractual arrangements, including:
• Contracts of association and SGBs
• Long-term (labour) contracts with athletes and coaches;
• Contracts related to the organization of mega-sporting events, including host city contracts;
• TV and media long-term contracts;
• Sponsorship agreements;
• and more.

Abstracts must be sent to Yuliya Chernykh (yuliya.chernykh@inn.no) by 15 June. 

Since 2022, the T.M.C. Asser Instituut, in collaboration with the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, is organising the first yearly summer course on the intersection of sport and human rights. This 4th edition brings together scholars specialised in the intersection between sport and human rights with professionals working in international sport to ensure respect for human rights. We will explore contemporary human rights challenges in sports, such as the protections of human rights at mega-sporting events, access to remedy in human rights cases within the world of sport, the intersection between human rights and gender rights in international sporting competitions, and many more. 

The programme is designed to provide both deep background knowledge and actionnable insights, which will be relevant to a range of participants committed to defending human rights in international sport, including students, junior researchers, representatives of CSOs, sporting organisations, and athletes. It is structured around half days taking place online meant to accommodate as many participants as possible throughout the world. 

Check out the latest draft programme below and register HERE! 

Call for papers

20 years of the World Anti-Doping Code in Action

International Sports Law Journal Conference 2025

Asser Institute, The Hague

6 and 7 November 2025

The Editors of the International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ), the Asser Institute and the Research Chair on Responsible Sport of the University of Sherbrooke invite you to submit abstracts for the ISLJ Conference on International Sports Law, which will take place on 6 and 7 November 2025 at the Asser Institute in The Hague. The ISLJ, published by Springer and T.M.C. Asser Press, is the leading academic publication in the field of international sports law and governance. The conference is a unique occasion to discuss the main legal issues affecting international sports with academics and practitioners from all around the world. 

The 2025 ISLJ Conference will focus on assessing the first 20 years (2004-2024) of operation of the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) since its entry into force in 2004, while also discussing its future prospects, in light of the new version of the Code due to be adopted at the Busan Conference in December 2025 and the 10th Conference of the Parties to the International Convention against Doping in Sport, to be held in Paris from 20 to 22 October. The aim of the conference will be to take a comprehensive stock of the operation of the private-public transnational regulatory regime which emerged in the wake of the WADC.  This regime is structured around a complex network of national and global institutions engaged in anti-doping work (WADA, NADAs, IFs, accredited laboratories) and guided by an equally complex assemblage of norms located at the global (WADC and the WADA Standards), international (UNESCO Convention against Doping in Sport), regional (Council of Europe Anti-Doping Convention), and national (various national anti-doping legislations) level. This makes for a fascinating and convoluted transnational legal construct in need of being studied, analysed and criticised by scholars. 

Reviewing 20 years of implementation of the WADC warrants a special edition of the ISLJ Conference and of the journal, which invites scholars of all disciplines to reflect on the many questions and issues linked with it. We welcome proposals touching on the following subjects (and more): 

• The governance of the world anti-doping regime
• The public-private nature of this governance
• The transparency of this governance
• The legitimacy of this governance
• The participatory nature of this governance
• The role of scientific experts in this governance

•  The normative content of the WADC and the international standards
• The strict liability principle 
• The privacy rights of athletes under the WADC
• The sanctioning policy under the WADC
• The role of the international standards in implementing the WADC
• The compatibility of the WADC with human rights

• The glocal implementation of the WADC
• The role of local institutions (NADOs/Labs/NOCs) in the implementation of the WADC
• The tension between global (WADA) and local (NADOs/Labs/NOCs) in the implementation of the WADC
• The role of the IFs in the implementation of the WADC
• The role of the ITA in the implementation of the WADC
• The role of judicial bodies (national courts, disciplinary committees of IFs, CAS) and their jurisprudence in the implementation of the WADC 

• The effectiveness of the world anti-doping regime
• The evaluation and evolution of the effectiveness of the world anti-doping regime in preventing doping
• The role of the media in unveiling the ineffectiveness of the world anti-doping regime
• The role of states in hindering the effectiveness of the world anti-doping regime
• The world anti-doping regime as a regime with a variable geometry of effectiveness

•  The future of the world anti-doping regime: Revolution, reform or more of the same?
• Do we need a world anti-doping regime? 
• If we do, should it be reformed? How? 

Abstracts of 300 words and CVs should be sent no later than 1 June 2025 to a.duval@asser.nl. Selected speakers will be informed by 30 June 2025. The selected participants will be expected to submit a draft paper by 15 October 2025. Papers accepted and presented at the conference are eligible for publication in a special issue of the ISLJ subject to peer-review. The Asser Institute will provide a limited amount of travel and accommodation grants (max. 350€) to early career researchers (doctoral and post-doctoral) in need of financial support. If you wish to be considered for a grant, please indicate it in your submission.  

On 4 October, the Court of Justice of the European Union shook the world of football with its Diarra ruling. The decision questions the compatibility of a key provision of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) with European Union internal market law. The RSTP, and in particular its article 17, are the bedrock of football’s transfer ‘market’ and regulate the conditions for the transnational movement of players between clubs. In 2023, based on FIFA’s numbers, 21 801 players were transferred internationally (of which 3279 with a fee) for transfer fees amounting to USD 9.63 bn. In short, this is a market that affects a considerable number of players and is linked with the movement of large sums of money between clubs and other actors (such as intermediaries).

Register HERE

Join us on 20 November from 16:00 to 18:00 CET to take stock of the ruling's impact and discuss the steps ahead in a free Zoom-In webinar in which there will be time for a Q&A session with the speakers. The ruling has already been much commented on (see here, here, here, and here), and this zoom-in webinar will be an opportunity for participants to engage with two experts on the economic and legal intricacies of the regulation of labour relations in football. We will mostly focus on the aftermath of the judgment and the question, 'what comes next?'

