Global Sport Leaders

Global Sport Leaders
Emmanuel Bayle · Patrick Clastres

Editors
Global Sport Leaders

A Biographical Analysis of
International Sport Management
Editors
Emmanuel Bayle Patrick Clastres
Institut des Sciences du Sport Institut des Sciences du Sport
Université de Lausanne Université de Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland Lausanne, Switzerland
ISBN 978-3-319-76752-9 ISBN 978-3-319-76753-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6
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Contents
1 Introduction: Becoming a Global Sport Leader 1

Patrick Clastres and Emmanuel Bayle
Part I Founding Ideologies
2 Pierre de Coubertin: The Inventor of the Olympic

Tradition 33
Patrick Clastres
3 Alice Milliat: A Feminist Pioneer for Women’s Sport 61

Florence Carpentier
4 Jules Rimet: FIFA’s Missionary President 83

Philippe Vonnard and Grégory Quin
5 Henri de Baillet-Latour: Globalising the Olympic

Movement 107
Florence Carpentier
v
vi Contents
Part II 1970–1980s: The “Dassler Revolution”
6 João Havelange: A Businessman for World Soccer 127

Philippe Vonnard and Nicola Sbetti
7 Philippe Chatrier: The Fight to Control Professional

Tennis 153
Emmanuel Bayle
8 Juan Antonio Samaranch: From Barcelona Elite

to the Olympic World 191
Jean-Loup Chappelet
9 Richard (Dick) W.D. Pound: The Architect

of Olympic Business 217
Milena M. Parent and Benoît Séguin
Part III 1990s–2000s: Commercialisation, Professionalization

and Governance
10 Hein Verbruggen: Bringing a Corporate Mentality

to the Governance of Sport 243
Josephine Clausen and Emmanuel Bayle
11 Jacques Rogge—The Quest for New Olympic Values 273

Roger Vanmeerbeek and Thierry Zintz
12 Sepp Blatter: Wielding Power Through FIFA 301

Sandro Arcioni, Emmanuel Bayle and Hervé Rayner
13 Lamine Diack: The Pride of a Continent 337

Claude Boli
Contents vii
Part IV The Fall of the IFs and IOC or a New Sporting

Governance?
14 Bernie Ecclestone: Formula One’s Entrepreneurial

Ringmaster 363
Stephen A. Stuart
15 Jagmohan Dalmiya: The Prometheus of Modern

Cricket? 395
Souvik Naha
16 Arab Autocrats Put Their Stamp on Global Sports

Governance 417
James M. Dorsey
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors

Emmanuel Bayle, Ph.D. is Professor of sports management at the
University of Lausanne Institute of Sport Sciences (ISSUL), where he
supervises the master’s degree programme in sports and leisure man-
agement. He has published several books and articles on sports man-
agement, CSR and non-profit management. His main area of expertise
is the governance, management and performance of Olympic and
non-Olympic sport organizations, a field in which he has given several
executive education courses. Currently, he is managing a research pro-
ject on the professionalization of international sports federations.
Patrick Clastres, Ph.D. is Professor of sports history at the University

of Lausanne, where he supervises the Global Sport and Olympic Studies
Center. He has published several books and articles on political and
cultural history of sports. His main area of expertise is Olympic stud-
ies from a geopolitical perspective. Currently, he is also managing the
International Observatory on Sports Policies, a joint research entity
launched with University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne.
ix
x Editors and Contributors
Contributors
Sandro Arcioni, Ph.D. is CEO and owner of MUPEX sàrl

(consulting company in sport management and technologies). He is
a researcher and lecturer in corporate management, governance and
security information systems. He is also a researcher and lecturer in the
management and governance of non-profit international organisations
(NGOs).
Claude Boli, Ph.D. is the Scientific Director of the French National
Sport Museum. Research fellow at De Montfort University (Leicester)
where he obtained a Ph.D. in contemporary history, he is a member of
the Association of sport museum directors. He works on various top-
ics such as colonial sport, English football, sport museum or sport and
immigration in Europe. Authors of numerous articles and books includ-
ing Football et Immigration (dir), Gallimard, 2010 and Mohamed Ali,
Gallimard 2016.
Florence Carpentier, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor at the University
of Rouen, Normandy, France. Her research, in the CETAPS (“Study
center of the transformations of physical and sport activities”), deals
with the history of the International Olympic Committee, the history
of women’s sport. Currently, she’s coordinating a book on the introduc-
tion of sports in Normandy before 1914.
Jean-Loup Chappelet, Ph.D. is Professor of public management
at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) of
the University of Lausanne since 1993. He has studied the Olympic
System since 1972 and published several books and many scientific arti-
cles on this system. He worked as a manager at the IOC (International
Olympic Committee) from 1982 to 1987, at the beginning of the
Samaranch presidency. He headed for twelve years the Executive masters
in sport organisation management (MEMOS), a programme supported
by Olympic Solidarity.
Josephine Clausen has a Ph.D. in Sport sciences and physical activ-
ity at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research interests
Editors and Contributors xi
include international sport federations, their professionalisation and

commercialisation, governance in international sport organisations
and major sport events. Her work has appeared in the European Sport
Management Quarterly and the Journal of Global Sport Management.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is Senior Fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies (RSIS) and co-director of the University
of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.
Souvik Naha has a Ph.D. in History from ETH Zurich and is the
book review editor of Soccer & Society. His thesis explored the network
of cricket’s mediated relationships, constituted by the mass media, read-
ers and spectators, and uncovered various strands of the consumption of
cricket in Calcutta from 1934 to 1999.
Milena M. Parent, Ph.D. is Full Professor in the School of Human
Kinetics at the University of Ottawa. She also tutors and lectures in the
Olympic Solidarity-funded Executive Masters in Sport Organisation
Management (MEMOS). A North American Society for Sport
Management Research Fellow, she teaches and studies the governance
and management of sport organizations, especially major sports events.
Grégory Quin holds a Ph.D. in Sport Sciences (University of
Lausanne, Switzerland) and Pedagogy (University of Paris Descartes,
France). He is senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne, where he
is trying to promote sport history, through courses, research, and some
public projects. After a Ph.D. focused on the medical roots of physical
education, he is currently working on Swiss and international sport his-
tory, especially trying to disclose some new archives while travelling all
over Europe. He has recently edited a special issue for Sport in History
on the history of international sports federation during the Cold War.
Among others, he has co-edited Les liaisons dangereuses de la médecine
et du sport (Glyphe, 2015), Building Europe with the Ball (Peter Lang,
2016) and Beyond Boycotts (De Gruyter, 2017).
Hervé Rayner, Ph.D. is Senior Lecturer in political science at the
University of Lausanne (UNIL). He is the author of several books and
xii Editors and Contributors
articles on political scandals. His field of research are scandals, mobiliza-

tions, corruption, French, Italian and Swiss politics.
Nicola Sbetti holds a Ph.D. in Politics, Institution and History
(University of Bologna, Italy), working on the relations between sport
and foreign policy in Italy from 1943 until 1953. His work focuses on
the political history of sport in Italy and on the links between sport
and international relations. He has already published several articles on
these topics and Giochi di Potere. Olimpiadi e politica da Atene a Londra
(1896–2012) (Le Monnier, 2012) and also co-edited Beyond Boycotts
(De Gruyter, 2017). He is currently contract lecturer of Contemporary
History for the University of Bologna (branch of Forlì).
Benoît Séguin, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in sport management in
the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
His main research interests focus on questions related to sponsorship,
ambush marketing and brand management, primarily in the context of
sport federations and major sports events such as the Olympic Games.
Stephen A. Stuart, Ph.D., FRSA is Associate Professor in Communication
at Saint Paul University, Ottawa. His research interests cover Formula
One, legacies of large-scale and mega sporting events and social marketing.
Colonel Roger Vanmeerbeek was a member of the Board of The
Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee between 1976 and 2000.
During the period 1989–2000 he was also the vice-president in charge
of Elite Sport. He developed a professional career in the Belgian Army
where he became the Head of Sport. At the age of 77‚ he obtained
his Ph.D. in Sport Sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
(Belgium) with a Historical thesis on Belgian Sport Heroes involved in
the Belgian Army during First World War.
Philippe Vonnard holds a Ph.D. in Sport Sciences and Physical
Education (University of Lausanne, Switzerland). His work focuses
on the history of international sport. He is currently doing a post-
doc funded by the Swiss National Foundation for Sciences (SNSF)
in Paris (at ISCC) where he is going on with researches about the
Europeanization of football during the Cold War. He has recently
co-edited a special issue for Sport in History on the history of
Editors and Contributors xiii
international sports organizations during the Cold War and co-edited

Building Europe with the Ball (Peter Lang, 2016) and Beyond Boycotts
(De Gruyter, 2017).
Thierry Zintz is Professor of Sports Organisations Management at the
Faculty of Sports Sciences of the Université catholique de Louvain. He
is in charge of the Olympic Chair Henri de Baillet Latour and Jacques
Rogge. In this framework, he focuses his work and research on change
management and governance.
List of Tables
Table 5.1 Host cities for Olympic Sessions during Coubertin’s

presidency (1900–1925) 117
Table 5.2 Host cities for Olympic Sessions during Baillet-Latour’s
presidency (1926–1939) 117
Table 7.1 Growth in clubs and players registered with
the FFT between 1968 and 1996 159
Table 7.2 Increase in earnings from Roland Garros between
1975 and 1998 (Source Interviews with Roland
Garros managers and the federation’s accounts) 162
Table 7.3 Size of the FFT in 1992 (when Chatrier stepped down
as president) compared with the French Football
Federation and French Basketball Federation 184
Table 7.4 Fluctuations in the FFT’s financial situation between
1991 and 1997 184
Table 12.1 Perez’s five levels of governance, as revised by Arcioni 308
Table 12.2 Growth in revenues from TV rights and sponsorship
from 1974 to 2014 312
Table 12.3 FIFA’s financial results from 1974 to 2014
(Source FIFA Management Report 2012) 312
xv
xvi List of Tables
Table 12.4 Growth in global football during the Blatter era 313
Table 12.5 Changes in FIFA’s administration during the Blatter era 313
Table 12.6 Increases in FIFA’s turnover and in the sums redistributed
to FIFA’s members during the Blatter era (Source FIFA
Management Report 2012) 320
1
Introduction: Becoming a Global
Sport Leader
Patrick Clastres and Emmanuel Bayle
Since the late nineteenth century, communication and information

routes have connected every corner of the planet, allowing the con-
stitution of a collective global memory composed of notable events,
eminent figures, consumer products and cultural movements. Sport is
another field of human endeavour that has left its mark on successive
generations, as the print media, radio, television and, now, the Internet
have turned exploits and records into legends. The successes and fail-
ures of sportsmen and, more recently, sportswomen have been ana-
lysed from every possible angle—technical, physical, psychological or
sociological—by an ever-growing number of pundits, journalists and
P. Clastres (*)
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Sport Sciences Institute (ISSUL),
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: patrick.clastres@unil.ch
E. Bayle
Institute of Sports Studies (ISSUL), University of Lausanne,
Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: Emmanuel.bayle@unil.ch
© The Author(s) 2018 1
E. Bayle and P. Clastres (eds.), Global Sport Leaders,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_1
2 P. Clastres and E. Bayle
academics, while innumerable biographies and biopics dissect the lives

and personalities of sporting champions.
On the other hand, the people who run international sport and con-
trol sport’s biggest events, such as the Olympic Games and world cham-
pionships, are rarely in the public eye, unless they or their organisations
become embroiled in scandals. Frequently polyglot, expatriate, educated
abroad, married to partners of other nationalities and constantly on the
move, sport’s top executives epitomise the globalisation of world affairs
since the late nineteenth century. Sport has enabled many of them to
reach career heights they could not have hoped for in other fields and
allowed them to rub shoulders with monarchs, presidents, prime min-
isters, financiers, industrialists, media tycoons, artists and, of course,
sporting champions. At the same time, ensconced within their own
customs and social codes, they have become cut off from the hundreds
of millions of people who participate in sport throughout the world.
Because most international sport organisations are far from models of
democracy, despite their “one country, one vote” voting systems, their
leaders have been able to turn these bodies into closed elites. It is this
transnational cast of sports executives that we focus on in this book.
Two Models of Globalised Sport

By leaders of institutionalised sport we mean the presidents of the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international sports fed-
erations (IFs). Assisted by their management staff, they promote their
sport by organising international events, introducing new economic
models, and implementing new organisational methods. This book pro-
vides a glimpse into the little-known world of these highly influential
people by examining the careers of fifteen leaders who have marked the
history of world sport. Each portrait shows how its subject’s personality,
values, commitment and skills shaped his or her strategic vision, views on
governance and approach to management. All but one of these leaders1
1Bernie Ecclestone, the former head of Formula 1 motor racing.

worked within and helped shape the European, pyramidal model of glo-
balised sport, in which clubs are members of national federations, which,
in turn, are members of an international federation. This model, which
dates back to the 1890s, facilitates the organisation of competitions at
all levels, from local to international, with a promotion/relegation system
for the most successful/least successful teams/clubs/athletes at each level.
Sport in North America developed along very different princi-
ples to European sport, giving rise to a second model based more
closely on private enterprise. The first international competitions in
many sports took the form of challenges in which a cup is competed
for every year. Such events include sailing’s America’s Cup, founded
in 1857 by the New York Yacht Club, and golf ’s Ryder Cup, created
in 1927 by Samuel Ryder, a London-based pioneer of mail order sell-
ing. More recently, Fred Lebow, the president of the New York Road
Runners Club, devised a very different type of sporting occasion when
he launched the trend for mass-participation events by creating the New
York Marathon in 1970. Since then, innumerable such events have been
created throughout the world, often through the impulsion of sponsors
and independently of the IFs and IOC. However, the American model
of sports governance is most clearly typified by the professional leagues
that run the elite echelons of sports such as baseball (Major League
Baseball, created in 1876), basketball (National Basketball League, cre-
ated in 1898), ice hockey (National Hockey League, created in 1917 in
Montreal) and American football (National Football League, created in
1920). Membership of these leagues is restricted to a fixed number of
teams, each of which pays a franchise fee and is required to impose a
salary cap on players. The advent of subscription television channels in
the 1980s greatly increased the worldwide audiences for these leagues,
leading franchises/teams to play some of their matches in Asia, Europe
and the Middle East. Many IFs and the IOC are beginning to see the
unstoppable rise of this American model as cause for concern.
The task we set our authors was to show how factors such as fam-
ily background, training, career path, social context and technological
advances impacted each leader’s approach to governing and devel-
oping their sport(s). Although our authors are of different national-
ities and have different academic backgrounds, they are all experts in
the institution concerned. Their portraits are based on interviews, the

academic literature, sport organisation archives, newspaper articles and,
in some cases, existing biographies. Some of the authors have worked
within international sport organizations and were therefore able to draw
upon direct observations of the leader they describe. We would like to
extend our warmest thanks to all of them for meeting the difficult chal-
lenge they were set.
Each chapter starts by summarising a leader’s life story and career,
highlighting his or her upbringing, education, professional background,
and links with the worlds of politics and business. It then analy-
ses the challenges that leader faced and the managerial doctrine he or
she adopted. In most cases, these analyses are centred round a central
issue, be it a leader’s autocratic management style, the intangible val-
ues of Olympism, commercialisation, professionalization and govern-
ance, marketing innovations, the development of a global spectacle, or
the consolidation of a system. However, few of the chapters explore the
issue of social responsibility, despite its potential to provide a new stra-
tegic framework for the development of sport organisations (Bayle et al.
2011). The final section of each chapter examines the leader’s legacy
for his or her organisation(s), for his or her sport, and for international
sport in general.
Management Science, Sport and History

Until now, specialists in sports management and in the history of sport
have rarely combined their two perspectives. Historians have tended to
focus on social history or on sport as an instrument of soft power, while
management scientists have mostly examined the way sport organiza-
tions are run. Neither specialty has shown much interest in the history
of international sport’s governing institutions, other than FIFA and the
IOC. For example, very few papers in the field’s leading journal, the
Journal of Sport History, mention the notions of sports management
and the few exceptions to this rule have all been studies of professional
sport in the United States. Similarly, management science journals have
given little space to the history of sport, despite being open to a wide
range of transdisciplinary research. In this respect, the study of sports
management has mirrored the evolution of management itself, which
has gone from being a science of production mechanisms to become a
science of organisations and then a science of human behaviour, most
notably, the psychology of social groups.
Nevertheless, sport and management have become modern in very
similar ways. For example, developments in both fields have been
inspired by the desire to perfect individual performance and improve
human organisations. One of the most important changes in sport was
the transformation of traditional games into modern sports, a process
that began in the Renaissance and accelerated during the nineteenth
century thanks to the scientific measurement of records, the adoption
of fixed rules for each game, and the creation of supervisory bodies.2 In
fact, the first sets of rules for sports were drawn up for golf, cricket and
boxing in the eighteenth century, followed by football, rugby, athletics
and tennis in the mid-nineteenth century, and then by basketball and
volleyball in the early 1890s. The forms taken by international busi-
ness and management follow a similar trajectory, from the division of
labour and specialisation of tasks described by Adam Smith, Charles
Babbage and David Ricardo between 1776 and 1817, to Frederick
Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911).
Another modern aspect of both sport and management is their
increasingly transnational nature. Challenges between athletes and clubs
were quite common as early as the 1860s, long before most national
and international federations were formed. Newspapers and magazines
were keen to promote new sports from different countries and create
transnational sporting heroes. Hence, even before the First World War,
a lingua sportiva, mostly based on English, had spread around the globe.
In the corporate world, large companies have become increasingly
2For more on this point see Allen Guttmann, From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports,
New York, Columbia University Press, 1978, and Georges Vigarello, Passion sport. Histoire d’une
culture, Paris, Textuel, 2000.
international in terms of their structures and management, as well as

their operations. Once known as multinationals, they have now become
transnational in that they exist and operate across the regulatory and fis-
cal regulations imposed by individual states. Performance, competition
and records are the hallmark of both modern sport and entrepreneur-
ial management. However, this does not mean that the leaders of world
sport apply corporate management models within their organisations.
Far from it.
Fifteen Portraits
It would, of course, be impossible for our fifteen portraits to cover every
possible career path and every approach to governance. Nevertheless, the
careers of our chosen leaders are sufficiently instructive and representa-
tive for the insights they reveal to be applied to other sports, other exec-
utives or other fields of management. Although our selection took into
account the state of current research and our authors’ fields of expertise,
it was primarily based on the extent of each leader’s legacy. Because all
fifteen leaders occupied highly influential positions within sport for at
least ten years, they were able to leave their mark on their era, their sport
and their organisation. In all cases, our authors were careful to approach
their subjects with proper academic impartiality and have avoided any
temptation to glorify or vilify individuals or their organisations. This
was particularly important in the case of contemporary leaders, many of
whose reputations have been damaged by the stream of corruption accu-
sations that have tarnished international sport from the Salt Lake City
scandal in 1999 to the on-going FIFAgate and IAAFgate affairs.
The fifteen leaders portrayed here cover a wide range of sports, from
Olympic sports to motorsport, and from team sports such as football
and cricket to more individual sports such as tennis, cycling and ath-
letics. Our focus on the European model of globalised sport, means
that the majority of the leaders are from western Europe, the birth-
place of most international sport organisations: Pierre de Coubertin
(IOC), Alice Milliat (International Women’s Sports Federation),
Jules Rimet (FIFA) and Philippe Chatrier (International Tennis Federation—

