Ajit Nair: Sports law relates to the sporting activities in a country. It is a newly emerging line of law that deals with the legal issues pertaining to acts and issues of players, teams, managers, and associates.

Ethics in sports requires four key virtues: fairness, integrity, responsibility, and respect. Fairness. All athletes and coaches must follow established rules and guidelines of their respective sport.

Sports Law is an amalgam of laws such as labour law, competition law, tax law, antitrust law, contracts, intellectual property rights, tort or criminal law that applies to athletes, agents, sporting bodies, or government regulators, and therefore the sports they play.

The objective of Sports Law is to understand and improve the existing laws relating to Sports and to ensure that these laws run smoothly to maintain the sports industry. It does so by bringing the legal practitioners and the sportspersons together and providing advice on any legal issues that the person might be going through.

The purpose, aside from conduct or harm on the players’ part, sports law plays an instrumental role in making sure that players aren't being discriminated against due to their religion, race, or stature. By keeping employers in check from biased practices, sports as a whole can involve a much larger array of talented individuals.

In India, there is no single, comprehensive law governing sports. The Constitution of India specifically states that sports fall under the jurisdiction of State governments (Entry 33, State List in Schedule VII).

India lacks comprehensive legislation which can regulate the governance of sports federations and authorities in India. Poor governance and lack of reforms can be attributed to India's poor performance at the Olympics and in global sports such as Football.

Sports Law can be roughly divided into the areas of amateur, professional, and international sports. The distinction between a professional and amateur athlete is somewhat tenuous,

With the advent of technology, increasing access to the Internet and awareness on social media sports have been able to reach a wider audience. This has led to the stakeholders drawing more revenue from a wide array of sources – ticket sales, advertisement revenue, broadcasting rights, and jersey sales to name a few. Sport constitutes a significant portion of world trade. India is on course to become the most populous country in the world, with 65%of its population being below the age of 35. Also, India has a strong sporting culture with cricket being the most popular sport in the country. This automatically makes it an attractive market for the sports industry and the commercialization of sports. The Indian Premier League was one such effort towards commercialization and one that has been very successful. The IPL was followed by the setting up of Pro – the Kabaddi league, Premier Badminton League, Indian Super League (ISL), Pro wrestling league (PWL), and Hockey India League (HIL).

According to sources, the immense potential of India in terms of commercialization of sports, recently, the broadcasting rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) were sold to Disney Hotstar and Viacom18 among others for a humongous Rs. 48,390.50 crores, with the value of each IPL match reaching up to Rs. 107 crores. The setting up of these leagues, marketing, and commercialization of these sports have changed the lives of players, who have got the opportunity to learn from the best and at the same time earn money and be popular. However, with stakes so high, some players resort to unscrupulous means to gain an unfair advantage through doping or earn more money through match-fixing. India ranks third in the global ranking of the world’s biggest doping violators. To cater to the setup of all these leagues, to look after the administration of sports in India, and to regulate the conduct of the athletes, we need a discrete body of sports law.

The Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs and the Indian Olympics Association are the two independent organizations in charge of governing sports in India. According to the Olympic charter, the IOA should be a self-governing organization, free from administrative control by the Indian government. The organisation in charge of choosing the athletes who would represent India in the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, and other international competitions is the Indian Olympic Association. 38 National Sports Federations (NSFs) that are in charge of the growth of their various sports in the nation are among its members. The Sports Authority of India (SAI) and other organisations under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MYAS) are encouraging sports training. However, the MYAS supports the National and State Sports Federations financially and indirectly controls these federations via political representations.

An analysis of the laws regulating sports in India would reveal that they are highly inadequate. The Commonwealth games’ fiasco and the match-fixing/spot-fixing scandal in the IPL in 2013 are a case in point. The buck does not stop with these high-profile events. Issues such as lack of transparency, corruption, administrative failure, discrimination and favoritism, and lack of funds are some of the issues that have plagued the sports governance system. There are no checks and balances against these sporting bodies. Creating an adequate sports infrastructure involves scouting, grooming through adequate training facilities, and selecting the ones that are most capable. The sporting bodies in India have failed to do this as there are systemic issues in the governance structure.

