Athletes' unions or similar organizations are not uncommon in team sports such as football or ice hockey. In individual sports, however, this is a novelty with some special features. This is because in individual sports, athletes are usually also organized as sole proprietorships and therefore do not have employers. This first part of a two-part article shows when and why athlete organizations in individual sports make sense from an economic and legal point of view for both athletes and higher-level sports federations.
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The Changing Role of Athletes as Key Stakeholders
Sports today compete with all other entertainment events and content. Sports are only competitive if they attract spectators to stadiums, to the sidelines or to screens. This generates higher revenues from the marketing of broadcasting and advertising rights. Higher revenues mean more resources for all stakeholders and for the further development of the sport.
Sports content that is attractive to viewers is no longer just about the game or the competition. It is about the people and what happens behind the scenes. Viewers want to see what Cristiano Ronaldo eats for breakfast, what new techniques Rory McIlroy uses in his personal fitness room to work on technical details of his golf swing, what Jannik Sinner's morning ritual looks like, how Mikaela Shiffrin is recovering from her injury under the pressure of participating in the upcoming Ski World Championships in a few weeks. Or in other words: viewers want all-access passes to locker rooms, training rooms, and the dining tables in the private living rooms of well-known athletes. With the Covid-19 pandemic and increasing social media consumption, athletes have also increasingly moved into the spotlight alongside the actual sporting event and ultimately provide sports content that also arouses viewers' interest in consuming the actual sporting event.
In short, athletes have become more important as key stakeholdes in sport far beyond their sporting prowess. This has changed the role and position of athletes in the sports world. Due to this new position, a structured organization of athletes is in the interests of all stakeholders; for the reasons mentioned below, it is particularly in the interests of those sports organizations that also set the rules of their sport and hold the commercial rights to this sport (e.g., the media rights).
Why Athlete Organizations Make Sense for Various Stakeholders
As soon as disagreements between prominent figures in sport are aired and exploited by the media, the constructive involvement of the most important figures involved in a sport has already failed. It also damages the sport itself if well-known athletes feel compelled to use the media to draw attention to any grievances. Dismayed officials of the federation's management are often also annoyed by this, and counter-reactions follow and the fronts harden. This is not an uncommon scenario. A disagreement in winter sports recently unfolded in a similar way, when skiers addressed public protest letters to the incumbent Internation Ski Federation (FIS) President, concerning a possible investment by a Luxembourg private equity company in the FIS.
With the increasing importance of athletes as sometimes leading figures in sporting events, there is also a growing need for them to be involved in certain decisions of sports organizations. This primarily concerns decisions that have a direct impact on the careers of athletes and their personal businesses. Sports organizations in this article refer to those organizations that define and enact the rules of their sport, are concerned with the safety and fairness of their sport, and act as control bodies to monitor compliance with their rules. These tasks are usually incumbent on the international sports federations.
Athlete organizations enable athletes in a structured manner, to
- bundle their economic and social interests and form as uniform views as possible, which makes the discourse with the sports organizations as regulators significantly more efficient and for the athletes, with an even stronger negotiating position, also more effective,
- take and implement new initiatives to further develop the sport from the perspective of the key stakeholder,
- create a platform that promotes the exchange of information on topics such as safety/health, competition calendars, sustainability, preparation of athletes for post-career life, financial support services, or regarding the status of athletes who are injured, ill, pregnant, or otherwise interrupt their sporting career.
For sports organizations, on the other hand, athlete organizations enable them to
- sound out clearer opinions and attitudes of the athletes as early as during the preparation of decisions and association resolutions and to sharpen their own arguments,
- prevent misunderstandings on the part of the athletes by providing clarification through dialogues with the people involved in a particular matter (as far as this is possible),
- promote technical and sporting developments with the involvement of those who know the sport first-hand and at the highest level;
- legitimize their decisions and association resolutions through an independent organization, because loud criticism – which the media are known to pounce on as soon as such criticism comes from top athletes – is harmful for the sport itself, the associated business, and dangerous for officials in leadership positions in a sports organization, as the pressure, unlike in other companies in less media-intensive industries, becomes very great very quickly,
- have athletes who feel heard and are thus largely satisfied to the extent that they are at the forefront of promoting the sport to the world through their performances, their personalities, and the content they produce or make available; which is ultimately also clearly in the economic interest of a sports organization.
