Professional football clubs in Europe are getting new owners at an increasing speed. However, only a handful of European countries try to regulate club ownership and the focus is mainly financial. Steve Menary outlines the state of affairs on tests of club owners and directors.

The Olympic future of weightlifting is shaky. This is not so much due to the doping culture that was allowed to flourish for decades in the traditional Olympic sport. Now it is long-discredited officials of the International Weightlifting Federation who consider themselves untouchable. They are putting the brakes on reforms and, above all, on new elections.

In 2020, Belarusian athletes forced the IOC to suspend the head of the Belarusian NOC, Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko, but the regime of ‘Europe’s last dictator’ still controls Belarusian sport, and athletes are still detained and fined for expressing their political views without help from the IOC.

According to a new survey conducted by Play the Game, athletes have largely lost confidence in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). They do not consider the CAS to be "independent" and "impartial", but rather an extension of the sports federations, where proceedings drag on irregularly and they are financially disadvantaged.

Over 20 academic experts have contributed to the free book “Good Governance in Sport. Critical Reflections” published by Routledge in 2021. The editors Arnout Geeraert and Frank van Eekeren asked Jens Sejer Andersen from Play the Game to write the foreword. Here is an extract.

Two new online tools make it possible for anyone to use Play the Game’s Sports Governance Observer Tools to benchmark governance in respectively international sports federation and national sports federations. The tools also make it possible to make comparisons to and between all federations that have already been benchmarked by Play the Game.

A new study of governance in national sports federations across 15 countries on four continents show that the organisations fail on a number of governance criteria particularly those that relate to societal responsibilities towards the environment, social inclusion, sexual harassment and anti-matchfixing.

Join our webinar on 23 November, as we release governance data from more than 100 federations in 15 countries. Meet the researchers and discuss with international experts like Sarah Lewis and Miguel Maduro whether sports federations are fit for society’s demands.