THE LAST WORD

CHAMPIONS KEEP PLAYING UNTIL THEY GET IT RIGHT

Wherever you come from in the world, sport is a common denominator that brings us together. It is supposed to be about community. Connections made through sports prove invaluable in other areas of life. But how did this trillion dollar industry manage to find immunity for its actions? How did it escape - until relatively very recently - the code of ethics that is now an integral part of most other businesses? In both major global sporting events and, at the other end of the spectrum, in school or club teams, and everything in between, corruption has been rife, abuse prevalent. Everyone should have access to sport - and no parent should ever have to fear about sending their children into that space. Because sport has always been kept so insular without much governance around it, the people in charge have had cause to believe they are so powerful they can do what they want. It is time to treat sport like any other business. To make it accountable for its behaviours. As the common denominator for so many people, the culture that surrounds sport can actually drive the behaviour of a particular town, country and even society as a whole. It is important for each and every one of us that we get it right.

David Alfrey is a partner at Addleshaw Goddard LLP. Since its first inception in 2016 he has been a key advisor to the founders of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, whose mission it is ‘to advance a world of sport that fully respects and promotes human rights’. The Centre, which was set up in Geneva, looks to centralise accountability in sports through the lens of human rights. Mary Robinson, who was a former president of Ireland and who then was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, became the founding chair and patron of the Centre and it very quickly grew with support from corporate sponsors, sports bodies, governments, trade unions, and civil society groups. David was also asked to support a project connected to human rights at the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 - which proved to be quite an extraordinary experience. As the event was approaching there was a lot of engagement from all over the globe as to what human rights standards and practice should look like for this particular World Cup. Peoples’ evolving attitudes to human rights would be the catalyst that would eventually promote meaningful change in the world of sports.

David says: “The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights came out in 2011. Russia and Qatar had won bids to host in 2010 for 2018 and 2022. So the runway, particularly for Qatar, was massive - but, more importantly, the award of the World Cup predated our current expectations of how Human Rights standards should be applied in the context of a mega-sporting event. It was around 2015 that realisation began that the world of sustainability and ethical corporate behaviour, that had started to develop more tangibly for the business world in particular, was not fully part of the ecosystem of sport which has always sat slightly apart from state-based standards and rules. If you look at the Olympics - or any of the mega sporting events - when they come to a specific country, usually the

city leaders (e.g. Mayors) will quite literally hand over the keys of the city to allow the sporting bodies to run them for the duration of the event. An example of this was when the UK hosted the Olympics, the London 2012 Olympic Act was passed to facilitate this - it allowed the organising and hosting bodies to control the delivery of the mega sporting event. In respects, sports organisations have supreme power but with very little accountability as to what goes on either pre or post event. We are all aware there are a number of issues and some of these repeat at every major event internationally, for example relating to the working conditions of migrant workers, labour conditions on site and in supply chains, discrimination in and around events, press freedom and so on. We also typically see patterns with illegalities of corruption presentbut once the starting whistle blows, everyone gets excited about the sporting event and often these concerns fade. This is commonly referred to as "sports washing". The same happens when the final whistle is blown. Suddenly it's all over, trophies get lifted and as everyone goes back to their lives or the next sporting adventure, the challenges in delivery of the games are often left unaddressed.”

It is clear that while sports ethics has a long history, responsible business practice was not a mainstream part of sports until fairly recently. Hence the need for the Centre which attempted to bring these influential bodies into a space where they would both focus on and action more accountability and greater engagement with the people and communities that they can impact.

As part of the Centre’s strategy, it introduced a roadmap called ‘Convergence 2025’ that sets out an ethical map of how to view sports through a people-centred approach, taking into account the responsibilities of institutions across sport.

It is clear that while sports ethics has a long history, responsible business practice was not a mainstream part of sports until fairly recently.

“There is an image of a stadium in the Centre’s strategy with athletes in the middle and fans around. The stadium stands are built up of all the advisers and other contractors. To contextualise this image, there are about 1200 contractual relationships in the delivery of major sporting events and failure to protect the interests of the vulnerable, amounts to around 1200 opportunities to have prevented this harm. Challenges in megasport are systemic and rely on collective responsibility rather than a single point of entry or just one organisation.”