ITF) from France, Henri de Baillet-Latour and Jacques Rogge (IOC)
from Belgium, Juan Antonio Samaranch (IOC) from Spain, Bernie
Ecclestone (Formula 1) from England, Hein Verbruggen (Union
Cycliste Internationale—UCI) from the Netherlands and Sepp Blatter
(FIFA) from Switzerland. Nevertheless, five chapters focus on leaders
who were born outside Europe.
The absence of North-American executives at the top of major IFs
and the IOC (apart from Avery Brundage, who presided the IOC
from 1952 to 1972) is due to the separation between the European
and American models of sport outlined above. Canada’s Dick Pound
attempted to win the IOC’s presidency on two occasions but was
defeated each time, even though he was the architect of the IOC’s TOP
sponsorship programme and had negotiated lucrative contracts with
American television networks. Pound’s appointment as president of the
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) could be viewed as a sort of com-
pensation for the IOC’s refusal to make him its president. Brazil’s João
Havelange, who became FIFA president in 1974, is another exception
to Europe’s hegemony over the top positions in world sport. Havelange
obtained his position due to the sporting and organisational strength
of Latin American football and the fact that non-European footballing
nations had become disaffected with Europe’s attempts to monopolise
power within the sport. In contrast, the elections of India’s Jagmohan
Dalmiya as president of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in
1997 and of Senegal’s Lamine Diack as president of the International
Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 1999 may augur greater
representation for the Global South and the BRICS within sport’s gov-
erning bodies. The final chapter charts the rise of sports executives from
the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. Although these countries
are becoming increasingly influential within international sport, and
despite attempts to win the presidencies of FIFA and the IOC, none of
their sporting leaders has yet presided a major IF.
The fifteen chapters are grouped together into four sections cover-
ing four generations of sports management: the founders of the inter-
national sports system around the dawn of the twentieth century,
the architects of the “Dassler revolution” during the 1970s and 1980s,
the manager-executives of the 1990s and 2000s, and the first wave of
non-European leaders. Because sport is an extraordinary “mirror on
society”, the changes brought about by these four generations reflect
major changes within society as a whole, in rules, morals, economic
structures, social interactions, the media, and technology. However, the
mirror analogy oversimplifies reality, as sport can anticipate change as
well as react to it. In fact, sport can be both a conservatory of tradi-
tions and an accelerator of modernity. As the actions of sport’s leaders
frequently show, sport sometimes lags behind the pace of economic
and political change, and sometimes it sprints ahead. The international
sports community has long attempted to prevent sport being used as
a political tool by governments and vigorously defends the principle
of “autonomy for sport”, according to which sport must be protected
from political interference. However, according such exceptional status
to sport within the concert of nations automatically confers a degree of
impunity on its leaders, whose transnational status has often allowed
them to escape from national laws.
Age No Barrier
The fifteen portraits in this book clearly show that age is more an advan-
tage than a barrier to becoming the head of a major international sport
organisation. In this respect, sport executives are no different to the
presidents of multinational companies, Catholic cardinals and dictators,
who often continue carrying out their functions well into their seven-
ties. Some people see such longevity as a source of stability within frag-
ile and controversial institutions; others see it as a source of stagnation.
FIFA typifies the tendency for IFs to favour experience over youth.
Football’s governing body has had eight presidents, either permanent or
acting, since 1954, six of whom were over the age of 60 when appointed
to the role. Rodolphe Seeldrayers, FIFA’s fourth elected president, still
holds the record, as he was already 73 when he was appointed to the posi-
tion in 1954. A similar picture can be seen at the IOC, which has had
five presidents since 1952, all of whom were at least 58 years old when
they took over. Avery Brundage was 65 when he was elected president
in 1952, but he was still much younger than his predecessor, Sigfrid
Edström, who was 82 when he stepped down. However, it is a miscon-
ception that these organisations have always been run by ageing men.
FIFA’s first president, Robert Guérin, was only 27 when he accepted the
office and the federation’s longest serving president, Jules Rimet, was
elected at the age of 47. At the IOC, Pierre de Coubertin was 33 when he
assumed the presidency in 1896, a position he held until 1925, when he
was succeeded by Henri de Baillet-Latour, then aged 49.
What is more, the custom of renewing presidents’ terms of office by
acclamation enabled some leaders to hold onto their positions until a
very advanced age. Five of FIFA’s nine presidents (excluding acting pres-
idents) remained in office until they were in their late seventies or eight-
ies (Jules Rimet was 80 when he retired and João Havelange was 82
when he stepped down). Once again, it has been a similar story at the
IOC: three of the organisation’s presidents remained in office into their
eighth decade—Samaranch was a day short of his 81st birthday when
he stepped down, Edström was 82 and Brundage, the record holder, was
almost 85. The IOC’s current president, Thomas Bach, will be in his
70s at the end of his presidency, if he receives the support necessary to
serve a final term.
Given the age at which these men attained their positions, it is not
surprising that some of them died “in harness” (Rodolphe Seeldrayers
and Arthur Drewry at FIFA, Henri Baillet-Latour at the IOC). In addi-
tion, the tendency to elect older presidents and these men’s long ten-
ures meant that until the eve of the twenty-first century the world’s two
largest sports institutions were led by people who were born before the
foundation of the Soviet Union, in 1922. In fact, all FIFA’s presidents
up to and including João Havelange were born before the end of the
First World War. Even Havelange’s successor, Sepp Blatter, was born
before World War II. Similarly, prior to 2001, when Jacques Rogge was
elected president, all the IOC’s presidents had been born before 1922.
In fact, Lord Killanin, who was elected president in 1972, was the first
IOC leader to have been born in the twentieth century.
Of course, the preference for older leaders is not restricted to FIFA
and the IOC, as is shown by the IAAF, whose five presidents prior to
Lord Coe all served until they were in their 70s or 80s. Nevertheless,
not all sports executives have had to wait until their sixth decade to
reach the peak of their careers. Among the leaders portrayed in this
book, Jagmohan Dalmiya was elected president of the ICC at the age
of 57, the same age as Richard Pound when he became president of
WADA. Younger still were Hein Verbruggen, elected president of the
UCI when he was 50, and Philippe Chatrier, who became president
of the ITF when he was 49. Both these men held onto their office for
14 years (Verbruggen: 1991–2005, Chatrier: 1977–1991), but many
executives who obtained the top job later in life also kept their positions
for many years. Bernie Ecclestone, for example, ruled over Formula 1
for 24 years (1993–2017), until he was 87, and Lamine Diack held
onto the presidency of the IAAF for 14 years (2001–2015), until he was
82. Even then, he only stepped down because of a corruption scandal.
Although many federations continue to elect presidents in their
late fifties or early sixties (e.g., David Haggerty at the ITF, Sebastian
Coe at the IAAF, Morinari Watanabe at the International Gymnastics
Federation), or renew the tenure of already ageing presidents (Uruguay’s
Julio Maglione, re-elected president of the International Swimming
Federation at the age of 81 in 2017), the second decade of the twen-
ty-first century appears to have brought a new generation of leaders.
Executives in the vanguard of this trend include France’s Jean-Christophe
Rolland at the International Rowing Federation (elected president in
2013 at the age of 45), Switzerland’s Gianni Infantino at FIFA (elected
in 2015 at the age of 46), Brazil’s Andrew Parsons at the International
Paralympic Committee (elected in 2017 at the age of 40) and France’s
David Lappartient at the UCI (elected in 2017 at the age of 44).
Long-Serving Presidents: Stability or

Stagnation?
New members of the IOC are appointed by cooption, a process that
enables the organisation to ensure members possess what it considers
appropriate qualities. This recruitment method has many advantages for
the IOC and undoubtedly helped it come through the great crises of the
twentieth century without suffering irreparable damage. However, it has

also turned the organisation into an exclusive circle that has struggled to
accept greater democracy, respond to a changing world, and wholeheart-
edly embrace the televisual and marketing age. For instance, the IOC
maintained its rules on amateurism until 1980; rules it had adopted in
1894 to exclude lower-class athletes and ensure the Games remained the
preserve of “gentlemen sportsmen”. Another example of the IOC’s fre-
quent conservatism is provided by Avery Brundage’s famous belief that
there was no future for the Olympic Games and television.
What is more, the principle of cooption tends to encourage a culture
of patronage, with advancement depending on obtaining support from
the right people. Given the length of most presidents’ tenures, it can
take two decades or more to rise to the top position—Baillet-Latour,
Edström and Bach all served as IOC members for 22 years before being
elected president. On the other hand, with sufficient support it is pos-
sible to rise through the ranks much more quickly. This was the case
for both Brundage and Rogge, who had been IOC members for just
a decade when they were elected president. Brundage and Rogge were
able to jump ahead of more senior members thanks to the support of an
out-going president (Edström for Brundage, Samaranch for Rogge) who
wanted to settle old scores and appoint someone he felt would extend
his legacy. For similar reasons, João Havelange supported Sepp Blatter’s
bid to become president of FIFA. Patronage also plays an important role
in determining which national executives are elevated to the ranks of
international organizations. For example, Dick Pound, Jacques Rogge
and Thomas Bach were coopted to the IOC thanks to the support of
the presidents of their respective NOCs.
The commonly held view of the IOC as a club for the elderly results
from the fact that, for much of its history, members were coopted for
life. Even Coubertin, the IOC’s founder, had no desire to adopt an elec-
toral process for appointing members, which could have led to chal-
lenges to his position and which was contrary to his political outlook.
Age limits for members were not introduced until the early 2000s,
as part of the reforms implemented in the wake of the Salt Lake City
scandal. Members coopted after 1999 are required to step down at the
age of 70, but members coopted before 1999 are allowed to keep their
positions until they are 80. In addition, a rule adopted in 2014 as part
of the IOC’s Agenda 2020 allows members to petition the General
Assembly for permission to serve for a further four years after their 70th
birthdays.
Cooption and long terms of office give sport federations a large
degree of stability, but they can also lead to conservatism and stagna-
tion, and, in some cases, nepotism. Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior’s
rise through the IOC is, perhaps, the most striking example of this.
Samaranch Junior, who had become vice-president of the very small
International Modern Pentathlon Union in 1996, was co-opted to
the IOC in 2001, when his father retired, appointed to the executive
board in 2012 and elected vice-president in 2016. In another case,
investigations by WADA’s Independent Commission into Doping
reported that former IAAF president Lamine Diack had given one of
his sons a job within the IAAF and awarded consultancy contracts to
another son. Such revelations have made limiting the age and tenure
of sports executives a central aspect of the governance reforms being
introduced by sport’s governing bodies. Consequently, presidents of
the IOC and half the world’s IFs, including FIFA, can now serve lim-
ited terms. Such limits can deprive an institution of expertise and be
used as a way for taking over power, but they are essential in order
to prevent stagnation within the upper echelons of sports governance.
They also help restrict the development of cronyism, whereby sports
executives trade favours in order to maintain or advance their posi-
tions, rather than to benefit their sport and/or organisation. In fact,
long tenures, combined with the power to appoint senior staff and to
control internal and external communication, enabled executives to
turn their organisations into personal fiefdoms that were subject to few
true checks and balances.
Sport’s Career Ladder

The path to the most senior positions in international sport follows a
career ladder that tends to be very similar from one IF to another and
which culminates in cooption to the IOC. In recent years, experience
as an elite athlete has become a distinct advantage when it comes to

climbing this ladder.
Apart from a few exceptions, the presidents of the world’s IFs have
patiently worked their way up from local administrator to interna-
tional executive. Jules Rimet, for example, began his administrative
career in 1897 when he founded a sports club called Red Star. He went
on to become president of France’s Inter-federal Football Committee,
in 1906, founded the League of Football Associations, in 1910, and
became president of the newly formed French Football Federation, in
1919. Two years later, in 1921, he was elected president of FIFA, which
he had helped found in 1904. Hence, it took him 24 years to rise from
his first administrative position to the top of world football. In compar-
ison, Chatrier’s ascent to the top of international tennis appears mete-
oric. After becoming president of the Tennis Club du Lys in 1965, he
was appointed vice-president of the French Tennis Federation (FFT) in
1968, president of the FFT in 1973, and president of the IFT in 1977.
In truth, Chatrier’s rise to the top of world tennis was not as spectacu-
lar as it seems because he had been preparing the ground since 1953,
through his magazine Tennis de France. Jagmohan Dalmiya, who began
his career with the Cricket Association of Bengal in 1977, had also
worked in sports administration for 20 years before he was elected presi-
dent of his sport’s IF, the ICC, in 1997.
This career ladder is even longer in the case of the IOC, because it
only accepts as members senior national or international executives—
presidents of either NOCs or IFs and chefs de mission for the Olympic
Games—and former Olympians designated by their peers. IOC mem-
bers must then serve on several Olympic commissions before being
considered for a position on the executive board, which opens up the
possibility of being elected vice-president. The evaluation, legal affairs,
marketing, and digital and technology commissions are particularly
propitious for advancement, as they enable members to expand and
strengthen their sporting, commercial and media networks around the
world. This is also the case for the Athletes’ Commission, founded by
Bach after Moscow 1980, and the working groups created to formulate
and assess possible reforms to the IOC’s governance.
Dick Pound’s career within the sports and Olympic movement has
been exceptionally long, as he obtained his first administrative position—
treasurer for the Quebec section of his federation—at the age of 23 and
he was still member of the IOC in 2017, at the age of 75. Between times
he became a member of Canada’s NOC, at the age of 26, chef de mission
to the Munich Olympics, when he was 30, an IOC member at the unu-
sually young age of 36, appointed to the executive board when he was
41, elected vice-president at the age of 45 and again at 54, and named
WADA’s first president when he was 59. However, Pound’s 52 years of
loyal service are eclipsed by Juan-Antonio Samaranch’s 55-year career,
which began in 1946, when he represented the Spanish Rink-hockey
Federation at Montreux at the age of 26. He became vice-president of
his IF and a member of Spain’s NOC when he was 34 and appointed
minister for sports by Franco when he was 46. This position allowed him
to be coopted to the IOC, where he served as head of protocol, a one-
off post created by Brundage to undermine the influence of his director
general, Monique Berlioux, before becoming a member of the executive
board at 50 and vice-president at 54. Six years later, at the age of 60, he
was elected IOC president, a position he held for the next 21 years.
Even though most of sport’s leaders achieved their positions thanks
to their work in sports administration, this does not mean they lacked
sporting prowess. Coubertin was a true sporting “all-rounder”, even if
he never took part in any competitions, Baillet-Latour was an enthu-
siastic equestrian, Milliat was an accomplished rower and Rimet was
a proficient club footballer. Similarly, Samaranch was an occasional
sportsman, Blatter played football in Switzerland’s amateur league,
Dalmiya was a decent cricketer and Chatrier was a top-class tennis
player. Other leaders, including Havelange (swimming—Berlin 1936,
water polo—Helsinki 1952), Pound (swimming—Rome 1960) and
Rogge (sailing—Mexico 1968, Montreal 1972, Munich 1976), were
Olympians. Lamine Diack, a long-jumper, would also have figured on
this list if he had not missed the 1960 Rome Olympics through injury.
Thomas Bach and Sebastian Coe, the current presidents of the IOC
and IAAF, went a stage further, as both are Olympic gold medallists,
Bach in the fencing competition at Montreal 1976 and Coe in the
1500 m at Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984. However, some sports
executives, including most executives from Arab countries and former

UCI president Hein Verbruggen, were not outstanding athletes, even if
they are passionate about the sports they represent.
Olympic Elitism
In June 2015 Marius Vizer, the International Judo Federation’s con-
troversial president, hit out at the lack of democracy within the IOC,
claiming that “most of the IOC’s members are aristocrats”.3 Vizer’s
attack may have been prompted by his anger at being ousted as pres-
ident of SportAccord, the umbrella organisation for Olympic and
non-Olympic IFs, but his accusation reflects a widely held, if increas-
ingly untrue, belief that the IOC is a club for the aristocracy. In fact,
when the IOC was founded, a quarter of its members were aristocrats;
today, royal families and the nobility provide 12 of the IOC’s 94 active
members. Moreover, many senior sports executives were raised to the
nobility in recognition of their contribution to sport. Notable examples
included Juan-Antonio Samaranch and Jacques Rogge at the IOC and
Sebastian Coe at the IAAF.
Not content with these national honours, sport’s leaders have
invented their own awards with which they can pay tribute to fellow
executives, sporting champions and partners. Coubertin, who received
many honours (but not the Légion d’Honneur he coveted) was well
aware of the symbolic and strategic importance of such awards. As a
result, in 1905 he created the Olympic Certificate as a way of recognis-
ing individuals with exceptional physical and moral qualities. Renamed
the Olympic Order in 1975, this distinction is now awarded for “out-
standing service to the Olympic Movement”. In fact a worldwide
“trade” in awards and distinctions has grown up between the sporting
world and states, and vice versa. Avid for international recognition,
many sports executives are highly susceptible to honours, foreign deco-
rations and honorary doctorates.
3Le Monde, 22 June 2015.

