More than 450 participants will discuss challenges to world sports in the coming days during Play the Game 2017 in Eindhoven. Although it is no longer taboo to speak about the murkier sides of sport such as corruption and doping, the law of silence still rules in many sports, sounded the warning at the opening of the conference.

Opening address at the 10th international Play the Game conference, 26 November 2017 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands

“Change or be changed” was the warning the IOC President sent to the sports world when the ‘Agenda 2020’ reform package was adopted. Three years later it is time to ask: Did change actually happen?

The International Olympic Committee stands firm behind Jose ‘Peping’ Cojuangco Jr., despite serious fraud allegations.

The preliminary results of the National Sports Governance Observer will be revealed at Play the Game 2017, taking place in Eindhoven, 26-30 November. Hear about the project partners’ expectations of the outcome of the project in a series of video interviews.

Another ‘Thrilla in Manila’ goes down on 21 September. This time, though, it is not a boxer taking severe punches. Instead, a president of a National Olympic Committee enters the ring. Will he survive?

Efforts to clean up international and regional sports governance six years into one of the worst crises in its history have yet to tackle the elephant in the room: the incestuous and inseparable relationship between sports and politics as indicated in Play the Game’s Autonomy Index.

UK sports organisations are expected to comply with the national sports governance code by end October to maintain public funding. But is this type of sanction beneficiary for a sport and how to ensure that the code does not end as a tick-box exercise, observers ask.