There is a lot to consider as ethics and human rights impinge on each stage and each person involved in sports events. We all talk about how to deliver a hundred billion dollar event. In Qatar’s case it was 300 billion. The issue starts at the very beginning. How does one even win the bid in the first place?

The United 26 Men's World Cup was the first bid requiring human rights reports to be published by each city. Typically considerations that play into the selection of countries and cities include costs, spending and savings, key infrastructure needs, political will, legacy, etc. Taking infrastructure as an example, significant migrant labour workforces are required to build infrastructure, but often they don't come in with all the relevant protections because of how transnational migration corridors are ripe with exploitation, trafficking risk and illegal recruitment practices. If considered at a grassroots level, there are several examples of widely known cases in sports, in particular with regard to the systemic abuse of young female athletes within sporting structures. By example, both the Haiti and the Afghan girls’ football teams have reported horrendous experiences of abuse and trafficking. While some of those affected have been offered support, including asylum and are now safe, many others globally are not, and years of trauma may never be overcome. Unfortunately, throughout the world of sport, at every stage, there are examples of unethical behaviours.

Some areas of sports are now setting up their own bodies to promote ethical behaviour. Gymnastics have created a body called the Gymnastics Ethics Foundation (GEF) in answer to some of the very damning revelations there have been in recent years regarding behaviours like sexual, physical and mental abuse in schools, in training centres within the sport. Parents' complaints had been ignored - but now new structures, and independent safe sport units, are being established to try and not just deal with the repercussions of such behaviour but to stop it occurring in the first place.

Protecting children surely is something that is a common goal that nobody would ever dispute. But David tells of horror stories where safeguarding concerns are poorly understood, and recommended actions to improve safety are resisted on the basis of competing priorities.

Today, David advises a number of international sporting federations ranging from football to motorsport. He optimistically says a seismic shift is finally happening.

“People are willing to be more transparent. Also, importantly, athletes are finally being viewed and respected as people, not just assets. The shift in language may seem insignificant, but if a player is an asset they have limited rights and are accounted for as part of the economics of the model, but as an employee, they have protected rights, these need to be respected. That shift in language starts to shift the entire system.”

The role of the international sporting federations is critical as to whether sports will become more ethical. Sports rights owners have the ability to set the rules of the game, inviting athletes to participate on their set terms, and offering financial support to those willing to do so. See for example FIFA, in addition to owning the Men's and Women's World Cups, also provides financial support to the national federations.

Think of it from a legal context. If you are an athlete on the PGA tour, and you break the rules by doing something inappropriate, the PGA can exclude you, essentially preventing you from participating in key tournaments. But as the PGA, in this example, sets those rules, enforcement of the rules requires strong governance. Sports rights owners are able therefore to set the standards and enforce these, which if done well creates an opportunity to improve protections of rights in sport.

Recognising the challenges reported in the 2022 World Cup, the 2026 edition across Canada, Mexico and the United States could be even more difficult. Whilst David was at his previous law firm, Clifford Chance LLP, he published a report together with the Centre for Sport and Human Rights called ‘The Promise of a Positive Legacy’, which showed the opportunity for positive human rights change for all these cities rather than beating them up for not being there already. On the back of the report, a number of large corporations connected with sport rallied up - delighted to have all the information needed four years in advance to understand what the human rights legacy of the event could be. In theory, this timescale allows the opportunity to prepare and to ensure that host cities deliver responsible events with strong community legacies.

“Security is obviously a top priority. There is an awareness that there will be risk of sex and human trafficking. I do worry that the 2026 World Cup, as the first multi-state World Cup, will be more challenging than what we saw in Qatar on human rights grounds. Women’s rights are under attack. Gun violence is a unique phenomenon in the United States. Racism and discrimination is more overtly tolerated. Add capital punishment, a widespread homelessness challenge, police brutality, the assault on the rights of LGBTQI+ people, and so much more on that list. While Qatar had many challenges and the impact of the tournament on the labour rights of the migrant workforce was significant, the games-time risks for those attending are potentially so much bigger at a transnational event in North America. It will be interesting to see if collectively, sport can come together to deliver a great tournament.”

William Rook is Deputy Chief Executive of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights that David advised since establishment. Before moving into human rights William trained as a solicitor at Slaughter and May and practised at Hogan Lovells LLP.

