Quick introduction
The Sports Governance Observer is a benchmarking tool that enables sport leaders to improve the governance of their federation by scoring performance on four different dimensions: Transparency, democratic processes, internal accountability and control, and societal responsibility.
A first version of the tool was applied to 35 international sports federations that are represented at the Olympic Winter and Summer Games, and the findings were published in a report from 2015.
A new version of the tool builds on 57 principles of good governance measures scored through 309 indicators through a yes or no system.
In 2018 and 2019, Play the Game published reports that measured the state of governance in five and six international sports federations, respectively.
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Do your own benchmarking
Play the Game has launched an online tool that allows anyone to benchmark an international sports federation following the principles of the Sports Governance Observer.
Learn more about the SGO tool
From AGGIS to SGO
The foundation of the SGO tool was developed in 2012-2013 in the project ‘Action for Good Governance in International Sports Organisations’ (AGGIS) supported by a grant from the European Commission under the framework of the EU Preparatory Actions in the field of sport.
AGGIS provided a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence for a tool for benchmarking governance standards in international sports federations.
The work was continued in the following years by Dr. Arnout Geeraert from KU Leuven University who developed the SGO tool to measure governance in international sports organisations.
The project was funded by Play the Game/The Danish Institute for Sports Studies in cooperation with KU Leuven.