Aristocrats may never have formed the majority of the IOC’s mem-
bers, but its members tended to be drawn from the upper echelons
of society, unlike the IFs, most of whose members have more middle
class origins. This was particularly the case for sports that were quick
to embrace the lower classes or professionalism, such as football, ten-
nis and golf. Consequently, the IOC has been reluctant to coopt the
presidents of IFs, preferring to recruit its members from NOCs, and it
was not until the reforms of 2002 that 15 seats within the IOC were
reserved for leaders of international sport organisations. Despite this
rule, the new presidents of two of sports leading IFs, Sebastian Coe at
the IAAF (elected in 2015) and Gianni Infantino at FIFA (elected in
2016), had still not been coopted into the IOC at the end of 2017.
As part of its Olympic Agenda 2020, the IOC charged its
Nominations Commission with introducing a “targeted” recruitment
procedure that would identify the best candidates to fulfil vacancies
(Recommendation 38). This procedure should ensure potential candi-
dates are scrutinised more carefully, even if this is not explicitly men-
tioned in Recommendation 38, and thereby protect the IOC from
having to accept candidates with links to dictatorships or criminal
organisations. In the long term, the IOC may even include ethical crite-
ria within its recruitment process, especially with respect to conflicts of
interest.
Lawyers, Businessmen and Athletes

Hein Verbruggen was an exceptional figure for several reasons, not least
of which was the fact that he rose to the top of the UCI despite begin-
ning his managerial career far from the world of sport, as a sales and
product manager for Mars, Incorporated. In fact, sport’s governing bod-
ies have always tended to be “closed shops”, impenetrable to anyone
from outside sporting circles—World Rugby’s appointment, in 2016,
of two new board members with no particular connection to the sport
was a truly innovative decision. If this approach to recruiting executives
were to become widespread, IFs may one day be presided by people
with no background in sports administration.
Generally speaking, the federations governing so-called working-class

sports, such as football, cycling, boxing and wrestling, have been pre-
sided by men from the middle classes. The modest origins of FIFA pres-
idents Jules Rimet and Sepp Blatter, and UCI presidents Paul Rousseau
and Hein Verbruggen, are typical of the men who ran these sports. In
contrast, sports associated with the middle and upper classes, such
as tennis, cricket and sailing, have mostly been presided by men from
the more privileged echelons of society. Former ITF president Philippe
Chatrier, World Sailing (and, later, IOC) president Jacques Rogge and
ICC president Jagmohan Dalmiya were all born into relatively afflu-
ent families. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. For exam-
ple, FIFA’s second longest serving president, João Havelange, was a rich
industrialist, and sport federation executives in the Middle East’s oil-
producing countries tend to be rich and often of royal blood. However,
the democratisation of sport in western countries is beginning to over-
turn the traditional social make-up of sport’s ruling elite. These changes
are personified by the figure of Bernie Ecclestone, a fisherman’s son,
used-car salesman and motorsport enthusiast who rose to become the
owner of Formula 1.
In terms of profession, a large proportion of sport’s leaders have
been lawyers by training, often commercial lawyers. Rimet, Havelange,
Pound, Bach and Infantino all had careers in law, whereas Pierre de
Coubertin and Henri Baillet-Latour, being of independent means, stud-
ied law but never went into practice. Other senior executives, including
Samaranch, Verbruggen and Blatter, studied business, management or
marketing, but few pursued their studies to a high level. In fact, sports
executives are rarely alumni of prestigious universities or hold higher
degrees: Pound, a graduate of McGill University, Rogge, an ortho-
paedic surgeon, and Bach, a doctor of law, are among the few excep-
tions to this rule. Despite his somewhat anachronistic background
as an amateur sportsman and surgeon, Rogge’s aim was always to
bring greater professionalism to sports administration. He shared this
vision with Hein Verbruggen, whose managerial experience at Mars,
Incorporated, undoubtedly influenced the way he revolutionised the
management of the UCI and shaped the new strategic vision he brought
to the IFs through his work at SportAccord. Rather surprisingly,
given the influence of the media on the development of international

sport, Philippe Chatrier, who ran a tennis magazine, is almost unique
among IF executives in having worked in the media. Nevertheless,
the ever-growing importance of television and digital media is likely
to make familiarity with this milieu an increasingly valuable asset for
future generations of sports executives.
A number of elite athletes have also risen to the top of sports admin-
istration, often after following successful careers in politics or business.
Avery Brundage, who presided the IOC from 1952 to 1972, competed
in the 1912 Olympics, Lamine Diack, IAAF president from 1999 to
2015, was a champion long jumper, and Sebastian Coe, the IAAF’s
current president, won athletics gold at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.
In fact, the most powerful position in world sport, IOC president, is
currently held by a former Olympian, Thomas Bach. After winning
fencing gold in Munich in 1976, Bach was so frustrated at not being
able to compete in a second Olympics because of West Germany’s boy-
cott of the 1980 Moscow Games that he asked Samaranch to create an
Athletes’ Commission within the IOC. He later used this commission
as a springboard for his election as IOC president. Measures to help for-
mer athletes develop their future careers and the increased availability
of university courses in sports management, marketing and law, should
enable more athletes to play an active role in sports administration. In
addition, changes to the IOC’s statues introduced following the Salt
Lake City scandal have increased athletes’ representation within the
IOC. As a result, at the beginning of September 2017, 37 of the IOC’s
active members were Olympians.
Political Colours
Contrary to sport’s reputation for being able to rise above political,
nationalistic and tribal passions, some executives have managed to
combine their ascent through the ranks of sports administration with
a political career. And this despite the Olympic Charter’s instance that
each IOC member is the IOC’s representative in his or her home coun-
try, rather than his or her country’s representative at the IOC.
Samaranch is, perhaps, the executive who managed this balancing

act most successfully, combining his sporting functions with a polit-
ical career that took him to Spain’s parliament. Even though he was
appointed minister for sport in Franco’s dictatorship, he negotiated his
way around Spain’s various elites so adroitly that he emerged untar-
nished into Spain’s new democracy. Hence, when King Juan Carlos and
Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez, a Falangist linked to Opus Dei but who
was given the job of wiping out Francoism, named Samaranch Spain’s
ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1977, they were able to present the
appointment as being in the national interest. In fact, their long-term
goal was to place a Spaniard at the head of the IOC in order to promote
and capitalise on Spain’s new, democratic image. This strategy quickly
bore fruit, as Samaranch was elected IOC president in 1980 and in
1986 Barcelona was chosen to host the 1992 Olympics. At the same
time, Samaranch, the heir to a textile company, continued to expand his
network by, for example, founding the Barcelona Boat Show in 1961.
He also continued developing his business interests, most notably by
becoming president of Catalonia’s largest bank, Caixia, which he headed
from 1987 to 1999.
The relationship between sport and politics is even closer in the
case of police states and dictatorships, whose sports executives tend to
be allied to, if not members of, the ruling political class. In fact, sen-
ior appointments in sports federations and the decisions made by IFs
are rarely entirely apolitical, a fact that Thomas Bach acknowledged in
two speeches given in the early years of his IOC presidency: “the IOC
cannot be entirely apolitical… …but we have to be strictly politically
neutral” (12 September 2013) and “Sport must remain independent of
politics, yet there must always be an awareness that its decisions can also
have political consequences” (Olympic Review, 3 January 2014).
In terms of political beliefs, sport’s governing bodies have tended to
be very conservative and to have given greater importance to protect-
ing traditional values and hierarchies than to addressing social issues.
Nevertheless, this outlook has gradually evolved, especially during the
last few decades, and sport’s leaders now tend to have more centrist,
Christian-democratic views.
For example, all the IOC’s presidents during the twentieth century had
very conservative political beliefs, in contrast to the institution’s last two
presidents, Jacques Rogge and Thomas Bach, who appear to have more
liberal opinions. Pierre de Coubertin, an aristocrat from an anti-republi-
can background, was a staunch conservative, as was his successor, Henri
Baillet-Latour, whose belief in serving king and country had led him to
consider a career as a senator or governor. The 1936 Berlin Olympics,
which the Nazis wanted to turn into an instrument of state propaganda,
brought to the fore the political opinions of the IOC’s leaders, who had
to decide whether to allow the Games to go ahead, and thereby provide
tacit support for Hitler’s regime, or to cancel the event. Coubertin and
Baillet-Latour admired the strength of Hitler’s leadership and his stance
against Bolshevism, but they were also profoundly anti-German. On the
other hand, Sigfrid Edström and Avery Brundage both supported Hitler.
In the end, the IOC’s leaders chose to let the Games go ahead, as cancel-
lation could have caused irreparable damage to the Olympic movement.
Brundage’s successor, Juan-Antonio Samaranch, also had right-wing lean-
ings, as is shown by his willingness to serve as a minister in Franco’s gov-
ernment, so it was not until 2001 that the IOC was presided by men
with, apparently, more centrist views. In fact, Jacques Rogge has always
been very circumspect about his political opinions, unlike Thomas Bach,
who is known to be close to Germany’s liberal-democrats.
There is less certainty about the political beliefs of many other
sports executives. For example, did João Havelange, who reigned over
Brazilian sport from 1964 to 1985, support the country’s dictators or
did he just work as best he could within the system? We may never
know, as this subject remains taboo for Brazilian journalists and aca-
demics. Philippe Chatrier appears to have supported the centre-right
politics of France’s President Giscard d’Estaing, but Verbruggen,
Ecclestone, Pound, Rogge, Blatter and Dalmiya have kept their political
opinions to themselves. Whatever their beliefs, nearly all of sport’s top
executives have been extremely artful politicians. This is especially the
case for executives from more authoritarian countries, such as Sheikh
Al-Sabah, Kuwait’s former oil minister and head of intelligence, and
Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s deputy prime minister and a member of the
FIFA Council.
European Hegemony over a Male-Dominated

World
Even a superficial glance at the leadership of the world’s international
sport organisations shows that these bodies have been presided almost
exclusively by Europeans. The United States may dominate the all-time
medals table for the Olympic Games, with twice as many medals as the
next country in the list (the Soviet Union), but Avery Brundage is the
only American to have presided the IOC. Within football, Brazil’s João
Havelange is the only non-European to have been elected president
of FIFA. This European hegemony is even more surprising given that
since the 1970s the largest sponsors of the world’s biggest sports events
and federations have been American and Japanese multi-nationals, the
oil rich states of the Persian Gulf and China. Nevertheless, the middle-
ranking powers and small, neutral countries of Western Europe and
Scandinavia have provided the vast majority of the presidents of sport’s
governing bodies.
In fact, Europe’s hegemony over the IFs and IOC is a direct reflection
of these bodies’ European roots. All the world’s largest IFs were founded
in Europe, often in France, around the turn of the twentieth century
and most have since migrated their headquarters to Switzerland in order
to be close to the IOC, which Coubertin moved to Lausanne in 1915.
Samaranch was particularly instrumental in encouraging other institu-
tions to congregate round the IOC’s headquarters, even going as far as
bestowing on Lausanne the title “Olympic Capital” as part of the IOC’s
centenary celebrations in 1994. The IOC’s European bias is also visible
in its choice of host cities for the Olympic Games. To date, 29 editions
of the Olympic Games (Summer and Winter combined) have been held
in Europe, compared with 13 editions in the Americas, 5 editions in
Asia, 2 editions in Australia, and 1 edition each for the Soviet Union
and Russia. Similarly, the football World Cup has been held in Europe
on 10 occasions, in the Americas on 8 occasions and just once each in
Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, the decisions to award upcoming editions
of the Olympics to PyeongChang (2018), Tokyo (2020), Beijing (2022)
and Los Angeles (2028), and of the World Cup to Russia (2018) and
Qatar (2022), are signs of Europe’s waning influence in world sport,

even if Paris was awarded the 2024 Summer Olympics.
One effect of this European bias has been to allow Europe to punch
above its commercial, financial and demographic weight, protected
by an image of the continent’s sporting dominance. As a result, 10
of our 15 portraits are of Europeans: France’s Pierre de Coubertin,
Alice Milliat, Jules Rimet and Philippe Chatrier, Belgium’s Henri
Baillet-Latour and Jacques Rogge, the Netherlands’ Hein Verbruggen,
Switzerland’s Sepp Blatter, Spain’s Juan-Antonio Samaranch, and
Britain’s Bernie Ecclestone. In addition, three of the remaining five
portraits are of leaders who were undoubtedly subject to European
influences, despite being born far from Europe’s shores: Canada’s
Dick Pound grew up in the Francophone and Francophile province of
Quebec, Brazil’s João Havelange had Belgian parents and Lamine Diack
was born in Senegal when it was still a French colony, although it later
gained its independence under Léopold Sedar Senghor.
The two remaining portraits look forward to the possible future of
sport’s administration, as they examine the rise of leaders from Asia
and the Middle East. Jagmohan Dalmiya is an exception among sports
executives as, despite being from India, one of the world’s least sporty
countries, he rose to the top of world cricket, the sport that most clearly
symbolises British imperialism, even if its epicentre is now in the Indian
subcontinent. India’s recent announcement that it was thinking of bid-
ding to host the 2032 Summer Olympics should mean that the world’s
most populous democracy will not remain on the edge of the Olympic
Movement much longer.
The final chapter differs from its predecessors in that it does not
describe the career of a single leader, but the rise of the oil-rich nations
of the Persian Golf, which have used their wealth to create a national
sporting culture from scratch, attract most of the world’s largest com-
petitions, and gain positions on the executive boards of numerous IFs.
What is more, they are gradually gaining control over Asia’s sport-
ing authorities and the world’s most popular spectator sport, foot-
ball (acquisition of controlling interests in major European clubs,
purchase of television rights, creation of the Beinsport channel, etc.).
However, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain are not the only countries with
great ambitions within the administration of international sport. Japan,

South Korea and China have substantial media and commercial inter-
ests in sport, but relatively little representation on the executive boards
of the largest IFs. This will surely change in the coming decades, as
demographic and economic expansion increases the weight of Asia’s
voice in world affairs and the region’s governments, notably China,
invest in sport as a tool of soft power. Africa’s influence is also likely to
grow, especially if the continent can set aside local rivalries in order to
gain positions of power for African executives, as when Lamine Diack
was elected president of the IAAF.
Eurocentrism is not the only bias within international sports adminis-
tration; most sports institutions have always been run almost entirely by
men. One of the first leaders in the battle to gain greater acceptance for
women as athletes and sports administrators was a modest shopkeeper’s
daughter from provincial France—Alice Milliat. Milliat was a remarka-
ble woman in very many ways. Not only did she organise international
events for sportswomen, she founded and presided an international
federation for sportswomen that was run mostly by women. A cen-
tury later, it is still hard to name a major international sports federation
with a female president. Sport’s male ruling class long resisted the rise of
women within their ranks, helped by the widespread conception that the
most popular spectator sports (football, cycling, athletics, etc.) were male
sports. But even as acceptance of and interest in women’s sport increased,
sport’s ruling bodies remained reluctant to accept women executives.
Women have been able to compete in the Olympic Games since 1900,
but the IOC did not coopt its first female members until 1980 and the
organisation is still far from achieving gender parity. In September 2017,
only 26 of the IOC’s 94 active members were women and only 3 mem-
bers of the 12-person executive board were women. Anita DeFrantz
became the organisation’s first female vice president in September 2017,
but it still seems unlikely that a woman could be elected IOC president.
The absence of women is even more striking at FIFA, where female
members of the general assembly are so rare, they are almost invisible
on official photographs. In 2016, the 37-person FIFA Council included
just six women, four of whom represent very small footballing nations
(American Samoa, Bangladesh, Burundi, Turks and Caicos). The only
two major footballing countries to be represented by women are Italy

and Ecuador. FIFA is unusual among IFs in that the last two presidents
(Blatter and Infantino) were general secretary of FIFA and UEFA. If this
trend were to continue, Senegal’s Fatma Samoura, could become FIFA’s
first female president.
The “Dassler Revolution”

The leaders of international sport are much quicker to criticize intru-
sions into their internal affairs when they come from governments than
when they come from sponsors and financial partners. In order to truly
understand sport’s great presidents, it is necessary to look more closely
at the contracts they signed with sponsors and the media, and with the
consultancies and marketing companies that swarm around the IFs and
the IOC. Examining the curriculum vitae of administrative directors
reveals a lot not only about the management methods of sport organ-
isation presidents, but also about the way managers, lawyers, market-
ers and corporate spin doctors have infiltrated these organisations. The
portraits of Havelange, Diack, Samaranch and Pound provide a glimpse
into the new approach to marketing that revolutionised the way FIFA,
the IAAF and IOC operate. Advised and assisted by Horst Dassler,
the head of German sporting goods company Adidas, these organisa-
tions began to negotiate highly lucrative contracts with major equip-
ment manufacturers, sponsors and the media. In 1982 Dassler founded
International Sport and Leisure (ISL), a Swiss-based sports marketing
company that advised and negotiated contracts for the world’s largest
sport’s federations until a series of poor investment decisions resulted in
the company going bankrupt in 2001.
Professor Jean-Loup Chappelet described the new approach to mar-
keting developed by the IOC during the 1980s as the “Samaranch rev-
olution”. However, although Samaranch oversaw these changes, they
were largely orchestrated by Dassler. This was also the case for the
changes made in the way FIFA and the IAAF negotiated their mar-
keting and broadcasting contracts. For example, it was Dassler who
negotiated FIFA’s first contract with Coca-Cola in 1977 and, in 1981,
FIFA awarded Dassler’s newly formed company, ISL, the contract

to negotiate its television and marketing rights. At the IOC, Pound,
with Samaranch’s support, contracted ISL to negotiate marketing
rights for the Olympic Games, thereby laying the foundations for
the TOP programme, created in 1985. ISL was also responsible for
bringing the IAAF, then presided by Lamine Diack, into the market-
ing era. And Dassler’s influence was not restricted to marketing, as he
played a central role in the election of several top executives. Hence,
it would perhaps be more accurate to refer to sport’s new, proactive
approach to negotiating marketing and broadcasting contracts as the
“Dassler revolution”.
Unlike politicians and corporate executives, who regularly have to
justify their actions to the electorate or to shareholders, the heads of IFs
and the IOC are generally more comfortably seated in their positions
and often have large electoral majorities. Because the organisations they
run are international non-profit associations, they are not subject to
the same degree of scrutiny as commercial enterprises and they enjoy
numerous privileges, especially in the case of the IOC and FIFA, which
have been given special status by the Swiss government. Consequently,
most of the innumerable scandals that have tarnished sport’s reputation,
from the Salt Lake City scandal in 1999 to the 2015 FIFAgate scandal
and the on-going inquiry into systematic doping in Russia, were ini-
tially revealed by investigative journalists. Even then, senior sports exec-
utives were (almost) never held to account for their misconduct unless
the justice system, most notably the United States’ Department of
Justice (DoJ), took an interest in the case. This state of affairs says a lot
about the ineffectiveness of the various control systems, ethics commis-
sions and financial audits introduced by the IOC and IFs over the years.
The privileges enjoyed by sport organisations also extend to their
presidents, who have a quasi-diplomatic degree of immunity. Hence,
when the DoJ wanted to question Juan-Antonio Samaranch in con-
nection with the Salt Lake City scandal, they had to summon him as
a witness, not as a defendant, and provide him with a guarantee that
he would be allowed to return to Europe. Nevertheless, this immunity
is no longer as strong as it once was, which is why Thomas Bach did
not attend the Rio Paralympic Games in 2016, a unique case in the
relations between the IOC and the IPC. Following the arrest of Patrick
Hickey, then president of the Irish NOC, Bach was concerned that he
might be summoned to appear before the Brazilian police.
For many years, the Swiss authorities refused to investigate the affairs
of sports federations based within the country. However, the never-
ending stream of scandals that have engulfed international sport over
the last 20 years were beginning to tarnish Switzerland’s image, which
had already been damaged by the DoJ’s pursuit of Swiss banks for com-
plicity in tax evasion. As a result, the Swiss government decided it had
no choice but to crack down on bribery, passing the “Lex FIFA” Act in
2014 and, at the request of the DoJ, arresting seven members of FIFA
in Zurich under suspicion of corruption. FIFAgate, as this affair became
known, was first revealed by a British investigative journalist called
Andrew Jennings, who had uncovered widespread corruption within
the IOC seven years before the Salt Lake City scandal. At the time, no
action was taken in the light of Jennings’ revelations, other than to hand
the British journalist a five-day suspended prison sentence for slander!
Sports organisations continue to view investigations of their affairs
as violations of the dearly held principle of autonomy for sport and
have therefore resisted attempts to draw up an international lex spor-
tiva to complement, if not supersede, national laws. Because sport is
both leisure activity and entertainment, it has historically occupied a
unique place on the boundary between the private and public spheres
and therefore deserves protecting from outside interference, especially
from religion, politics and financial interests. But autonomy should not
mean immunity for executives who break national laws and who do not
respect the legal conventions adopted by the United Nations.
The Challenge of Increased Professionalization