“Very frequently, sports organisations will have various ethics codes, ethics committees, ethics principles, ethics practices. But what we see as a priority from our perspective is that all these things should be underpinned by a human rights foundation that's based in normative international standards as opposed to self-referential or self-defined codes. An approach rooted in the UN guiding principles on business and human rights is the best way to underpin ethics, integrity, safeguarding, sustainability, sports development and anti-doping - the whole plethora of assurance, duty of care and social good measures that sports bodies take to make sure that they are safe, inclusive, and accessible for everybody. By establishing a human rights foundation, sports bodies are better able to fulfil their social role and demonstrate that while very autonomous, they are responsibly governed.

For us, that means following the UN guiding principles and related standards like the OECD guidelines on responsible business conduct and asking questions like; Are sports organisations properly engaging their stakeholders? Are they considering the impact of their actions as an institution on people? Do they have robust policies in place? They're very frequently in a kind of castle with a drawbridge that's pulled up in a self-governing environment that can have some pretty archaic governance structures. A human rights based-approach encourages sports bodies to view themselves as part of an ecosystem of relevant actors that collaborate, rather than the more traditional hierarchical structures that have governed sport, that are themselves very euro-centric and perpetuate some of the structural issues that allow human rights abuses to take place in sports.

Sport is highly self-regulating. It lives outside of a lot of the policing and state-based mechanisms that could hold them to account. Because sport has a high degree of autonomy, this means sports organisations administer their own events, determine their own criteria, define who takes part when, where and how, but beyond that, administer their own disputes as well, whether it's through the Court of Arbitration for Sports or other operational grievance mechanisms, and often these kind of mechanisms don't have sufficient transparency attached to them or the

requisite expertise or design to accommodate human rights disputes effectively. While there are many good reasons for keeping sport independent of the state in lots of cases, on the flip side because it's so selfregulating, there are opportunities for abuses within those systems that can perpetuate.”

Sam Murray Hinde is an employment partner at Howard Kennedy LLP who has a particular specialism in sport. At the start of her career, she was involved in the sector working with Olympic governing bodies who, at that time, were mainly staffed by volunteers who, although had great intentions of doing good, were not properly qualified for the jobs they were having to do. Often those in senior roles were having to multitask and deal with issues outside their own remit, to include HR and safeguarding. When changes were brought in around how funding was awarded by UK Sport and Sport England, there was a real shake up to get all these organisations into shape and put better governance in place. This involved an overhaul of what the boards looked like, the skill sets, and what volunteers should and shouldn't be doing. It was a move away from simply being sports organisations, where the feeling was often that the same rules didn’t apply, and towards more professional and businesslike standards and accountability.

Sam genuinely believes a lot of the issues do arise from that sense of perception of being in a different sphere from business and there needs to be a change in culture.

“Ethics and values in sport, as with any profession, are vital in promoting confidence, but there are still some organisations that do not live and breathe these in the same way as other businesses and that may be because they haven't come under the same scrutiny in the past. Better structures and having checks and balances in place would help prevent crises occurring: you don’t want to be left addressing these issues as part of crisis management. Often, once a difficult period is over, organisations can relapse. The challenge is to ensure that efforts go beyond solving the immediate problem and are also focused on having systems and policies in place to ensure that the problems do not arise in the first place. Change is a journey that keeps going and it needs an ongoing commitment.”

Whilst there is so much in the media today about incidents of historic abuse and other unethical behaviours in sport, Sam believes they are only coming out now because people feel more

empowered to talk about them. She says today we have genuinely moved forward positively and there is much more awareness.

“Although things are definitely improving, we still have a long way to go. Governance is so important in that respect. The leadership has to have a vision that everyone engages with, where ongoing training is fundamental. As is listening to all stakeholders to understand the issues in order to get ahead of the curve rather than simply keeping up with it. Sport can be a great catalyst for change - especially when the people are behind it.”

Doing the right thing in the world of sports is clearly not as straightforward a purpose as it initially seems or as, indeed, it should be. But, that is not to say it cannot continue to change, to improve and, in fact, to lead the world in terms of ethical behaviour. It can and should set an example for the communities it represents both locally and globally. Part of that is most definitely down to regulation and accountability. It is a cause we must all champion and when we occasionally fail which, inevitably we will, we must persevere until we get it right.