Play the Game 2017 launches programme overview

When Play the Game opens its 10^th conference on 26^th November in Eindhoven, it will be with an opening session focusing on key Play the Game themes like anti-doping and good governance, featuring WADA president Craig Reedie along with other prominent speakers. The following three days of conference will take conference delegates through a wide array of lectures, debates and workshops on some of the most urgent challenges to world sport.

With two and a half months to go, Play the Game 2017 can now reveal a preliminary programme with 40 sessions and an expected 150 speakers that will spark debates and provide new insights on the chosen conference themes and more.

Over the course of the four days of conference, Play the Game 2017 will take on familiar themes like sports reforms, anti-doping efforts, mega-event legacy, and crime in sport with a view to exposing problems that persist in these areas while also trying to bring forward possible solutions. Other areas of sport that need addressing like innovation, e-sports, agents, athletes’ rights and sexual abuse will also be taken up for discussion.

These and other themes will be subject to examination by the many researchers, journalists and other professionals who have submitted abstracts. A total of 100 abstracts have come in from 28 different countries, spanning from Argentina, Australia and Austria over Canada, Cuba, India and Iran to Russia, Uganda and the United States, just to name a few.

A large number of abstracts (42) on the subject of governance in sports shows that this issue, which has been at the core of Play the Game’s work since its start 20 years ago, is equally important to a large number of stakeholders.

The quantity and quality of abstracts within this subject bode well for fruitful discussions and vivid debates. The governance theme will be concentrated in the first two days of the conference, and on the opening night, the first results from Play the Game’s Erasmus+ project, the National Sports Governance Observer, will be presented and open for discussions on how sport is governed on a national level.

A number of organisations and research groups have taken advantage of the possibility of setting up special sessions within the Play the Game 2017 programme to feature a specific area of interest. This is the case for iNADO, FARE, The Outer Line, Knowledge Centre for Sport Netherlands. Moreover, two research groups, one on martial arts and one on athletes’ perception of anti-doping, will present their work and viewpoints in sessions during the conference.

There are still a few vacant slots in the programme, in case you have a project you would like to present or other input to the themes on the agenda. If you submit your abstract or storyline the organisers will review it in a rolling procedure and revert with the decision within a month approximately.

Thanks to generous conference contributions from multiple sides, the organisation of this year’s conference has been secured while still keeping the delegate fees at a minimum.

By registering before 22 September, you can enjoy the early bird rate and secure yourself a €200 discount on full conference participation. Click here for more about prices and links to registration.