Introduction

Abstract

Chapter 1 offers guidance on the definitions and terminology used, while highlighting the differences in the way that the legislation of individual countries and international organisations view the primary functions that sport ought to perform. Sport’s internal self-regulation and the sources of the autonomy of that self-regulation from the point of view of the statutes of the governing bodies are then looked at. It will be shown that claims for self-regulation have been replaced by the aspirations towards a more expansive interpretation of the concept of sporting exception developed in the Court’s jurisprudence. Self-regulation is also looked at from the point of view of the European institutions as expressed in their policy instruments. Respect for the principles of good governance is seen as instrumental for the conditional autonomy offered to sports governing bodies. The chapter further discusses what it later identifies as two amalgamated types of sports law: first, sources of lex sportiva including CAS decisions, and different documents spelling out regulatory and organisational rules, and second, European sports law and policy. The latter is considered in more detail, including theories on the historical development and acceptance of sports law as an independent area of law, EU institutional actors and their relevant functions and activities, and applicable EU policy and legislative instruments (in particular Article 165 TFEU, the so-called the sports article, added by the Lisbon Treaty amendments).

In this year 1894 and in this city of Paris, whose joys and anxieties the world shares so closely that it has been linked to the world’s nerve centre, we were able to bring together the representatives of international athletics, who voted unanimously (so little controversial is the principle concerned) for the restoration of a two-thousand-year-old idea which today as in the past still quickens the human heart for it satisfies one of the most vital, and whatever may have been said on the subject, one of its most noble instincts. In the temple of science these delegates heard echo in their ears a melody also 2000 years old, reconstituted by an eminent archaeologist through the successive labours of several generations. And in the evening electricity transmitted everywhere the news that Hellenic Olympism has re-entered the world after an eclipse of several centuries.

Speech by Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin at Paris Congress held at the Sorbonne on 16–23 June 1894, when International Olympic Committee was established.