Suspended in 2025/26
LL4GG      Half Unit
Sports: Law and Governance

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Sport has increasingly been in the public limelight. Events such as the announcement of the European Super League, the sanctions imposed against Russian athletes in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, and the human rights breaches committed in the context of the Football World Cup in Qatar have raised important political, ethical, economic, as well as, growingly, legal questions. This half-unit examines the foundations of and key developments in sports law and governance.

The module will introduce students to how sport governing bodies are organised, which regulatory constraints they are under, and how the sports justice system is structured. In addition, it will zoom in on the most pressing contemporary issues in the field, including the role of human rights, the protection of gender and racial equality, as well as issues surrounding financial sustainability and competitive balance. National, European, and international law will be assessed. Students will also be introduced to the concept of lex sportiva and the jurisprudence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Examples will be drawn from a range of sports, including football, athletics, golf, baseball, ice skating, and those pertaining to the Olympic movement more broadly. The module will pursue a ‘law in context’ approach, looking at the legal developments in this field, while exploring their political, economic, and socio-cultural significance from a critical perspective.

Topics: 

• The Structure of Sports: Governance Models and Lex Sportiva
• The Autonomy of Sports: Regulatory Freedoms and Restraints 
• Sports Justice 
• Athletes’ Rights 
• Sports and Politics
• Human Rights 
• Gender and Racial Equality 
• Financial Sustainability 
• Integrity of Sport: Doping and Betting
• Fans and Identity

2 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the AT.

• Geeraert and van Eekeren, Good Governance in Sport: Critical Reflections (Routledge 2022)
• Lindholm, The Court of Arbitration for Sport and Its Jurisprudence (Springer 2019)
• Kuper and Szymanski, Soccernomics (HarperCollins 2022)
• Wrack, A Women’s Game (Faber 2022) 
• Semenya, The Race to Be Myself (Penguin 2022)
• Dodd and Ordway, ‘FIFA Governance: How Crisis Opened the Door for Gender Equality Reforms’ (2020) Jean Monnet Working Paper 14/20
• Krech, ‘To Be a Woman in the World of Sport: Global Regulation of the Gender Binary in Elite Athletics’ (2017) 35 Berkeley Journal of International Law 262 
• Weatherill, ‘Saving Football from Itself: Why and How to Re-make EU Sports Law’ (2022) 23 Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies 1 
• Heerdt, ‘Tapping the Potential of Human Rights Provisions in Mega-Sporting Events’ Bidding and Hosting Agreements’ (2018) 17 International Sports Law Journal 170 
• Duval, ‘The Olympic Charter: A Transnational Constitution Without a State?’ (2018)

Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period