Professional leagues and clubs, sports newspapers and sports equipment
manufacturers have, of course, always been run by professional manag-
ers. In contrast, sport federations have traditionally been led by non-
salaried executives, who have rarely been entrepreneurs of international
stature and have never applied the principles of scientific management.
Until the 1970s, even major organisations such as FIFA and the IOC
continued to be administered by association-style secretariats in which
a small number of employees carried out basic secretarial tasks such
as dealing with correspondence. Thus, when vastly increased revenues
from broadcasting rights first began projecting projected the sports
movement into a new era, at the end of the 1970s, most IFs were run as
families rather than as major international organisations.
The large sums of money that began flowing into the coffers of the
IFs were accompanied by the creation of many new annual sports
competitions, with the result that the number of events controlled by
the IFs exploded, rising from around 100 a year in the 1970s to more
than 2000 in the 2010s. The IFs’ revenues were further increased in
the 1990s, when the IOC began attributing a proportion of Olympic
revenues to its member federations, partly with the aim of helping
them appoint professional managers and staff. In fact, it was becoming
increasingly urgent for the IFs to be run on a more professional basis so
they could more effectively manage the larger budgets at their disposal
and the increased workload produced by administering more competi-
tions. Larger sports institutions quickly began recruiting professional
staff, with FIFA and the IOC increasing their paid workforces from
around a dozen people in 1980 to over 500 employees in 2010. This
lead has gradually been followed by most of the smaller IFs. The “pro-
fessionalization” process has had several consequences, most notably in
the way federations manage their salaried and unpaid human resources,
and in the need to find a new balance in the relationship between the
federations’ political leaders and their administrative staff.
As federations have grown in size, they have adopted more complex
legal and financial structures, with the result that the largest sport
organisations can now be considered groups consisting of a “parent
organisation” and “subsidiaries” (which may be commercial bodies,
associations and/or foundations). In fact, it has become common for
observers to talk about the IOC Group or UEFA Group. Moreover,
each IF is at the head of a network of continental and national fed-
erations, which are autonomous organisations over which the IF
exerts no direct control. This presents an additional challenge for an
IF’s leaders, who have to ensure the unity/professionalization of the
federal network/system, while pursuing the interests of the international

federation as a whole. Samaranch’s efforts to develop and unify the
Olympic Movement (notably the IFs and NOCs) and Blatter’s strategy
for ensuring the continuing support of FIFA’s continental confedera-
tions and national associations illustrate two approaches to reconciling
these sometimes conflicting priorities.
These characteristics explain why running sport’s governing bodies
can be such a difficult task. Sports executives have to take into account a
number of factors—sport’s heightened passions, reliance on volunteers,
the autonomy of “subsidiary” organisations, attempts by bodies inside
and outside sport to use sport for commercial, political or geo-stra-
tegic ends, etc.—which corporate executives do not have to face. This
complexity and the increased stakes explain why sport’s most promi-
nent leaders, such as Samaranch, Blatter and Verbruggen, ruled their
organisations as chief executive officers, rather than as non-executive
presidents, were able to hold onto their positions for so long, and felt
justified in accepting substantial “compensation” for their work, in lieu
of a salary. In return, they maintained the system’s equilibrium with
respect to:
• Internal governance, including the international body’s marketing

and internal management;
• Subsidiary members (the IFs in the case of the IOC, continental and
national bodies in the case of the IFs), sometimes achieved at the cost
of private “arrangements” with important players or internal power
games.
• Worldwide governance and regulation, which has become ever more
complex due to the increased number of stakeholders (sponsors, media,
governments, European Union, UN agencies, NGOs, professional
sport leagues, professional sport associations, social networks, etc.)
Samaranch, Verbruggen and Blatter were autocratic leaders who exer-

cised absolute control over the organisations they presided. These
men may have been charismatic, farsighted and some observers have
suggested that they confounded their personal interests with those of
their organisation. Shedding light onto the complex characters of the
people who have shaped international sport since its emergence at the
end of the nineteenth century is one of this book’s main objectives. By
presenting leaders from different eras, different backgrounds and differ-
ent sports, our fifteen portraits cover most of the major issues and chal-
lenges sport has faced over the last 120 years and describes the impact of
the solutions they chose on both individual federations and the world
of sport as a whole. As such, they provide a comprehensive overview of
the history of sports governance, while looking forward to some of the
changes the future is likely to bring.
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Part I
Founding Ideologies
The first four chapters present pioneering figures who helped lay the
foundations of the international sport system during the decades prior
to and immediately after the First World War: Pierre de Coubertin, the
father of the modern Olympic Games, his successor at the IOC, Henri
de Baillet-Latour, Jules Rimet, FIFA’s longest serving president, and
Alice Milliat, who fought to gain acceptance for sportswomen and cre-
ate institutions that would give women control over women’s sport.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Great Britain, one of the pio-
neers of organised sport, had developed a model based on amateurism
and sports’ boards that controlled the rules of individual sports. In con-
trast, continental Europe, led by France, developed a more hierarchi-
cal model with clubs as the base unit of a pyramidal system of local,
regional and national federations. The logical next step with such a
pyramidal system was to bring together national federations within an
international umbrella body which could oversee the staging of inter-
national competitions. Consequently, it was the French who formed
and ran most of the earliest international sport organisations, including
the IOC (founded by Coubertin in 1896), FIFA (founded by Robert
Guérin in 1904) and the International Tennis Federation (founded by
32 Founding Ideologies
Henri Wallet in 1913). Although France exported this model across the
British and American empires in the years leading up to the First World
War, it was the United Kingdom and United States who were vying to
become the world leaders of sport.
Pierre de Coubertin and his colleagues at the IOC had a very elitist
view of sport, based on amateurism and Olympism. Other Frenchmen,
such as Paul Rousseau (boxing), Frantz Reichel (cycling) and Jules
Rimet (football), had a more democratic outlook that embraced profes-
sionalism and the idea of sport for the masses. This dichotomy reflects
the social origins of sports’ administrators, differentiating those who
were born into Europe’s old aristocracy and moral bourgeoisie from the
burgeoning middle classes. However, all the period’s sports organisa-
tions were run by men with a conservative, Eurocentric perspective that
consigned women and colonial peoples to lower echelons or excluded
them completely.
International sport emerged during an extremely turbulent period of
history that saw nations ripped apart by two world wars. Even during
times of peace, sporting passions could run high, especially in interna-
tional competitions involving imperial rivals (e.g., between the United
Kingdom, France and the United States). Totalitarian regimes, most
notably Hitler’s Germany, skilfully used these passions to turn sport
into an instrument of nationalistic propaganda, a development that was
diametrically opposed to international sport’s founding aim of bringing
nations together. Nevertheless, the leaders of international sport, who
had been raised in the western model of parliamentary democracy and
freedom of association, managed to keep the sports movement alive but
failed to find an adequate response to the hijacking of sport by authori-
tarian regimes. The creation of the Soviet Union and the onset of the
Cold War merely added a new issue and a new model—the USSR and
international communist sport—to this tableau.
Despite these problems, the popularity of sport in western cul-
tures never stopped growing, first among the “leisure class” (Thorstein
Veblen, 1899) and then by ever wider social classes. This growth can,
to a large extent, be attributed to the efforts of newspapers, followed
by radio and cinema, to organise, finance and popularise sporting
spectacles.
2
Pierre de Coubertin: The Inventor
of the Olympic Tradition
Patrick Clastres
France’s Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937) played a decisive

role in reviving the Olympic Games and setting up the International
Olympic Committee (IOC), which he presided from 1896 to 1925.
This chapter looks at his IOC presidency, focusing on the strategies he
used to re-establish the Olympic Games “in a modern form”, to win
and hold onto the IOC presidency for 30 years, and to forge and spread
his conception of “Olympism”.
Here, we reject any view of Pierre de Coubertin as a manager, admin-
istrator or marketer of world sports. We also reject any idea of him as a
“social marketer” or of Olympism as a “social marketing product”
(Chatziefstathiou 2007) because these concepts are anachronistic and
embedded in the mass consumption era that emerged in 1920s America.
Indeed, the notions of marketing, management and sports admin-
istration were completely foreign to him, and the idea that sports
P. Clastres (*)
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Sport Sciences Institute (ISSUL),
e-mail: patrick.clastres@unil.ch
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_2
34 P. Clastres
needed managers and bureaucrats was contrary to his convictions and

beliefs in individual freedom and free association. His political culture,
inherited from the European aristocracy’s tradition of doctrinal and ideo-
logical independence, and his conversion to liberal conservatism included a
wariness of all forms of power or domination.
Hence, it is necessary to uncover the presents of the Olympic past
as experienced by Pierre de Coubertin, with all their uncertainties,
stalemates and failures. In other words, to remember that there was no
guarantee that the revived Olympics would be a success, that the IOC
would survive the first modern Games in Athens, or that Coubertin
would remain in control. There was nothing certain about any of these
events because the Olympic project had to overcome opposition from
many sources, including the national and international heads of the dif-
ferent sports, who found it hard to accept the IOC’s tutelage, the pri-
vate and public organizers of the Olympic spectacle, the athletes, who
were tempted by professionalism, and the public, who were attracted
to more exciting events such as football matches, cycle races and box-
ing matches. Other challenges came from those left out of Coubertin’s
Olympics, starting with sportswomen, who set up an independent
Women’s World Games after the First World War, students, who were
later given their own international games, known as the Universiade,
and workers, who were automatically excluded from the Olympics
because they were professionals and who were attracted by the social-
ist and communist Olympiads. Alternative events organized by ath-
letes and officials from colonial countries and by sportspeople from
the Jewish diaspora, who started the Maccabiah Games in Palestine,
continued to emerge until the 1930s.
Other than a single PhD thesis (Clastres 2011), very few studies
have examined Coubertin’s Olympic presidency, as most scholars have
focused on his educational theories and his “Olympic neo-humanism”.1
Nevertheless, studies of the IOC’s history between the wars (Auger
1998) and of Henri de Baillet-Latour’s presidency (Carpentier 2004)
1For a presentation of Coubertin’s despisers and hagiographers, see Patrick Clastres (2011), “Une
historiographie contrastée”, pp. 10–17. Also Clastres (2006, 2010a, 2016).
2 Pierre de Coubertin: The Inventor of the Olympic Tradition 35
provide detailed examinations of how the Executive Board (EB) came

into being in 1921. Both authors rightly interpret the EB as a coun-
terweight imposed on Coubertin by colleagues who had become infu-
riated by his authoritarianism. In fact, Coubertin had tried to maintain
his control of Olympism even during the presidencies of his predeces-
sor, Greece’s Demetrios Bikelas (1894–1896), and successor, Belgium’s
Count Henri de Baillet-Latour (1925–1942). Coubertin’s activism and
autocratic behaviour in the years leading up to the Great War resulted
in him conceiving all the features that made the Olympic Movement
unique: the very idea that the Games should be “modern” and “interna-
tional”, their movement from Paris 1900 to Stockholm 1912, the for-
mation of the IOC as a circle of trustees, the organisation of Olympic
Sessions and Congresses, the creation of the Olympic Review as an inter-
national newsletter in 1901, and the conceptualisation of Olympism
with all its ceremonial trappings.
A Young French Aristocrat Lost in a Republic

Yves-Pierre Boulongne first presented Coubertin as a “bourgeois liberal”
(1975) before coming to stress the importance of his aristocratic origins
(1994). In the meantime, John MacAloon (1981) had noted the impor-
tance of “prowess” and patronage within the ethos of the traditional
aristocracy. As the son of a French noble, the young Pierre was groomed
to stand out from the crowd, to be a leader and to leave his mark on
history. It was his misfortune to be 20 years old when those wishing to
see the return of the Bourbon monarchy lost their prince, the Comte de
Chambord (24 August 1883). But it was also an opportunity for him,
as he had to adapt to the new political situation and find himself a new
future.
Surrounded at home by paintings of his ancestors, he was constantly
reminded of his family’s tradition of serving king and country as civil
or military officers. Both his parents had aristocratic origins: his moth-
er’s family were “nobles of the sword” from Caux in Normandy; his
father’s ancestors were “nobles of the gown” from the Chevreuse Valley.
In the 1860s and 1870s, as France swayed between monarchy, empire
36 P. Clastres
and republic, the Gigault de Crisenoys were legitimist royalists, loyal

to Louis XVI and his descendants, whereas the Frédy de Coubertins
favoured the liberal and contractual monarchy of their cousins, the
Orléans. So how could Coubertin fulfil his destiny in a France where
nouveau-riche tradesmen and industrialists outclassed traditional aristo-
crats such as his parents, whose fortunes were measured in land? Where
the democratic principle overrode the tax-based voting system?
Coubertin initially considered a career in the army (Clastres 2008b).
In his Mémoires de Jeunesse (Clastres 2008a) he said he had “half entered
Saint-Cyr”, France’s officer-training school, only to change his mind
because he felt Europe was entering an era of peace. He passed the writ-
ten entry exam, but failed the oral. Perhaps he paid the price for his
brothers’ and father’s monarchist proclamations, as the radicals in charge
at Saint-Cyr feared a counter-revolution and wanted to ensure successful
candidates were good republicans. The other option open to him was to
follow his ancestors into the civil service, which meant he would have to
study law. This he did half-heartedly, although he registered as a student
at the newly formed Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques (ELSP), where
he claimed he “saw the light”. This private school played a decisive role
in converting Coubertin to the liberal and colonial school of thought.
The ELSP had been founded in 1872 by the philosophers Boutmy
and Taine in order to “rebuild a leadership for the people” capable of
ensuring France’s recovery after the disastrous defeat by Prussia in 1870
and the Paris Commune. Teaching staff and students included mon-
archists and republicans, but they were all converts to economic and
political liberalism. The ELSP’s second founding principle concerned
the content of its teaching, as it was felt that the skills needed to deal
with the challenges of globalisation and the “clash of imperialisms”
could not be provided by a purely legal education. This is why the ELSP
called upon professionals at the top of their fields, as well as academ-
ics, to provide courses in new fields such as comparative constitutional
law, economic history, commercial geography, Europe’s diplomatic and
colonial history, and the administrative sciences. Although France’s
aristocracy tended to have a very Euro-centric perspective the young
Coubertin discovered new horizons in France’s colonial empire and the
new worlds of America and Africa.
Among other things, he understood that he and his fellow aristocrats

could still exert their influence within the republic and throughout the
world. In the spring of 1887, at the age of 24, he told the parliament
of Parisian students that they should accept republicanism, as it was
the best defence against radicalism and socialism, in other words, the
opponents of private property (Clastres 2010c). “God, motherland, lib-
erty” became his political credo. Rather than being tempted to follow
his maternal uncle and friends at the ELSP into the diplomatic corps,
he seemed set on entering politics. However, he never managed to enter
parliament, despite considering standing for election in 1888, 1893,
1898, 1902 and 1906 (Clastres 2008c, 2012). In Mémoires de Jeunesse
he excuses this failure with a very face-saving explanation: politics
would have stunted his cultural growth, which was something he could
never have accepted. In truth, his position as a monarchist with mod-
erately republican leanings left him in a sort of no-man’s land between
staunch royalists who wanted to restore the monarchy and radical
republicans.
Unwilling or unable to follow a career in the army, diplomacy, pol-
itics or literature (he tried to publish several poems, apparently with-
out much success), he threw himself into a completely novel form of
patronage: developing sport as a tool for training France’s new elites.
Forming France’s Elites Through Sport

Even as a young adult, Coubertin was obsessed by the question of how
to train France’s elite, perhaps because it had long been a subject of
conversation and concern for his family (Clastres 2004, 2005, 2008c).
His earliest travel diary, from June 1883, which remains unpublished,
describes how he first came into contact with the British education
system while visiting a friend who was studying at Beaumont College,
near Windsor. The educational principles applied at this Jesuit school
were an eye-opener for Coubertin and a marked contrast to his own
experience of boarding school.
Although he was there for only a year—he was mostly educated at
the Externat Saint-Ignace, a day school on Rue de Madrid—his time at
38 P. Clastres
the Jesuit boarding school on Rue de Vaugirard, in Paris, had a lasting

impact on him. “I don’t think”, he wrote in 1883, “that a man can be
taught to appreciate his freedom by bringing him up in a prison. (…)
I hate French boarding schools and I am very comfortable saying so.”
Never having known anything but strict discipline, book learning and
ranked marches around the schoolyard, he was surprised by the freedom
Beaumont’s pupils had to organise their academic and leisure activi-
ties, especially sports, and to arrange their rooms. Already—he was only
20 years old—he was wondering about “the qualities of the English,
which remain their own, whether they are monarchical or republican,
qualities that make a great people, if only we could give them to ours”.2
Nevertheless, it was another three years before he thought of apply-
ing English boarding-school methods to French secondary education,
including the freedom for students to do and organise sports. With this
in mind, between 1884 and 1886 he visited England on several occa-
sions to study the methods used by public schools, where youngsters
from the aristocracy and middle classes were educated together in order
to best serve their country’s industrial, commercial and colonial glory.
He studied these establishments using the sociological survey meth-
ods Frédéric Le Play and his disciples had developed to analyse fam-
ily units, especially family budgets (Clastres 2003a, b). In fact, since
January 1883 he had been a member of the Paris group of the “Unions
for Social Peace”, which were trying to reform society in order to avoid
another revolution. Their “social reforms” were intended to improve
workers’ living conditions and education, and keep them from “vice”,
but they did not offer any economic or cultural freedom. Le Play’s mes-
sage, which Coubertin applied throughout his life, was: reform just
enough to keep hold of power. With his conservative belief in natural
hierarchies, he showed a profound aversion for any state intrusion in
people’s private lives (family and education, beliefs and convictions,
professional and leisure activities, including sport). He dreamed of
using sport to create French Tories and struggle-for-lifers, in other words,
2Extracts from “Bretagne-Angleterre, 1883, 2”, p. 1 (unpublished), Sciences Po Archives, fonds