These reasons for athlete organizations only prove to be advantageous if the organizations are professionally established and organized and consequently function in such a way that they can effectively perform their tasks. In Part 2 of this article, we will address the main points of structuring. First, however, it is worth drawing a distinction between existing structures in which athletes already participate today and those that exist in most international sports federations.
Distinction between Athletes' Commissions and Athlete Representatives
Individual sports often have athletes' commissions embedded in the structures of international sports federations. Either the delegates'/ association general assembly or the board elects the members of such athletes' commissions. The association general assembly of international sports federations usually consists of the individual national federations and thus legal entities as members – however, in some cases, natural persons are designated as delegates and thus members; as is the case, for example, with the International Olympic Committee. In both cases, however, no (active) athletes are designated as members (with voting rights).
Athletes' commissions also sometimes have the goal of representing athletes of a sport, establishing a link between the international sports federation and the athletes, and promoting dialogue. Athletes' commissions only rarely have actual decision-making power. Rather, they are responsible for preparing draft decisions for the board or the association general assembly, for issuing statements on technical sporting matters, or for election recommendations.
Athlete representatives are usually members of the board of an international sports federation elected by the association general assembly (or confirmed on the recommendation of athletes). They are usually therefore full members of the board.
Duties of Care and Loyalty of Athlete Representatives
When athlete representatives sit on the board of a sports organization, they are subject to various duties of care and loyalty, which in Switzerland, in addition to the duties under association law and the statutes, primarily derive from the law of mandate. However, athletes can quickly find themselves in a conflict of interest. The duty of care and loyalty in the role of a board member means that athlete representatives must prioritize the interests of this sports organization and, for example, also keep certain business matters and other information secret, which they cannot share or discuss with other athletes. In the course of this, they may have to deal with certain business matters wearing the "hat" of the sports organization and also make decisions or vote accordingly, even though they would assess them differently if they were acting solely in the interests of the athletes. From various perspectives this is the correct course of action and, moreover, as explained above, also legally required.
However, how to deal legally with such conflicts of interest of board members of higher-level federations as delegates of subordinate federations is another topic, which we will address separately in another article. The peculiarity in sport is that often entire bodies (including association boards) consist of delegates from subordinate federation and therefore would have to immediately recuse themselves from a matter that is fraught with a conflict of interest for them; as a result, a body could quickly become incapable of acting. As an athlete representative in the role of a member of the association's board, however, it is advisable to take the necessary measures immediately upon becoming aware of a conflict of interest (e.g., to recuse oneself from the negotiation and resolution during the association's board meeting, regarding a budget cut, which affects the sport under the umbrella of the international federation in which the athlete and association board member in question is also active).
Existing Athlete Bodies complementing Athlete Organizations
In general, the involvement of athletes in the bodies of a sports organization should be welcomed by athletes. Both athletes' commissions and athlete representatives as bodies of a sports organization have the potential to bring athletes' issues into the structures of an international sports federation, to present the athletes' point of view in the right places, and to promote dialogue. However, the relevant people in these bodies are ultimately elected in most cases by federation officials and not by the athletes themselves. Therefore, a seat on the board and the establishment of an athletes' commission complement the necessary involvement of athletes in an international sports federation, but they do not normally replace an independent athlete organization that is solely based on the broadest possible will of the athletes.
In order to create the greatest possible acceptance and legitimacy of matters concerning athletes, an athletes' organization with its own legal personality is needed. Not only to prevent and manage conflicts, but also to make the best possible decisions in the interests of a sport, which are also broadly legitimized by the involvement of the athletes (where necessary).
In the second part of this article, we will discuss how athletes can establish such organizations and what should be given priority in terms of content and procedure when structuring them.
Authors: Moritz Jäggy, Sven Hintermann
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