According to sources India lacks comprehensive legislation which can regulate the governance of sports federations and authorities in India. Poor governance and lack of reforms can be attributed to India’s poor performance at the Olympics and in global sports such as Football. However, India made a failed attempt to raise the standard of sports in the country through the introduction of the National Sports Policy in 1984. The same was amended in 2001 to bring the Central government together with the state government, The IOA, and The NSFs. The policy aimed at the efficient and effective integration of sports and physical education with the education curriculum.

The CWG fiasco in 2010 revealed the gaps in the Indian sporting structure. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports introduced the National Sports Development Code, 2011 in order to compile all notifications and directives about the effective governance of National Sports Federations. It includes some features such as age and tenure norms, timely submission of annual accounts, transparent and timely elections, timely submission of Long-Term Development Plans and the annual calendar to be posted online, and open selection processes. NSFs became signatories to the code but didn’t bring the necessary changes to their constitution until rebuked by the courts to do so.

The courts have intervened in several cases relating to the malfunctioning of NSFs, including the latest one, Rahul Mehravs Union of India, 2022, whereby the court ordered that the NSFs that don’t comply by the code shall be suspended. Further, AslamSher Khan vs. Union of India &ors, 2022, the court while scrapping the administrative setup in Hockey India stated that “The Government of India cannot grant recognition to an NSF whose constitution is not in consonance with the Sports Code.” Moreover, in ManikaBatravs The Table Tennis Federation of India, 2022, ManikaBatra, the table tennis ace questioned the functioning of the Table tennis federation along with her coach whom she alleged pressurized her to concede a match so that a player that was part of his private coaching academy could qualify for the Olympics. The court held that “the way TTFI is functioning is not what is expected from an NSF which has the duty to work for the welfare of sportspeople in the country. The report goes on to highlight that TTFI has been taking all possible steps to shelter its own officials, as opposed to promoting the interest of its players.”

Also, the government tried to pass the National Sports Development Bill in 2011 and 2017. The draft includes provisions such as banning politicians from being office bearers in NSFs and national Olympic committees, including athletes in the decision-making process, and setting a limit on the age of the elected officials in NSFs at 70 years old, putting a limit to the periods of officeholders to two terms, each lasting four years, and setting a threshold that athletes hold 25% of the membership and voting rights in NSFs. However, the draft has been shelved due to a lack of consensus amongst the shareholders. The Prevention of Sporting Fraud Bill 2013 which sought to deal with the issues of match-fixing, spot-fixing, and illegal betting was also shelved.

The aforementioned section reveals how badly we lack laws to regulate the governance of sports governing authorities such as NSF and IOA. The IOA claims autonomy on the pretext of an International Olympic charter that provides for no government interference. However, that autonomy hasn’t been put to good use.

CONCLUSION

Reports suggest that India is eyeing to host the Summer Olympics games of 2036. Officially known as the Games of the XXXVI Olympiad, is a forthcoming international multi-sport event.

If that is to be true, India would need to build stadiums and sporting facilities and develop infrastructure adept for hosting the Olympics. However, reforms would be required as far as governance in sports federations and authorities is concerned. India would surely not want a repeat of CWG as well as the more recently conducted FIFA U-17 world cup, in the latter case, it was alleged that water was being sold for Rs. 80 per bottle and complaints of the inadequacy of infrastructure were raised.

Sport is part of the state list. The author is of the opinion that sports should be made part of a concurrent list so that the Government can pass laws relating to sports.

Comprehensive legislation that deals with systemic issues of governance should be passed. An election commission should be constituted specifically for sporting federations and authorities that ensure fair and consistent elections. Similarly, a sports tribunal should be set up to deal with disputes arising in the field of sports. Moreover, the legislation should introduce a provision to deal with matters such as doping, age fraud, gender-based discrimination, and favoritism.

Also, a structure should be put forth as to how the different federations and authorities should be funded. Lastly, efforts should be made to include Panchayati Raj institutions and educational institutions in order to improve sports infrastructure at the grassroots level. (Ajit Nair master in mass com)