“Pierre de Coubertin-Geoffroy de Navacelle”.
liberal conservatives and cultured men of action, who were both patriots
and open to the rest of the world.
In his mind, education for the new French elite of the industrial,
commercial and colonial revolution needed to be much more than just
intellectual; it also had to be physical and moral. And, in order to forge
young men’s characters and give them the ability to command, he pre-
ferred sports to gymnastics. At best, he accepted artistic gymnastics as
preparation for sport, but callisthenics, he felt, were suitable only for
women and weak men. On the other hand, sports, whether fencing
or tennis, wrestling or boxing, rowing or rugby, encouraged people to
show initiative, take risks and push their limits. He began a campaign
to win over politicians and educationalists, writing articles for the press
and giving lectures, which gave rise to books on “education in England”
and “English education in France”, both published by Hachette. And
to bring together his supporters, in 1886 he created the Committee for
the Propagation of Physical Exercise in Education, which he asked Jules
Simon, a former president of the council of ministers, to oversee.
Coubertin did not strive only to develop sport in secondary educa-
tion; he also worked through the new amateur sports clubs that were
springing up in Paris and the provinces. In 1888 he became general sec-
retary of the recently founded Union of French Athletic Sports Clubs
(Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques—USFSA), the
forerunner of France’s modern sport federations. This unpaid post pro-
vided him with an excellent view of the sporting scene and a field for
experimentation across France. Nevertheless, he was never a sporting
prophet in his home country. Because he wanted to import an educa-
tional model from England, he was widely opposed by all the political
factions of the time: nationalists, Catholics, and republicans defended
both gymnastics and French sports. Very few French reformers saw the
value in importing a liberal and sports-based education system from
England, a powerful rival since the Hundred Years’ War and a protestant
monarchy.
Hence, on the eve of the 1890s he found himself in another impasse.
But a new opportunity was about to present itself, an opportunity he
grabbed with both hands: international sports exchanges.
40 P. Clastres
A Pioneer in the Field of International

Sports Exchanges
Between 1889 and 1892, Coubertin became a central player in the
opening up of French sport to international competition. He was one
of France’s first promoters of international competitions between ama-
teur sportsmen, whether rugby players, rowers, cyclists, tennis players or
athletes. Moreover, his travels and meetings with foreign sportsmen and
what he read in foreign newspapers, which already included sports col-
umns, helped him understand the internationalisation of sport that was
happening under his eyes.
The 1889 World’s Fair in Paris give him his first opportunity to
play a role in international sport and bring together executives from
beyond France and the United Kingdom. As general secretary of the
International Congress for the Propagation of Physical Exercise in
Education, he launched a vast postal survey into the place of sport in
male secondary education. By carefully selecting certain responses
from the Americas and British colonies in Africa and Asia, he was able
to show the extent to which the influence of athletic exercise “is salu-
tary for camaraderie, morality, the character and work”.3 He was also
given the opportunity to meet future members of the first International
Committee of the Olympic Games (ICOG): Count Brunetta
d’Usseaux, president of the Italian Rowing Club, and François Kémény,
a professor at Hungary’s Brasov University. Jules Simon’s invitation to
the peace congress allowed him to join the transatlantic network of lib-
eral pacifists, who promoted free trade and learning history as a way of
enriching peoples and improving mutual understanding.
It was not long before he was asked by the Minister for Public
Instruction to “visit the universities and colleges of Canada and the
United States and to study the organisation and functioning of the ath-
letics associations formed by the young people of those two countries”.4
3Pierre de Coubertin, Les exercices physiques dans les écoles d’Angleterre, d’Amérique,
d’Australie et dans les colonies anglaises. Same author: L’Exposition athlétique. La Revue ath-
létique, 25 May 1890.
4National archives, F/17/2950.
This first trip across the Atlantic, in the autumn of 1889, would put
him in contact with the sportsmen of the east coast’s gymnastics clubs
and universities, such as William Sloane, a professor at Princeton, who
would become the first American member of the ICOG (Wassong
2004). In response to compatriots who criticised him for being an
anglophile, he could now cite the amateur sporting tradition of the
United States, a republican country and French ally since the reign of
Louis XVI. From his time in the United States, he also brought back
a neologism—amateurism—which he claimed to have introduced into
the French language in 1890.
Another of his roles as general secretary of the USFSA was to deliver
conferences and organise meetings with foreign sports clubs. On one
such occasion, 11 April 1891, he makes a speech on the history of ath-
leticism before an audience of French young protestants inspired by
YMCA gymnasiums facilities (Clastres 2008b).5 A few months later, on
4 July 1891, he marked America’s Independence Day by hosting a del-
egation from New York’s Manhattan Athletic Club. On 8 April 1892,
he signed a convention between the USFSA and the Amateur Rowing
Association under which a first rowing match between English and
French eights would be held on the Seine the following October. Also
in April 1892 he helped organise the first international rugby-football
match between Stade Français and London’s Rosslyn Park Football
Club. He also took a close interest in French cycling and, to counter
the numerous professional races organised by Parisian newspapers, on
1 August 1893 he launched the Paris–Brussels race for amateur cyclists.6
Hence, he could not be unaware of the emergence of sports associ-
ations around the world. In fact, 1892 saw the foundation of the first
three international sport federations (IFs): the International Rowing
Federation (FISA) in June, International Skating Union (ISU) in July,
5Pierrede Coubertin, L’athlétisme, son rôle et son histoire, La Revue Athlétique, 25 avril 1891,
pp. 193–207. The Union chrétienne des Jeunes Gens de Paris gymnase-club is opened on 7 May
1893 and the first ever basket-ball match on the European continent is played there on the 23
December 1893.
6Hence, the USFSA was torn between the Association Vélocipédique Amateur (AVA) and the
Union Vélocipédique de France, which was open to professionalism.

42 P. Clastres
and International Cycling Association (ICA) in November. The ICA is

often forgotten because it was dethroned in 1900 by the International
Cycling Union (UCI), which had a less rigid position with respect to
amateurism.7 It is no coincidence that Coubertin made his famous
speech on the “revival of the Olympic Games” on 25 November 1892,
just after the creation of the ICA.8 Of course, he had visited Dr Brooks,
the driving force behind the Much Wenlock Games, in October 1890,
when he had also learnt about the Zappas Olympics in Athens, but his
“Olympic idea” was triggered more by the on-going internationalisation
of sport than by the genealogy of attempts to revive the Olympics since
the Renaissance.
A Vision of the Olympic Games as a Force

for Unity and Peace in the World
His 11 April 1891 and 25 November 1892 speeches made Coubertin
the first observer, analyst and theoretician of the globalisation of sport.
Before the executives of the USFSA, gathered to celebrate their young
institution’s 5th anniversary, he presented a knowledgeable picture
of sporting cultures around the world, showed the dynamics affecting
them, and speculated about the future of international sport. It was as if
he was applying to the sports of his time the lessons on the globalisation
of trade and colonialism he had learnt at the ELSP.
First, the picture: the “physical renaissance” of the period, in other
words, the renewed interest in physical exercise, had three capitals, Berlin,
Stockholm and London, and could be summarised in three words: “war,
health, sport”. Coubertin said he greatly preferred sport to military
7The Bureau des Fédérations Européennes de Gymnastique, founded in 1881, stands out for
being both one of the first sporting federations to be founded and for its opposition to the sports
movement.
8Pierre de Coubertin (1892), “Les exercices physiques dans le monde moderne. Conférence faite
à la Sorbonne le 25 novembre 1892”, in: Pierre de Coubertin: Le Manifeste Olympique, with an

introduction by François d’Amat, Lausanne, Les Editions du Grand Pont, 1994, pp. 45–58.
gymnastics or callisthenics because they inspired both “effort and emula-

tion”. Next, past dynamics: “the sons of Albion have taken this precious
recipe with them and athleticism is springing forth in both hemispheres,
in every climate… Australia, the Cape, Jamaica, Hong Kong, the Indies,
etc. A specialised press has emerged and the results… …are spreading
around the world”. Finally, the future: his initial script included a con-
clusion about the need to strengthen the links between French universi-
ties and school sports clubs, but this was crossed out to make way for his
ideas about peace through sport. In fact, at the last minute he decided to
return to the processes of democratisation and internationalisation which
he believed were operating within sport on the eve of the 1890s. Thus, he
concluded it was necessary to revive the Olympic Games.
There are people you call utopians when they talk about the end of war,
and you are not entirely wrong. But there are others who believe in the
progressive reduction in the chances of war and I see no utopia there. It
is obvious that the telegraph, the railways, the telephone, science’s excit-
ing discoveries, conferences and exhibitions have done more for peace
than all the treaties and diplomatic agreements. And I hope sport will do
even more. Those who have seen 30,000 people run through the rain to
watch a football match will know I am not exaggerating. Let us export
rowers, runners, fencers; that’s the free trade of the future. And the day it
becomes one of old Europe’s customs, the cause of peace will have found
another, powerful ally. That is enough to encourage your humble servant
to think about the second part of his programme. He hopes you will help
him as you have helped him up until now, so, with you, he will be able to
continue and achieve, in a way that conforms with modern life, this great
and beneficial work – the revival of the Olympic Games.
He was not yet 30, but he could already see other pathways to interna-
tional peace than diplomacy: new information technologies, improved
transportation and the movement of scholars and inquisitive laypeople.
A similar idea for organising sports meetings to promote peace had
been put forward a few days earlier at the Rome Peace Congress, but
between students. Coubertin was thinking in terms of all sportsmen,
whether or not they were students. It is also noticeable that he asked his
fellow Frenchmen to help him, rather than his English and American
44 P. Clastres
friends, and his first proposition, in June 1894, was to launch the new
games in Paris during the 1900 World’s Fair. Hence, his Olympic idea
was very much a French contribution to international peace and was
seen as such by his future opponents, whether they were Greek, English
or German. Coubertin was not the first person since the Renaissance
to think of reviving the ancient games. But previous concepts had been
either imitations of the ancient games and restricted to Greeks, as in the
case of the Zappas Olympics, or rural competitions combining tradi-
tional games and social health, as in the Wenlock Olympian Games.9
The novelty of Coubertin’s idea was to combine several late-nineteenth-
century athletic sports within a single international event (Clastres
2010b, 2017c).
But why bring together in one stadium rugby players, rowers, run-
ners and fencers? Was it because this is what the ancient Greek games
had done, combining running, jumping and throwing events with dif-
ferent forms of combat and horse races? Not entirely. A more complete
explanation can be found in the sporting values espoused by Coubertin
and his audience, the members of the USFSA, who rejected speciali-
sation in a single sport as a form of professionalism and considered a
sportsman to be a “complete athlete” who changed his sport to suit the
season. One of Coubertin’s reactions to the professionalization of cham-
pions was to invent, in 1912, the modern pentathlon, which requires
equestrians to run and swim, and forces athletes to learn how to shoot
and fence. He also had in mind the example set by the World’s Fairs,
which ranked and rewarded innovations from the four corners of the
world, including, from 1878, in the field of education. Hence, his
Olympic Games would act as a sort of international exhibition for all
the sports useful for training future elites, as the ultimate goal of these
gatherings was to convert the worlds sporting elite into ambassadors for
international peace.
9In his letter of 19 May 1896 to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, Démétrios Bikélas conceded that the
Zappas Olympics “were void of any international character and would have no impact.” Archives
of the Greek Olympic Committee, K1 Φ7, 1895–1896.
However, according to Coubertin, his Olympic idea received no

more than polite applause. So, to bring it to fruition, he involved him-
self in Adolphe de Palissaux’s10 project to hold a conference in Paris in
June 1894 in order to produce an international definition of amateur-
ism (Clastres 2002). Coubertin became general secretary of the con-
ference and used the 18 months before it took place to convince the
leading figures in French, English and American amateur sport of the
merits of his Olympic idea (Wassong 2004). And he ensured himself a
seat on the patronage committee for the Sorbonne conference by invit-
ing Europe’s leading liberal pacifists, who would be among the first win-
ners of the Nobel Peace Prize. The only grain of sand in the works of
his Olympic project was the appearance of Démétrios Bikélas, Greece’s
royal envoy, who was adept enough to ensure that the first Games of the
modern era would be held in Athens, in 1896, and to become the first
president of the ICOG.
At the Heart of the First Standardisation

of International Sport
Everything now had to be invented, from how the Olympics should be
organised to international rules for sport. In fact, the reason the first
three IFs had been set up in 1892 was to clarify the rules for their sports
and define criteria competitors had to meet. Until this time, sports
competitions had been organised by athletes or clubs as challenges
governed by the rules set by the inviting party. This was how sailing’s
America’s Cup (1851) and tennis’s Davis Cup (1900) began. Moreover,
the first bodies to set rules for sports were clubs such as the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club at Saint Andrews (1754), Marylebone Cricket Club
(1787) and the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (1875). It
took litigation between English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish clubs before
national boards were set up for football (1882) and then rugby (1886).
10One of Coubertin’s colleagues at the USFSA.

46 P. Clastres
The only rule uniting the different clubs, boards and IFs was the
principle of amateurism, which automatically excluded from their com-
petitions anyone from the working classes, who did not have the money
or the free time needed to train. Nevertheless, definitions of amateurism
varied from one sport to another and from one country to another. In
athletics and English rowing, simply being a factory worker or having
a manual job was enough to be considered a professional. For others,
anyone who competed against a professional sportsman, even if they did
not receive a fee of any kind, was considered a professional. But with
the advent of more and more international meetings, how could one be
sure that one’s opponent was not a professional? Therefore, the objec-
tive of the international conference due to take place at the Sorbonne
in June 1894 was “the study and propagation of the principles of ama-
teurism”. With a few exceptions, French sportsmen were very reticent
about adopting a definition of amateurism that would restrict sport to
the leisured classes. The reason France’s sportsmen took the initiative in
this area was to impose their own definition of sportsman in order to
challenge and, why not, beat the English in their own sports. What is
more, they benefitted from Britain’s isolationism, born of the country’s
disregard and disdain for European sport.
Coubertin, himself, was not in favour of defining amateurism as
restrictively as the leaders of rowing or English athletics, although he
never envisaged opening the modern Games to professionals. Given his
aristocratic ethos, with the value it put on effort and its rejection of easy
money, he was a fervent critic of sports betting and firmly against cash
prizes. Nevertheless, he envisaged exceptions for horse riding, yachting
and clay-pigeon shooting because competitors’ expenses were likely to
be far higher than any potential winnings. He also wondered how win-
ners could be prevented from selling the works of art they received as
prizes and whether it would be possible to use the gate money paid by
spectators to reimburse competitors’ travel expenses. He claimed much
later that the issue of amateurism was never really one of his top priori-
ties. Thus, he focused all his attention on winning approval for his pro-
ject from the commission and then from the full assembly. However, his
fellow countrymen from the Paris Polo Club proposed holding the first
modern Games in London, which is why Coubertin finally accepted
Bikélas’ proposal to hold the Games in Athens in 1896, with a second

edition in Paris in 1900.
He used Greece’s inexperience in sporting matters and in organis-
ing competitions (Georgiadis 2003) to bend the programme of events
in Athens to his own, French, elitist conception of modern sport. As
general secretary of the Congress, and then of the ICOG, he had all
the latitude he needed to exclude sports that were too specifically
British (association football, golf, polo, cricket) or American (baseball,
American football, basketball, volleyball), either because he did not
know about them or because they did not correspond to his conception
of sport as a selfless leisure pursuit and a school for manliness (Clastres
2017a). Although he had to accept British or American rules for sports
such as the javelin, discus, long jumping, high jumping, rowing, ten-
nis and cricket, he imposed Parisian rules for running events, fencing
and sailing. And adopting the metric system for measuring distances
and French as the language for umpires were by no means innocuous
choices with respect to the cultural competition between countries.
All of these decisions proved controversial in Great Britain and
Germany, and even in Greece. The British press saw Britain as the
first sporting nation in the world and imagined creating an All-England
Olympic Games, open uniquely to British athletes. Worried about end-
ing up at the bottom of the Olympic rankings, Germany’s three gym-
nastics federations also considered organising a Kampfspiele covering all
sports, which would be closed to other nations, before exerting pressure
to include more gymnastic events in the programme for Athens.
A Simple Set of Internal Regulations for the IOC

