Assessing sports governance principles and indicators

Recent corruption scandals involving major international sport organisations (ISOs) have deeply affected the sport system. Consequently, ISOs are being urged to follow ‘good governance’ principles such as transparency, accountability and democracy in order to restore public trust and preclude further unethical behaviour. Nevertheless, no group of major sport organisations and their stakeholders has yet accepted the sort of general and binding code or standard of governance needed to give itconceptual and operational clarity and stability. Moreover, sport organisations are faced with a plethora of governance principles and indicators, contained in almost 50 different frameworks, which might impact their activities. This chapter describes a selection of these frameworks in order to provide a better understanding of sport governance frameworks and issues relating to their implementation. It also suggests an approach for assessing and comparing them, and proposes avenues for further research in the emerging field of sport governance assessment.