Moderator: Marjolaine Viret (Université de Lausanne)

Speakers: 

• Antoine Duval (Asser Institute)
• Stefan Szymanski (University of Michigan)

Register HERE

The Court of Justice of the European Union has recently handed down its judgement in the Lassana Diarra case (C-650/22 FIFA v. BZ).

Given the importance of this case to the sports industry, LawInSport, the Asser Instituut and the Association for the Study of Sport and the EU (Sport & EU) are hosting a joint webinar to bring together experts to unpack and provide clarity on the complex legal, regulatory & commercial issues stemming from this case. This free webinar will be hosted from 14:00 UK time (15:00 CET) on 18 October 2024.

Register HERE 

Speakers

Our expert speakers come from academia, law and sport. Our confirmed speakers are:

• Mario Flores Chemor, Head of Sports Legal, European Club Association
• Sinziana Ianc, Antitrust & Foreign Investment Managing Associate, Linklaters
• Carol Couse, Partner, Mills & Reeve
• Pieter Paepe, Partner, Edson Legal (represented FIFPRO & UNFP - French player’s association in this case)
• Dr. Andrea Cattaneo, Senior Lecturer in Law, Edge Hill University
• Dr. Antoine Duval, Senior Researcher, T.M.C. Asser Instituut
• Sean Cottrell, CEO, LawInSport (moderator)

Register HERE 

On 24 and 25 October 2024, the Asser Institute in The Hague will host the 2024 edition of the  International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ)  Conference. The ISLJ is the leading academic journal in transnational sports law and governance and is proud to provide a platform for transnational debates on the state of the field. The conference will address a number of issues of interest to the ISLJ and its readers. 

Register HERE

Drivers and effects of reform in transnational sports governance 

Transnational sports governance seems to be in a permanently unstable state of crisis and reform. At regular interval, international sports governing bodies face scandals triggered by corruption investigations or human rights violations, as well as adverse judidicial decisions. These are often followed by waves of institutional reforms, such as the creation of new bodies (E.g. the Athletics Integrity Unit), the adoption of new codes and regulation (such as Codes of Ethics) or human rights commitments (e.g. FIFA and the IOC’s Human Rights Policy/Strategy). This dynamic of crisis and reform will be at the heart of this year’s ISLJ conference, as a number of panels will critically investigate the triggers, transformative effects and limited impacts of reforms in transnational sports governance.  

Football in the midst of international law and relations 
As the war in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continue to rage, it has become even clearer that the football world can hardly be entirely abstracted from international relations. Yet, FIFA and UEFA continue to insist on their neutrality and to deny that their governance is (or should be) affected by the world’s political affairs. During the conference, we will engage with case studies in which football is entangled with international politics and law. In particular, the speakers will delve into the role of FIFA and UEFA in such situations and on the legal standards and processes that should be applied throughout their decision-making.  

Olympic challenges of today and tomorrow 
While the Paris 2024 Olympics have come to a close, the legal questions they have raised are far from exhausted. Instead, the Olympics have highlighted new issues (such as the question of the legality of the hijab ban imposed by the French Federation on its athletes) or old ones (such as the question whether Olympians should be remunerated by the IOC or the international federations), which will be discussed by our speakers. Finally, with the help of our keynote speaker, Prof. Jules Boykoff, a longstanding critique of the current Olympic regime, we will explore the IOC’s capacity to adapt to challenges while resisting radical change to the current model of olympism.   

Download the full programme 

Online participation available 
Following the success of our webinar option in the past years, we are once again allowing online participation to the conference at an affordable price. Thus, we hope to internationalise and diversify our audience and to reach people who are not in a position to travel to The Hague.  

We look forward to welcoming you in person in The Hague or digitally to this new iteration of the ISLJ conference. 

Register HERE

Speakers 

• Ariel Dulitzky (University of Texas)  

• Burak Gemalmaz (Istanbul University) 

• Pedro José Mercado Jaén (European University Institute) 

• Cathérine Van de Graaf (University of Cologne) 

• Seamus Byrne (Manchester Metropolitan University)  

• Layckan van Gensen (Stellenbosch University)  

• Jules Boykoff (Pacific University, Oregon) 

• Brendan Schwab(Schwab Legal) 

• Roddy Cairns (University of Strathclyde)  

• Katarina Pijetlovic (Catolica University)  

• Béatrice Martel (McGill University)  

• Marcus Mazzucco (University of Toronto)  

• Shubham Jain (Cambridge University)  

• Veronika Yefremova (Leiden University)  

• Sarah Carrick (Manchester Metropolitan University)  

• Miquel Aznar Company (Universitat de València)  

• Niyati Pandey (Gujarat National Law University) 

• Tarun Tarun (Gujarat National Law University) 

• Khalida Popal (Afghan National Team) 

Register HERE

The newly launched ‘Global Sport and Human Rights Research Network’, an initiative jointly hosted by the T.M.C. Asser Instituut and the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, together with the European Union-funded project ‘Human Rights Empowered Through Athletes Rights (H.E.R.O.)' is organising an in-person conference on October 23 at the Asser Institute in The Hague, to map the field of athletes' rights and engage in critical discussions on protection of these rights and how to prevent rights violations.

The one-day conference will kick off with a presentation by the H.E.R.O. team on their research results, followed by a short panel discussion. The rest of the day will be filled with four panels on different aspects related to the topic of athletes’ human rights, with speakers from academic institutions around the world.

Check out the full programme HERE and register for free HERE.