The way the IOC is run and the recruitment of members by co-option
are very interesting issues given that the institution did not have an
official statute until one was provided by the Swiss Federal Decree of
17 September 1981. Pierre de Coubertin and his successors up until
Juan Antonio Samaranch would undoubtedly have seen nothing but
advantages in this situation, as it gave them a large degree of autonomy
from other authorities, whether governmental, sporting or economic.
48 P. Clastres
This is perfectly coherent with the central creeds of Coubertin’s political

culture: independence and non-interference.
With respect to the sporting world, the principle of co-option pro-
tected the IOC from other sport organisations, or even individuals,
using an electoral mechanism to infiltrate and take control of the institu-
tion. Looking outward, a statute would have forced the IOC to abide by
legal norms drawn up by a state. Hence, for almost a century the IOC
was built on a simple set of internal regulations, renamed the “Olympic
Charter” in 1978, which were updated periodically by Olympic Sessions.
Although these regulations were not published for the first time until the
Session at the 1908 London Olympics, it would be wrong to think that
the IOC had operated without any rules until then (Latty 2001). In fact,
Coubertin and his colleagues had very quickly taken measures to ensure
the ICOG’s functioning and continued existence.
As early as the April 1896 Session in Athens, the committee took care
to define the scope of its responsibilities. To ensure the first national
Olympic committees or future organisation committees did not sup-
plant the ICOG, it was decided that it would have “control over general
decisions taken by national committees and affecting the institution”.
Coubertin was especially careful to reject proposals by Germany’s
Willibald Gebhart, to “form in each country powerful national com-
mittees subsidised, as far as possible, by government”, and by Sweden’s
Victor Balck, to entrust “a notable and qualified person to organise
the national committee as he thought best”. Gebhart’s proposal would
have subjected the national committees to government control, while
Balck’s idea might have created overly strong national leaders capable of
removing the national committees from the ICOG’s control. In order to
ensure the ICOG’s autonomy from Greece, which wanted the Games
to be permanently based in Athens, Coubertin drew his colleagues into
a competition to host the 1904 Olympics. And, in order to get round
existing sport organisations, without side-lining them completely, the
question of affiliation was left open. The Games would remain open
to “clubs affiliated to a union, independent clubs and sportsmen who
are not members of any club”. As another way of marking its territory
and repelling competitors, it was decided to publish “a Bulletin in three
languages, French, English and German”.
Finally, Coubertin, who intended to succeed Démétrios Bikélas after

the Athens Games, worked hard to define and strengthen the president’s
powers. For example, allowing the president to organise his secretariat
as he saw fit would enable Coubertin to fulfil the roles of both presi-
dent and general secretary for 30 years, and to keep the committee’s
headquarters in his Paris office until 1915. Because ICOG Sessions only
took place in conjunction with the Olympic Games, the president was
given the power to call a meeting of the committee “when he judged
it possible and desirable”. Coubertin made good use of this power to
strengthen his position whenever his authority was contested.
This was also the case for “Olympic Congresses”—the president
was free to choose locations and dates, and who could attend and who
would speak, as well as the programme of work or festivities.11 For
example, in 1897 Coubertin countered Greece’s proposal to keep the
Games in Athens by holding a first Olympic Congress in Le Havre,
where his social and political influence were well established. Being una-
ble or unwilling to attend the Saint-Louis Games in 1904, he responded
by calling a congress in Brussels in 1905. In addition, because he
was against the initiative put forward by the Greek government and
some members of the ICOG to hold an intermediary Games in 1906
(which would be open to professionals), he scheduled a “Consultative
Conference on the Arts, Literature and Sports” in Paris at the same
time. This was no more than a social event, but it gave him an excuse
not to go to Athens. As he noted in his Mémoires Olympiques, the dan-
ger was very real because three members of the ICOG and four new
recruits “had passed a sort of resolution implying an imminent reor-
ganisation of the ICOG and had even offered the honorary presidency
to the prince royal”. As for the Olympic Sessions, that is, the general
assemblies of ICOG members, they were not held annually until 1903.
Hence, Coubertin ran the ICOG almost entirely on his own during
the eight years between the Athens Games and the 1904 Saint-Louis
11During his long presidency, Olympic congresses were held in the following cities: Le Havre, on
sport in health and education (1897), Brussels, on sport and physical education, especially in the
colonies (1905), Paris, on art, literature and sport (1906), Lausanne, on sport’s psychology and
physiology (1913), Paris (1914), Lausanne (1921) and Prague (1925) on Olympic rules.
50 P. Clastres
Olympics. To be fair, it must be said that most of his colleagues took

little or no interest in the ICOG’s day-to-day affairs and were happy
to leave everything in the hands of their hyperactive president. This is
how, despite the rule adopted in Paris stipulating that the president of
the ICOG must always be a citizen of the country organising the next
Games and that the committee’s administrative headquarters must fol-
low the president, Coubertin managed to get himself elected for ten
years in 1901, and for another ten years in 1907. This continuity and
imprecision in the president’s mandate gave him considerable room for
manoeuvre and allowed him to impose his conception of Olympism.
But he still had to recruit the right colleagues.
The Cenacle of “Trustees of the Olympic Idea”

The entire Olympic edifice is built on the principle of recruiting com-
mittee members by co-option and on the usefulness to the IOC of each
person recruited. Although Europe had begun embracing the principles
of democracy at the end of the nineteenth century, the ICOG was not
set up as an association, but as a cenacle, that is, a small group of people
who “share the same ideas, same tastes and, most importantly, profess
the same theories” (Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1932).
In order to silence the ever-increasing number of people criticising the
lack of democracy within the Olympic committee, at the 1908 London
Games Coubertin was forced to explain why “we are not elected, we
recruit ourselves and our terms of office have no limits”. His argument
that the absence of democracy can serve democracy was entirely falla-
cious, but highly revealing of his liberal-conservative political views.
In the past I learned many things from this very country, amongst which
is the idea that the best way to protect liberty and serve democracy is not
always to submit everything to a vote, but, on the contrary, to maintain
within the vast electoral ocean, islands where, in certain specialties, it is
possible to ensure the continuity of an independent and stable effort. (…)
Undoubtedly, this independence, as far as we are concerned, may have
disadvantages, if, for example, it involved drawing up strict rules that
were to be made mandatory. But that is not our role. We do not trample
upon society’s privileges; we are not a police council. We are just “trus-
tees” of the Olympic idea.
The IOC published its first set of internal rules in 1908 in response to
the “traps and obstacles that outrageous cabals and fanatical jealousies
have put in the committee’s path over the last fourteen years”. They
included principles for recruitment and representation, which were
intended to protect the IOC from interference by clubs, national feder-
ations and, implicitly, by IFs and governments.
The International Olympic Committee is permanent and will itself

recruit at least one, at most three, members for each country represented.
There is no limit on the number of countries represented. Members must
consider themselves the International Olympic Committee’s delegates to
the sport and physical exercise federations and clubs in their respective
countries. They must not accept from these bodies any position likely to
restrict them as members of the Committee and affect the independence
of their votes. Members of the Committee are elected for an indetermi-
nate period. However, they will be considered to have resigned if dur-
ing two full years they have not participated in a single event, meeting
or vote, etc. The Committee may remove any member who betrays the
Committee’s interests or who fails to act with honour and charity.12
The abovementioned notion of “trustees of the Olympic idea” is rooted

in the British tradition of voluntary service and philanthropy. A trustee is
trusted by the people he or she represents to act impartially and in good
faith without seeking any personal benefit. But this notion of trusteeship
also refers to a current in British political thought espoused by Edmund
Burke (1729–1797) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), who com-
pared the “trustee model of representation” with the “delegate model
of representation”.13 These two liberal conservatives imagined a form
12“Règlement”, in International Olympic Committee, Annuaire, 1908, pp. 7–9, extracts.

13On these notions and the debates they continue to raise see, for example, Justin Fox and
Kenneth W. Shotts. Delegates or Trustees? A Theory of Political Accountability, The Journal of
Politics, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Oct., 2009), pp. 1225–1237.
52 P. Clastres
of parliamentary government that protects society against tyrants and

the individual against the tyranny of society by giving decision-mak-
ing powers to those capable of reasoned deliberation, that is, those
whose education and experience allows them to hear different opinions
and make judgments aimed at ensuring the common good.
One of the passages in Coubertin’s Mémoires Olympiques, pub-
lished in 1932, suggests that he modelled the ICOG on Henley Royal
Regatta’s Committee of Management: “the Committee was a self-re-
cruiting body, similar to the guiding mechanism for the Henley regat-
tas”.14 As always with Coubertin, this argument was devised after the
fact and in reference to an honourable tradition: Henley regatta was
created in 1839. However, it is true that he had had this reference in
mind since 1906 but without explicitly comparing the ICOG to the
Henley Committee. For those in France or elsewhere who wanted to
imitate Henley, he extoled the value of “absolute and undisputed
power” and the “complete independence” of the regatta committee.15
He liked the fact that the members of the Henley Regatta were made
“strangers to the arguments and conflicts of the day, indifferent to rival-
ries between colleges or clubs” by the simple fact that they owned prop-
erty beside the Thames.
When it came to the choice of new members, nothing was set down
to define selection criteria or an election procedure. Later, and some-
what cynically, Coubertin gave a few clues to their respective roles: the
committee “was already [1894] what it would be for 30 years [until
1925] – and what it is still [1932] – composed of three concentric cir-
cles: a small core of working members with the right convictions; a
nursery of willing members capable of being educated; finally, a façade
of people of greater or lesser utility but whose presence satisfies national
pretentions while giving prestige to the whole”.16 Again in 1932, he
described as a “heinous slander” the idea that he “appointed” all the
14Pierre de Coubertin (1932), “La conquête de la Grèce”, Mémoires Olympiques, Lausanne,

B.I.P.S., chapter 2, p. 23.
15Pierre de Coubertin (August 1906), “Henley Royal Regatta”, Olympic Review, pp. 115–116.
16Pierre de Coubertin (1932), «La conquête de la Grèce», Mémoires Olympiques, Lausanne,
B.I.P.S., chapter 2, p. 23.

members: “Only one of those I have just mentioned was my personal

candidate. Elections were always held regularly, but nominations were
preceded by long enquiries, sometimes involving direct correspondence
with the potential nominee or at least with his patron or patrons”.17
Should he be believed? Saying he only sponsored one candidate does
not mean he did not have the right to assess other nominees. Moreover,
if he had not had any control over nominations, how would he have
kept his place at the head of the institution for so long?
The composition of the ICOG changed profoundly after 1900, with
membership rising from 15 to 43 people in 1911. This is the moment
Coubertin chose to rename the ICOG the IOC. The new name was
designed to indicate more clearly the IOC’s self-appointed mission,
which was not to organise the Games themselves but to occupy an
overarching position with respect to the sporting world during periods
called “Olympiads”. Also with this objective, in 1901 Coubertin had
launched the Olympic Review, a monthly magazine intended to main-
tain ties between the IOC’s members. Coubertin used the magazine to
lay out his conception of “Olympism”, a word he had coined in reac-
tion to commercial and nationalistic tendencies within the Olympic
Games and which he used repeatedly after the 1910s.18 As for the new
recruits, in addition to ensuring an IOC presence in an increasing num-
ber of countries, they also enabled Coubertin to strengthen his major-
ity. The “small core of working members with the right convictions” he
alluded to in 1932 comprised four members of the former ICOG—
Ernest Callot, Jiri Gurth, Victor Balk and William Sloane, who was the
only non-European—and six new recruits—Britain’s Robert de Courcy
Laffan, Greece’s Alexandre Mercati, Italy’s Brunetta d’Ussaux, the
Netherlands’ Christiaan van Tuyll, Switzerland’s Godefroy de Blonay
and Sweden’s Clarence von Rosen.19 It was this group of ten men who,
along with Coubertin, took most of the IOC’s decisions prior to the
Great War.
17Pierre de Coubertin (1932), Mémoires Olympiques, p. 110.

18The term appears in the Olympic Review nine times between 1901 and 1911, over a total of
1500 pages, but fourteen times between January 1912 and May 1914.
19This list is based on the people present at the nine IOC meetings held between 1904 and 1914.
54 P. Clastres
What were, now, the criteria for selecting candidates? The 1896 Session
in Athens had already stipulated that the committee would “recruit itself
and be financed by each of its members, who are required to find advertis-
ers and group together clubs in their respective countries”. In other words,
co-option of committee members was based on implicit criteria of wealth,
social standing and social skills. Personal wealth was an essential criterion
for Coubertin, who was pleased to say that an annual subscription of 25
francs per person was enough to cover the IOC’s budget and that “not
a centime of subsidy will come into our accounts”.20 But the IOC did
not cover any of the expenses its members incurred for travel, receptions
or other social events. Coubertin saw this as a good thing, believing that
the lifestyle required of an IOC member would “dampen the enthusiasm
of many, more-or-less undesirable candidates”.21 His idea of the perfect
candidate, as described in Mémoires Olympiques, further highlights the
notions of sporting prowess, cosmopolitism and independence.
All, or almost all, were sportsmen in the true sense of the word, conform-
ing to a formula I set myself as a principle, that is, men who are skilled
enough to go far in any specific field but far enough away from any spe-
cialisation to avoid becoming enslaved to it; men who are international
enough to prevent their national prejudices affecting their judgment with
respect to any international question and, finally, men who are able to
stand up to technical groups and certain to escape from any material
dependency upon them. True bonds of friendship have formed between
these men, who are now used to meeting and who are delighted by the
charm of their annual gathering. The rest of the year, I corresponded reg-
ularly with them.22
These annual meetings and their shared correspondence, chan-

nelled through Coubertin, bred familiarity and friendship among the
more diligent IOC members and created a shared Olympic culture.
Drawn together by the spirit of sportsmanship, which went beyond their
20Pierre de Coubertin (1932), Mémoires Olympiques, p. 109.

21Pierre de Coubertin (1932), ibid.
22Pierre de Coubertin (1932), ibid.
upper class origins and their different nationalities, religions and profes-
sions, they constructed a transnational solidarity that helped the Olympic
edifice withstand attack and survive the ups and downs of world events.
A Reactionary Social Utopia

Inspired by Frédéric Le Play’s elitist and conservative theories, the idea
of working-class children receiving secondary education or becoming
sportsmen was completely alien to Coubertin. Nor could his Olympism
be considered “popular” (Chatziefstathiou 2007), given his disdain for
the lower classes. Hence, Coubertin was by no means a “social mar-
keter”; he was a social reformer in the 1880s–1890s sense of the term.
His Olympic project was aimed at bringing together the sons of the
western elite in a stadium filled with spectators from the same social
class. Although he accepted, in the 1910s and 1920s, the idea of open-
ing sports clubs and the Olympic Games to men from the lower classes,
this was not due to a softening of his elitist ideals but a way of coun-
tering the progression of socialist ideas and attempts to start separate
games for workers. His vision of the people was paternalistic and moral-
istic, but in no way emancipatory. For Coubertin, new elites could arise
thanks to sport or the Olympic Games only if they accepted the val-
ues and principles of the aristocracy: belief in the idea of a natural elite,
mutual respect between equals, pushing one’s limits, chivalric bravery
and a taste for art and literature. The influx of sportsmen was aimed at
revitalising the traditional elites and helping them regain the influence
they had lost due to the rise of the nouveau-riche bourgeoisie.
This point was also made by Corry Cropper (2008), who presented
the revival of the Olympic Games as “an attempt to restore the van-
quished aristocracy’s cultural supremacy”, to “build up the strength and
unity of the international aristocracy” and to “reinvigorate the European
monarchy”. More precisely, Coubertin’s theory of Olympism belongs
to the liberal-conservative school of thought, apart from the fact he
did not envisage a return to the Ancien Régime; rather, he wanted to
use sport to forge a new aristocracy he called “sporting knighthood”.
Hence, Coubertin’s version of Olympism was both a social utopia and a
56 P. Clastres
reaction to cultural change. Paradoxically, this is probably why the IOC

managed to survive the catastrophes of the twentieth century.
It was this Olympic conception of sport, and the way the IOC
functioned, that drew such heavy criticism from the IFs either side of
the Great War. Consequently, Coubertin agreed to hold an Olympic
Congress in Paris in June 1914, to which he invited the national
Olympic committees. It was decided that athletes taking part in the
Olympic Games should meet the criteria for amateurism laid down by
their IF and obtain proof of their amateur status from their national
Olympic committee. Coubertin also used this Congress to officially
unveil his design for the Olympic flag, which combined the colours
of almost all the world’s flags as a way of highlighting the IOC’s trans-
national character. In 1920 he again had to justify “the principle [of
co-option] which is the source of our strength”, that is, “rapidity and
efficacy”.23 In the face of such intransigence, in 1921 Paul Rousseau, the
French general secretary of the International Cycling Union, founded
the Permanent Bureau of International Sports Federations, the predeces-
sor of SportAccord, recently renamed AGFIS. However, it was not until
the Salt Lake City scandal in 1999/2000 and the reforms introduced by
Juan Antonio Samaranch that the heads of the Olympic IFs automati-
cally became members of the IOC.
Biography
1 January 1863: Born into an aristocratic family in Paris.
1886: General secretary of the Committee for the Propagation of Physical
Exercise in Education.
April 1887: Speech supporting the Republic “in the constitutional field”.
1888: General secretary of the Union of French Athletic Sports Clubs.
1889: General secretary of the International Conference for the Propagation
of Physical Exercise in Education (Paris).
23Pierrede Coubertin (July 1920), «La victoire de l’Olympisme», La Revue Sportive Illustrée, 16e
année, nº 2, p. 2.
July 1890: Introduces the American word “amateurism” into the French
language.
1892: Foundation of international federations for rowing, ice-skating
and cycling.
25 November 1892: Speech on reviving the Olympic Games.
June 1894: Sorbonne Congress votes unanimously to revive the
Olympic Games, general secretary of the International Committee of the
Olympic Games (ICOG).
April 1896: Athens hosts the first modern Olympic Games, first term as
ICOG president.
1897: First Olympic Congress held at Le Havre.
1901: Re-elected president of the ICOG for ten years, launch of the
Olympic Review.
1904–1913: Wave of new international sport federations.
1907: Re-elected president of the IOC for ten years.
1908: IOC “internal regulations” published for the first time.
1912: Begins using the term “Olympism” increasingly frequently.
1914: Unveiling of the Olympic flag in Paris.
10 April 1915: The IOC discreetly sets up its headquarters in Lausanne.
1921: Contestations during the Olympic Congress in Lausanne, creation
of the Permanent Bureau of International Sports Federations (forerunner of
the AGFIS), creation of the IOC’s Executive Commission.
1925: Retires as IOC president, foundation of the Universal Pedagogical
Union (1925–1930).
1928: Foundation of the International Bureau of Sports Pedagogy.
2 September 1937: Coubertin passes away in Geneva.
26 March 1938: His heart is buried in a memorial stone at Olympia.
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3
Alice Milliat: A Feminist Pioneer
for Women’s Sport
Florence Carpentier
Despite being born into a modest family in provincial France, Alice

