Blackshaw, Ian --- "Mediating Sports Disputes" [2011] ELECD 812; in Nafziger, A.R. James; Ross, F. Stephen (eds), "Handbook on International Sports Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Handbook on International Sports Law

Editor(s): Nafziger, A.R. James; Ross, F. Stephen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847206336

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Mediating Sports Disputes

Author(s): Blackshaw, Ian

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

3 Mediating sports disputes
Ian Blackshaw



I INTRODUCTORY
Sport is now big business ­ worth more than 3 per cent of world trade and more than
3.7 per cent of the combined GNP of the 27 European Union (EU) Member States, with a
total population approaching 500 million. So, there is much to play for, in financial as well
as sporting terms. Not surprisingly, therefore, sports disputes are on the increase. The
sporting world prefers not to `wash its dirty linen in public' but to settle disputes `within
the family of sport'.1 And so the question naturally arises: how best to settle them? By
traditional or modern means? Through the courts or by alternative dispute resolution
(ADR)?
ADR, which may be defined as any process that leads to the resolution of a dispute
through the agreement of the parties without the use of a judge, has become very popular
over the years amongst companies, business people and organisations around the world,
including sports bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee, which established
the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 1983 to settle sports disputes `within the
Olympic family'.2
Extra-judicial settlement of various kinds of disputes through ADR methods has
developed because the courts ­ and, indeed, traditional arbitrations like those conducted
through the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, France ­ are often slow;
procedurally complex, technical and inflexible; and quite expensive. Apart from all that,
arbitration, which is designed to avoid litigation, often, in practice, results in ...