Milliat rose to become a leading figure in the nascent international
movement for women’s sport. Her career began in 1915, when she
was elected president of Femina Sport (founded in 1912), France’s first
women’s sports club. She went on to help create the Fédération des
Sociétés Françaises des Sports Féminins (FSFSF—Federation of French
Women’s Sports Clubs), in 1919, before founding the Fédération
Sportive Féminine Internationale (FSFI—International Women’s Sport
Federation), in 1921, in order to unite women’s sports movements
around the world. As President of the FSFI she organised four editions
of the Women’s World Games between 1922 and 1934. Milliat’s main
goal for these organisations was to develop women’s sport and organ-
ise competitions for sportswomen in a society which equated sport with
virility, strength and courage, that is, with men. Faced with determined
opposition from the male-dominated world of international sport and
F. Carpentier (*)
University of Rouen, Normandy, France
e-mail: florence.carpentier1@univ-rouen.fr
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_3
62 F. Carpentier
the more conservative, misogynist and often anti-feminist sections

of society, she employed a wide variety of strategies to get her message
heard. Nevertheless, the positions Milliat adopted and the way she
tackled the obstacles her opponents put in her way can only be truly
understood in the light of her feminist ideals and links with France’s
First-wave feminist movement.
Although a seminal study of Alice Milliat’s life and work by the
American scholars Mary H. Leigh and Thérèse M. Bonin (1977) showed
Milliat to be a staunch advocate of women’s suffrage (French women
obtained the right to vote in 1944), Pierre Arnaud, a French sports histo-
rian, categorically rejected this conclusion in 2000. Without citing a sin-
gle source other than a book by two French sociologists,1 Arnaud argued
that Milliat was never a feminist and that the feminists of the 1910s and
1920s would never have endorsed sport. Arnaud’s position was unques-
tioningly reiterated by Thierry Terret (2007a, b), who stated in 2010:
“Alice Milliat was never a feminist in any formal way and never belonged
to any movement struggling for the emancipation of women or for their
right to vote”.2 In addition, André Drevon’s (2005) very factual descrip-
tion of the lives of Alice Milliat and early twentieth-century sportswomen
entirely overlooked the issue of Milliat’s ideas on women’s place in society.
Even Philippe Tétard’s entry on Milliat in the Dictionnaire des Féministes,
France, XVIIIe–XXIe siècle (2017), edited by the gender historian
Christine Bard, does not say much about her feminist ideas and ideals.
In contrast, the present chapter shows that Milliat’s feminist beliefs
were an integral part of her struggle for women’s sport. As such, it
contradicts the picture painted by many recent studies of Milliat,
which have tended to avoid or even dismiss the issue of feminism in
the history of women’s sport. In fact, the small amount of informa-
tion available in the literature, Milliat’s statements to the press, and
the FSFI’s and French Athletics Federation’s (FFA) archives all clearly
demonstrate Milliat’s support for the feminist struggles of the 1920s.
1Annick Davisse & Catherine Louveau, Sports, école et société : la différence des sexes. Paris,
L’Harmattan, 1998.
2Terret Thierry, “From Alice Milliat to Marie-Thérèse Eyquem: Revisiting Women’s Sport in
France (1920s–1960s)”, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 27(7), 2010, p. 1156.
Many of her actions, such as establishing two sports federations for and
run by women, and creating separate world games for women, suggest
that she, like many 1920s and 1930s feminists, was a “differentialist”
(Bard 2017). In other words, she accepted the idea that women and
men are different but did not see these differences as a reason for deny-
ing both sexes equal rights and duties. However, other aspects of her
feminism showed a much more “egalitarian” point of view. For example,
she believed passionately that women should be free to do any sport,
including football, then a bastion of masculinity, and she fought hard
for sportswomen to be admitted to the Olympic Games.
This chapter begins by presenting what is known about Alice Milliat’s
rather unusual journey through life and her rise through the echelons of
women’s sport administration. It then examines the strategies she used
to advance the cause of women’s sport despite deep-seated resistance to
her ideas, the support she received from feminists, and her fight to ena-
ble women to compete at the Olympic Games. This battle, in the mid-
1930s, sounded the death knell for the FSFI and the Women’s World
Games, and led a frustrated Alice Milliat to withdraw from public life.
A Provincial French Woman in Cosmopolitan

London
Alice Joséphine Marie Million was born in Nantes on 5 May 1884 to
a lower-middle-class family of shopkeepers. Her grandparents were inn-
keepers and tailors; her parents were grocers, although her father later
took an office job and her mother became a seamstress. Alice was the
eldest of five children (three sisters and one brother). In 1904, a year
before she came of age, Alice moved to London, probably for love and
against her parent’s wishes, as she immediately married Joseph Milliat,
a barber’s son four years her senior, from her home district of Nantes.
Joseph found a job in a London office but he died in 1908, leaving
Alice a young widow with no children. Although some authors (Drevon
2005; Terret 2010) have claimed, albeit without citing their sources, that
Milliat had been a junior-school teacher before leaving for London, her
name does not appear in the official role of qualified teachers for that
64 F. Carpentier
time. Nor was this the profession she followed when she returned to
Paris a few years later. Given her exclusive address in London—Holland
Park Avenue, in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea—it would
seem more likely that she found a position with a wealthy family as,
for example, a private tutor. Working for a diplomat or an international
businessman would also explain the trips to America and Scandinavia
which she described in a press interview later in her life.3
At the time, very few provincial French women from modest families
had the opportunity to travel abroad, but these experiences expanded
Milliat’s view of the world. Living in London also enabled her to become
fluent in English, a skill that would allow her to find a job as a translator
when she returned to Paris. More importantly, it would help her enor-
mously in her career in international sport. In fact, it was almost certainly
during her time in England that she discovered sport and feminism.
Early twentieth-century Britain was a pioneer with respect to both
“modern” sports and the struggle for women’s rights, so women’s sport
developed much earlier in the UK than in the rest of Europe. By the
late nineteenth century, gym teachers at the newly founded Women’s
Polytechnic Institutes (Regent Street in 1888, Northampton in 1896)
were encouraging young women (“poly girls”) to take up sports such
as swimming, tennis, hockey, cricket, roller-skating, fencing, badmin-
ton and basketball (Hargreaves 1994). The 1880s and 1890s also saw
the creation of the first football clubs for women, including the Lady
Footballers and the British Ladies’ Football Club, 30 years before the rest
of Europe. Milliat had hated the “callisthenics” she had been forced to
do at school, but she did take up a number of sports later in life, includ-
ing football and rowing, which few French women had the opportu-
nity to try prior to the First World War. She probably learned to row in
Hyde Park or on the Thames, with one of the many clubs that were set
up at the end of the nineteenth century.
To what extent was Alice Milliat influenced by British feminists?
Information on this subject is scarce, but it is hard to imagine that
her social and political consciousness was not impacted by her time in
3“Madame Alice Milliat ou le sport et la femme”, Les cahiers de la République des lettres, des sciences
et des arts, 15 May 1927, pp. 83–87.
London, which had been the centre of a large women’s suffrage move-
ment since the end of the nineteenth century. The spectacular actions
of the Women’s Social and Political Union, founded by Emmeline
Pankhurst the year before Milliat arrived in London, were regularly in
the headlines. Frustrated by the lack of progress being made by more
genteel activists, Pankhurst and her fellow “suffragettes”, as they were
called by the press, began attacking the institutional symbols of male
domination, including sport, even at the risk of going to prison. Milliat,
however, was never a radical suffragette; she preferred using more mod-
erate methods to overcome men’s domination of sport and bring about
change within the conservative milieu of sports administration.
From Femina Sport to the Head of Women’s

Sport in France
Milliat, now a childless widow since 1908, moved back to France, prob-
ably at her father’s death, in 1910, to care for her young brother and
sister, while their mother died in 1907. She settled in Paris, where she
held a number of different jobs, including accountant and office worker
(Tétart 2017). It was now that she first became involved with sports
administration, with a club called Femina Sport.
Three women’s sports clubs (Femina Sport, En-avant and Académia)
and a Union Française des Sociétés de Gymnastique Feminine
(UFSGF—Union of French Women’s Gymnastics Clubs) saw the light
of day in Paris in the early years of the twentieth century. However,
they had divergent ideas of what sportswomen could and should do.
The biggest differences between these pioneering institutions concerned
their opinions on which sports were suitable for women (from callis-
thenics to football), how sportswomen should dress, whether spectators
should be allowed to watch women’s sport, whether there should be
competitions for women and whether women’s sport should be run by
women or by men. In other words, these clubs’ views on how women’s
sport should be organised, which sports women should play and how
they should be played were as diverse as the forms of feminism preva-
lent at the time, with some women calling for limited emancipation and
66 F. Carpentier
others demanding complete equality. Femina Sport, created in 1912 by

the world champion gymnast Pierre Payssé, was undoubtedly the most
progressive French club, as it encouraged women to play football and
rugby (women’s rugby was referred to as “barette”). The club was pre-
sided by a woman from the very beginning and had links with mod-
erate feminist groups (Prudhomme-Poncet 2003). Milliat originally
joined the club as a sporting member, but rose to become its president
in 1915.
In the argument over which sports women should and should not
be allowed to do, athletics was about the only area in which the wom-
en’s movements of the time were able to find a minimum amount
of common ground: running, jumping and throwing could be con-
sidered a sort of “grammar” of the body or a foundation course for
sports, depending on one’s point of view. Thus, in 1917 the heads
of the three competing clubs managed to put aside their differences
and organise France’s first women’s athletics championships. This led,
a few weeks later, to the creation of a new umbrella organisation for
women’s sports clubs, called the FSFSF. However, the FSFSF’s board
of directors included only two women, Marie Surcouf, a famous
balloon pilot and feminist, as vice-president, and Alice Milliat, as
treasurer. By 1918 Milliat had become the federation’s general secre-
tary and by 1919 she had been named president, at which point she
resigned as president of Femina Sport. Her first victory for the FSFSF
was to obtain official recognition, and the subsidies that went with
it, from the Ministry of War. This success gave her the opportunity
to implement a fundamental principle of the contemporary femi-
nist movement by appointing women to all the federation’s executive
positions.
A Revolution: Women in Charge of Women’s

Sport
In 1922, at the request of the socialist-republican Secretary of State for
Sport, Gaston Vidal, Milliat agreed to merge the FSFSF with the con-
servative Fédération Féminine d’Education Physique et de Gymnastique
(Women’s Physical Education and Gymnastics Federation), which had

close ties with the all-male FFA. Concerned about the growing popu-
larity of women’s athletics, the FFA wanted to take it under its control,
either directly or indirectly. Nevertheless, after long and difficult discus-
sions, Milliat won her case: “the board of the FSFSF will be made up of
women, as decided at our last meeting, on 6 August. Thus, we will keep
our independence”.4 This essential principle was later enshrined in the
FSFSF’s statutes: the federation’s regional committees could nominate
only women to the executive committee, which would include “a board
composed of eight people, the majority of whom must be women, with
senior positions being reserved for women”.5 Milliat was always ready
to defend, on the national and international stages, the principle that
women’s sport should be run uniquely by women. As she wrote in
one of her first articles for L’Auto, in March 1923, “It is profoundly
abnormal, for many reasons, to see men at the helm of women’s organ-
isations”.6 The following year, when the federation was looking for ref-
erees for its national championships, she wrote: “let’s hope that women’s
sport will be able to find all its administrative and technical managers
from among women”,7 and “no one hopes more strongly than I that our
clubs’ managers and coaching staff will be all female”.8
Nevertheless, as was quite common in the period’s feminist organisa-
tions, Milliat did not exclude men entirely from the organisations she
led, mostly for pragmatic reasons. First, there were not enough women
to fill every managerial position in every women’s organisation, espe-
cially at the local level. Second, she did not want to exclude men who
were sympathetic to her cause, as the more hostile male sports organ-
isations, such as the FFA and the International Olympic Committee
(IOC), were more likely to listen to the case for women’s sport if it was
presented by a man. Prominent male supporters included Dr. Maurice
4L’Auto, 10 August 1922.

5L’Auto, 10 January 1924.
6L’Auto, 26 March 1923.
7L’Auto, 28 February 1924.
8L’Auto, 15 May 1924.

68 F. Carpentier
Pillet, a former executive at the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports

Athlétiques (USFSA—Union of French Athletic Sports Clubs), and
Emile Anthoine (1882–1969), a former athlete who founded (in 1926)
and presided the International Walking Federation. However, the most
important reason for accepting male managers was that Milliat, like
most feminist reformers at the time, believed that male support was
necessary to reassure opponents of women’s emancipation and to obtain
political support. Consequently, in the early 1920s the FSFSF accepted
the “high patronage” of Alexandre Millerand, France’s socialist presi-
dent, and Henry Paté, a radical-socialist member of parliament, sports
administrator and future Secretary of State for Sport.
Support from France’s Feminists

By 1915, members of the reformist Union Française pour le Suffrage
des Femmes (UFSF—French Union for Women’s Suffrage) were start-
ing to take the development of women’s sport more seriously and began
supporting Femina Sport and the FSFSF. For example, the suffragist
magazine La Vie Féminine published several articles on women’s foot-
ball in England, lamenting the reluctance of French women to take up a
sport it considered emancipating or even a primer for other struggles for
women’s rights (Breuil 2011).
In the spring of 1922, at the initiative of the UFSF’s long-serving
leader Jane Misme, the Conseil National des Femmes Françaises
(CNFF—National Council of French Women), France’s largest fem-
inist movement in the 1920s (Bard 1995), gave women’s football a
huge boost by sponsoring a Women’s French Cup (Prudhomme-Poncet
2003). The CNFF had come to see sport as an important battleground
in the struggle for women’s rights, as the following quotation shows:
“Two major currents of feminist action are starting to come together:
the movement to obtain civil and political rights for women and wom-
en’s sport. In fact, they are merely different manifestations of the same
cause, feminism, that is, the struggle for the social equality of the
sexes. […] The apostles of women’s rights are beginning to understand
this solidarity. France’s great feminist federation, the Conseil National
des Femmes Françaises, is proving this by donating the La Française

Cup”.9 On the day of the cup final, Misme wrote in the CNFF’s official
mouthpiece, a magazine called La Française, which she had edited since
1906: “La Française considers women’s sport to be an excellent move-
ment with the power to build women’s physical and moral value. It is
its duty to promote women’s sport in the same way it promotes other
initiatives. It will not fail in this duty”.10 Every year Misme or Avril de
Sainte-Croix, another major figure in the French feminist movement,
attended the cup final in person and tried to rally young women foot-
ballers to their cause.
Milliat’s articles for the press show how close she was to France’s
feminists and how strongly she believed in their fight. For example, she
was tireless in her criticism of France as a “prejudiced country”11 and of
“[men’s] age-old desire to dominate, to keep women under their author-
ity, for fear of them becoming something other than useful or agreeable
objects for men.” She continued: “women still have a lot to do to gain
recognition for their true value in the different categories of social life”,
and “in the field of sport, as in all other fields, women have to strug-
gle against the primitive spirit of male domination”.12 That Milliat was
herself a suffragist is shown by this extract from La Française, written
in 1923, where she expresses her hope that politicians will one day give
women’s sport the same material and financial help they give to men’s
sport: “The day French women manage to replace with social and polit-
ical rights the chores [society] has always been keen to impress upon
them, the situation will look very different”.13 She reiterated her con-
victions in an interview she gave to an American feminist magazine
in 1934: “Women’s sports of all kinds are handicapped in my coun-
try by the lack of playing space. As we have no vote, we cannot make
our needs publicly felt, or bring pressure to bear in the right quarters.
9“Les droits de la femme et le sport”, La Femme sportive, n°12, 1 April 1922.

10La Française, 3 June 1922.
13La Française, 21 April 1923.

70 F. Carpentier
I always tell my girls that the vote is one of the things they will have to
work for if France is to keep its place with other nations in the realm of
women’s sport”.14
However, Milliat was an astute tactician who was happy to express
her suffragist beliefs in feminist magazines, but more measured in
her disclosures to the sporting press and sports executives, who were
mostly very conservative and suspicious of her objectives. She was not
alone in this; similar tactics were adopted by many of her contempo-
raries, including Dr. Marie Houdré, a well-known socialist and activist
for the Ligue Française pour les Droits des Femmes (French League for
Women’s Rights), Dr. Maurice Pillet, a sports administrator and editor
of the sports column in La Française, and sportswomen such as Suzanne
Liébrard and the Brulé sisters, Jeanne and Thérèse.
All Sports for All

Throughout her career, from her time at Femina Sport to her tenures
at the top of national and international federations, Milliat skilfully
and subtly fought her opponents’ medical, social and moral arguments
against women’s sport. Many of these arguments were based on the
widely accepted idea, even among the medical profession, that women
were the “weaker” sex and that their constitutions were too fragile to
support the intense effort sport required. According to another argu-
ment, the physical effort associated with sport was likely to damage a
woman’s reproductive organs and therefore prevent her having children.
For these two reasons, physical exercise for most French girls during the
nineteenth century was restricted to low-intensity callisthenics, cen-
tred round exercises to improve posture and flexibility, strengthen the
abdominal and hip muscles for childbirth and develop what was seen as
a woman’s greatest asset—an ability to move gracefully.
14“Woman’s World Games Dramatize Women’s Athletics.” Independent Woman, Vol. XII, Oct.
1934, quoted by Bonin and Leigh, “The pioneering role of Madame Alice Milliat and the FSFI
in establishing International Trade and Field Competition for women”, Journal of Sport History,
4(1), 1977, pp. 72–83.
Milliat rejected all these arguments, believing in all sports for all and
competitive sport for the best. With medical backing from Doctors
Marie Houdré and Maurice Pillet, she called upon her opponents to
prove their case, demanding “facts, not words”.15 For Milliat, women
had not been doing sport long enough to know whether or not it was
dangerous for them: “let us heed the opinion of our women doctors
who, combining practical experience with knowledge, say that studies
conducted over several generations are needed to determine, with little
risk of error, which sports women can do safely and usefully”.16 In addi-
tion, she used the first articles she wrote for L’Auto, in 1923, to show
that there was nothing new in women doing sport and that the female
sporting champions of the nineteenth century—often mountaineers or
ballooners—were, in other respects, normal women. At the same time,
her attacks on opponents of feminism, who she called “tardigrades”
(antediluvians), could be extremely cutting: “By what right do so-called
scientific “luminaries”, along with many ignoramuses, decree: “these
exercises are suitable for women, these exercises will do them harm”?
Who can say that with any certainty at this point in time”.17
Nevertheless, in order to reassure her readership, she suggested an
adaptive approach to sport: young girls should participate in “reasona-
ble and intelligent physical activity leading them to do different sports
according to each person’s preferences and abilities”.18 Similarly, she
conceded: “for this event [1000-m race], as for any other, serious prepa-
ration is needed and we can say with satisfaction that our clubs give
these necessary preparations all the care of their instructors and doc-
tors”.19 And, in order to counter the arguments of the self-appointed
guardians of public morals, who believed that sport took women away
from their duties as wives and mothers, she regularly brandished fam-
ily photos of the “many married women footballers with beautiful

16“Propagande”, La Femme Sportive, n°11, 1 March 1922.
17“Propagande”, La Femme Sportive, n°11, 1 March 1922.
19L’Auto, 19 April 1923.

72 F. Carpentier
children”.20 During this post-war period of high birth rate and “race
protection” policies, Marie Houdré was the first person to present sport
and the competitive spirit as beneficial for withstanding the ordeal of
childbirth, rather than threats to maternity.21 These arguments from a
well-known doctor represented a significant break with the conservative
position espoused by Pierre de Coubertin and influential doctors such
as Philippe Tissié and Maurice Boigey.
Although Milliat and the FSFSF encouraged women to do all
sports, they did not want to expose women to excessive physical effort
or injury. Consequently, they modified the rules some of some sports,
especially team sports such as basketball, football and rugby, shortening
the playing time, reducing the size of playing area and banning contact.
In addition, sport’s administrators were very aware of concerns about
the impact of watching women’s sport on spectators’ morals. Hence,
while never ceding ground over a sportswoman’s right to wear shorts or
t-shirts, there were frequent discussions about the decency of women’s
outfits in order to ensure they were never too revealing or close fitting.
Winning Over the French Media

Milliat regularly and effectively used the media to promote both the
FSFSF and women’s sport in general. In the years following World War
One, she wrote frequent articles for the sporting, women’s and military
press, expressing her ideas on a variety of subjects, but always adapting
her discourse to the publication’s readership. She would, for example,
be very patriotic when writing for a military magazine such as Le Soldat
de Demain, a strident defender of women’s suffrage when expressing
her views in the feminist press, and a cool-headed proponent of the
benefits of sport for childbearing when addressing the readers of more
20L’Auto, 2 March 1923.

21In the editorial she wrote for the first issue of La Femme Sportive, published on 1 May 1921,
and in her famous book for women that was reprinted several times up until the 1950s: Ma
doctoresse, guide pratique d’hygiène et de médecine de la femme moderne (tomes 1 et 2), Strasbourg,
Editorial Argentor, 1928.
conservative newspapers such as La Culture Physique, L’Auto and Les

Dimanches de la Femme. Hence, rather than being taken at face value,
the fact that she sometimes denied her feminism (Tétard 2017) should
be seen as a strategy she used to get her message across. It is easy to
imagine her forthright editorials for the FSFSF’s ambitious monthly
newsletter, which she created in 1921, being designed specifically to
convince or reassure the fathers, husbands, families and friends of
sportswomen. The two pages of sports results included in each issue give
an idea of the popularity of women’s sport in France, while the decision
to report records set by sportswomen was a major step in recognising
women’s competitions.
However, it was in the pages of L’Auto that Milliat found her best
platform, especially during the 1920s. In 1922, she demonstrated
her sporting prowess by completing the very difficult Audax-rameur,
which requires participants to row 80 km along the Seine in less than
12 hours. This exploit was reported on L’Auto’s front page, alongside a
photograph of the “rowing-woman”, and earned her a certain amount
of respect in sports circles. Over the next two years she wrote more than
20 in-depth articles for L’Auto, in which she promoted women’s sport
and denounced the “prejudices” and “conservatism” (“la routine”) of
sport’s administrators. L’Auto also chronicled her regular appearances
among women’s and men’s sporting society. Milliat had become a sport-
ing figure who was invited to sports events and banquets, as well as to
important meetings with the heads of other federations and political
leaders.
However, this fame work did not protect her from being attacked by
her opponents throughout her career, right up to her retirement from
sport in 1936. Accused of being “bossy”, compared to Napoleon, called
“a dictator, a Mussolini”,22 and subjected to a smear campaign by the
FFA, Milliat twice came close to resigning from the FSFSF: in 1920,
following pressure from sports executives who were opposed to her
appointment as president, and in 1922, when the FSFSF merged with
the Women’s Physical Education and Gymnastics Federation. On this
22L’Auto, 25 April 1924.

74 F. Carpentier
occasion, she was alleged to have received payment for her work as presi-
dent of the FSFSF, which was illegal because the FSFSF was a non-profit
association and contrary to the period’s strict rules on sporting amateur-
ism. She vigorously denied the accusations, but they were given a degree
of plausibility by the fact that, unlike most federation presidents at the
time, who came from affluent or even aristocratic backgrounds, Milliat
had to earn her own living. Consequently, she lived very modestly, pro-
viding for her needs by taking a succession of low-paid jobs. She finally
did resign in 1925, after finding herself in a minority in her federation,
only to return in 1930, when she focused on developing international
women’s sport, a movement that had begun in 1921.
Creation and Conquest of the FSFI

According to the literature (Arnaud 2000; Drevon 2005; Terret 2007a,
b), Milliat helped create the Monte-Carlo Women’s Olympiad, the first
edition of which took place in April 1921, and she used its success to
found the FSFI a few months later. However, this interpretation of
events raises a number of questions. For example, how could a mod-
est Parisian office worker have developed the necessary contacts with
Monaco’s high society? If she had created the Olympiad, why did she
not go to the event? And why, a year later, would she create another
event, the Women’s Olympic Games, in direct competition with the
second edition of the Olympiad? In fact, the president of the Women’s
Olympiad organising committee was none other than Marcel Delarbre,
the vice president of the FFA, which saw the event as a way of gaining
control over women’s athletics.23 Hence, it is likely that Milliat created
the FSFI as a way of ensuring the feminist movement kept control over
international competitions for women by organising a World Games
capable of countering the success of the Women’s Olympiad.
The FSFI officially came into being on 31 October 1921, during a
congress held in Paris at the initiative of the FSFSF and its president.
23FFA archives.
At this time, there were large disparities between Western countries

with respect to the administration of women’s sport. Although the
United States had set up a federation for women’s sport in 1904, other
pioneering countries in the development of women’s sport, such as
England and Czechoslovakia, still had no such federation. For England
and Czechoslovakia, as for many other countries, the opportunity to
join an international federation served as a catalyst for the formation
of national federations for sportswomen. Milliat used her column in
L’Auto to explain how the FSFI had come about: “First, there was a
rapprochement between France and the United States and an exchange
of correspondence between the women’s federation presided by Mme
Milliat and a committee representing university and civil clubs in the
United States. It was only when an agreement between America and the
French federation was sealed that Mme Milliat approached England,
Czechoslovakia and Spain in order to form a larger and more compact
group. […] In this way, the international federation was created by
the representatives of the French federation presided by Mme Milliat,
England and Czechoslovakia, with support from America and the
Spanish authorities”.24
As the only female head of a national women’s sports organisation,
Milliat had to do some careful manoeuvring in order to be elected pres-
ident of the FSFI. She was not everyone’s obvious choice for president,
with even her main French ally, Emile Anthoine, recommending that
the new federation be run by a man “because of the diplomatic rela-
tions it might need”. Milliat was shrewd enough to begin her campaign
by reiterating certain principles she held dear: “Mme Milliat expresses
the wish that the members of the committee include several women
and would like, if possible, for women to be in the majority, as long as
they have the expertise required and are able to serve the International
Women’s Sports Federation”.25 She then suggested that a postal vote be
held after the congress. In the end, the vote was held the following year,
at the FSFI’s second annual congress, and Milliat was elected president
24“Comment fut fondée la Fédération Internationale féminine”, L’Auto, 3 November 1921.

25FSFI minutes, 31 October 1921, Paris.
76 F. Carpentier
“by acclamation”.26 She owed this success largely to her efforts to

increase the number of female-led national women’s sports federations
affiliated to the FSFI, which meant that a much larger proportion of
the delegates at the second congress were women. In fact, the minutes
for this second congress list 38 affiliated countries, almost as many as
the men’s international athletics federation. By 1926 every country in
Europe was affiliated to the FSFI, except for Germany, which was still
banned from all international organisations (including the League of
Nations and IOC). Elsewhere in the world, the FSFI could count on
Canada, five South American republics (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru
and Uruguay), Australia, China, Japan and Britain’s two African colo-
nies, Egypt and South Africa.
The Admission of Women to the Olympic Games

The FSFI’s main objective was to take control of international women’s
sports competitions as quickly as possible and thereby thwart the efforts
of the all-male FFA to gain dominion over women’s sport. Hence,
in its statutes, the FSFI claimed the exclusive right to organise inter-
national competitions for women and the power to control all other
events. In fact, what Milliat really wanted was for female athletes to be
given “full admittance” to the Olympic Games athletics programme, in
other words, for women to be allowed to compete in all the athletics
disciplines open to men. She petitioned the IOC’s president, Pierre de
Coubertin, about this issue on two occasions, first in 1919 and then
in 1922, but Coubertin ignored both requests. Consequently, Milliat
and the FSFI organised their own “Women’s World Games”. As one
of Milliat’s objectives for the these Games was to provide a showcase
for women’s sport capable of winning over the IOC, the first edition of
the event, in 1922, was held in Coubertin’s home city, Paris. Similarly,
Brussels was chosen to host the second edition of the event, in 1926, as
Belgium’s Henri de Baillet-Latour had taken over from Coubertin at the
26FSFI minutes, 18 August 1922, Paris.

head of the IOC. When the Brussels organisers pulled out, the Games
were transferred to Gothenburg, home of Sigfried Edström, then pres-
ident of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) and a
member of the IOC’s Executive Committee.
Nevertheless, the FSFI was split between two opposing conceptions
of women’s sport. Alice Milliat, on the one hand, believed that women
could do the same sports as men and compete with them. This is why
she saw the Women’s World Games as an intermediary step towards
women taking part in the Olympic Games on an equal footing with
men. On the other hand, Sophie Elyott-Lynn, a British athlete and
future aviator, felt that women should have their own, completely sepa-
rate international competition, mostly in order to protect public morals.
In addition, Elyott-Lynn’s views on feminism were highly differential-
ist, as she believed in women’s liberation through sport, but she also
believed that women and men should be treated differently because
of the “natural” differences between the sexes. Unlike Milliat, many
of Elyott-Lynn’s compatriots shared these views, which is why British
sportswomen boycotted the men’s Olympic Games in 1928 and 1932.
Although these two visions of women’s sport caused disagreements
within the FSFI, in 1926 the federation’s delegates gave Milliat per-
mission to negotiate with Edström the admittance of women into the
Olympic athletics programme.
Aware that the Women’s World Games were due to be held in his
home country, Edström convinced the IOC and IAAF to allow women
athletes to compete in a number of events at the Olympics. However,
his aim was not to promote women’s sport, rather, it was to take con-
trol of women’s athletics and put an end to the FSFI. Edström later
expressed his feelings very clearly in a letter he wrote to his colleague
and future IOC president Avery Brundage in 1935: “I suppose you
know that Mme Milliat’s Federation has caused us so much trouble
that we certainly have no interest at all to support it. We should like
the whole thing to disappear from the surface of the earth”.27 This letter
27Letterfrom Sigfried Edström to Avery Brundage, 3 January 1935, “ABC Box 42, reel 24”,
Archives of the International Centre for Olympic Studies, University of Western Ontario,
Canada, cited by Carly Adams (2002).
78 F. Carpentier
eloquently illustrates how strongly many powerful sports administrators

opposed women’s sport.
Nevertheless, by dangling the possibility of women being allowed to
participate “fully” in track and field and of an egalitarian partnership
with the FSFI, Edström convinced Milliat to accept a trial in which
women would be allowed to compete at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics
in five of the twelve events open to men. But, within the space of just
two Olympiads, Edström, supported by the national athletics feder-
ations, especially the FFA, managed to eliminate the Women’s World
Games. Although Milliat and the FSFI’s American and Austrian repre-
sentatives attempted several times to withdraw women’s athletics from
the Olympic Games and regain their independence,28 they never man-
aged to overthrow the IAAF’s and IOC’s control. The great depression
of the 1930s was particularly deleterious to women’s sport and in 1936
the FSFI disintegrated. This was also the end of Alice Milliat’s career in
sport, as, due to a shortage of money and lack of support she was forced
to abandon the FSFSF.
Conclusion
The admission of women athletes to the 1928 Olympic Games was
a Pyrrhic victory, as Milliat and the FSFI quickly realised. Sigfried
Edström took over as president of the IOC in 1942, following the death
of Baillet-Latour, a position he held until 1952, when he handed over
the reins to America’s Avery Brundage, his friend and colleague from
the IAAF. Brundage remained at the top of the IOC for 20 years. Both
men succeeded in their aim of stemming the development of interna-
tional women’s sport, as under their presidencies women were restricted
to a limited number of events and never accounted for more than 15%
of competitors at the Olympics. It was not until the presidency passed
to Ireland’s Michael Killanin (1972–1980), and especially Spain’s Juan
Antonio Samaranch (1980–2001), that the Olympics began to open up
28Correspondence with the IOC in 1930 and 1935. IOC archives, Lausanne, Switzerland.
to women (20% of competitors were women in 1976, 28% in 1992,

40% in 2004, 47% in 2016). The IOC admitted its first two women
members in 1981, but it was a further ten years before it began explic-
itly encouraging women’s sport around the world. While traditional
Olympic sports have had to progressively embrace women’s competi-
tions, all new Olympic sports since 1991 have had to include women’s
events. Now the greatest inequalities are between countries and within
the upper echelons of sport administration. The IOC has taken steps to
encourage international sport federations and national Olympic com-
mittees to work towards greater parity between the sexes, but it cannot
force change.
Through her work with the FSFI, by gaining acceptance for the idea
that women could do sport and take part in competitions, by organ-
izing the Women’s World Games and by writing numerous articles for
newspapers and magazines, Alice Milliat played a vital role in promot-
ing women’s sport in many countries. Her belief in the need for wom-
en’s sport to be run by women and she was proved to be well founded
by the efforts male sports administrators made to hamper the devel-
opment of women’s sport when they managed to take it under their
control.
After the collapse of the FSFI, in 1936, Milliat disappeared from
public view. She died 21 years later, completely forgotten, and was laid
to rest in a grave that does not even bear her name. Her final resting
place, in a Nantes cemetery, was only discovered thanks to the efforts
of André Drevon. Although French scholars have tended to ignore
or minimise Milliat’s feminism, there is no doubt that her male con-
temporaries in sport administration found her activism discomfit-
ing and too strident. After withstanding repeated and often violent
attacks from her opponents over almost three decades, Milliat finally
abandoned her struggle for women’s sport in the mid 1930s. She has
already been silenced once; modern scholars must not be allowed to
silence her again by dismissing her convictions and commitment to the
feminist cause.
80 F. Carpentier
Biography
5 May 1884: Alice Joséphine Marie Million is born in Nantes (France).
1904: At the age of 20, she moves to London and marries Joseph
Milliat, who was born in Nantes in 1880.
1908: The couple are still childless when Joseph dies at the age of 28,
leaving Alice a widow.
1914: Milliat returns to France, probably at the beginning of World
War I.
1915: Becomes president of Femina Sport, Paris’ first women’s sports
club, formed in 1912.
1917: The FSFSF is founded with Alice Milliat as its treasurer.
1918: Appointed general secretary of the FSFSF.
1919: Elected president of the FSFSF at the very young age of 35.
1919: Petitions Pierre de Coubertin to allow women to take part in ath-
letics events at the Olympic Games.
1921: “Women’s Olympiad” in Monte-Carlo, organised by the FFA.
Milliat helps create the FSFI (October).
1922: Becomes president of the FSFI. Again petitions Pierre de
Coubertin to allow women to take part in the Olympic Games. Opens
the first Women’s World Games in Paris.
1925: Resigns as president of the FSFSF.
1926: Opens the second Women’s World Games in Gothenburg,
Sweden.
1930: Becomes president of the FSFSF for the second time. Opens the
third Women’s World Games in Prague (Hungary).
1934: Opens the fourth Women’s World Games in London (United
Kingdom).
1936: Resigns the presidencies of both the FSFI and FSFSF, which cease
to exist.
1957: Dies in Paris at the age of 73 and is buried anonymously in a
cemetery in Nantes.
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Terret, Thierry. 2010. From Alice Milliat to Marie-Thérèse Eyquem: Revisiting
Women’s Sport in France (1920s–1960s). The International Journal of the
History of Sport 27 (7): 1154–1172.
Tétart, Philippe. 2017. Alice Milliat. In Dictionnaire des féministes. France,
XVIIIe–XXIe siècle, ed. Bard Christine. Paris: PUF.
4
Jules Rimet: FIFA’s Missionary President
Philippe Vonnard and Grégory Quin
Introduction
Football administrators can, in many ways, be likened to senior civil
servants,1 as both categories of people are motivated by the desire to fur-
ther a specific domain, without necessarily bringing about political change,
and they achieve this by implementing actions for and over the long term.
This was certainly the case for Jules Rimet, who devoted his entire profes-
sional life to sport and became one of the sporting world’s ‘great leaders’.
1Bourdieu,P. (1989) La Noblesse d’état. Grandes écoles et esprit de corps, Paris: Minuit; Feiertag,
O. (1995) Wilfrid Baumgartner, les finances de l’État et l’économie de la nation (1902–1978): un
grand commis à la croisée des pouvoirs. History doctoral thesis, Université Paris—X Nanterre.
P. Vonnard (*)
ISCC, Paris, France
e-mail: Philippe.vonnard@unil.ch
G. Quin
University of Lausanne | UNIL, Institute of Sports Science,
e-mail: Gregory.Quin@unil.ch
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_4
84 P. Vonnard and G. Quin
Although no single individual can achieve much on his own, even

if he is the most powerful man of his time, and although his actions
have to be assessed within a much larger context, Jules Rimet was
undoubtedly the most important figure in international football dur-
ing the first half of the twentieth century. In fact, Rimet was not only
FIFA’s (Fédération Internationale de Football Association ) longest-serving
president, he was one of football’s great “missionaries”,2 whose belief
in football as a force for good helped spread the sport across the globe.
During his tenure as FIFA president, from 1921 to 1954, he oversaw
the introduction of true professionalism, helped create what has become
the world’s greatest international sporting competition, the FIFA World
Cup, and laid the foundations for soccer to become the world’s most
popular sport. He also played a major role in ensuring FIFA’s autonomy
from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).3
Our biographical analysis highlights Rimet’s importance as the instigator
and champion of these projects, but he was only able to bring them to fru-
ition thanks to the support he received from many other people, including
Germany’s Peco Bauwens, Belgium’s Rodolphe Seeldrayers, France’s Henri
Delaunay, Italy’s Giovanni Mauro and Germany’s Ivo Schricker, who
served as FIFA general secretary from 1931 to 1951. Given the historical
insights that are inevitably provided by researching the lives of key play-
ers in any field, it is somewhat surprising that most previous biographies
of Rimet have been merely hagiographies4 or purely descriptive accounts
with little discussion of his impact on football.5 The present chapter
attempts to remedy this situation by filling in some of the gaps in Rimet’s
biography and providing a critical analysis of his role in developing FIFA.6
2Tomlinson A.; Sugden, J. (1998) FIFA and the Contest for World Football: Who Rules the Peoples’
Game? Cambridge: Polity Press; Tomlinson, A. (2000) “FIFA and the Men Who Made It” Soccer
and Society 1(1): 55–71.
3Carpentier, F. (2005) “Le conflit entre le CIO et la FIFA dans l’entre-deux-guerres. Les Jeux
olympiques contre la Coupe du monde de football” STAPS 68(2): 25–39.

4Lasne, L. (2008) Jules Rimet: la foi dans le football, Saint-Cloud: Le tiers livre.
5Guillain, J.-Y. (1998) La Coupe du monde de football: l’œuvre de Jules Rimet, Paris: Amphora.
6This chapter is a revised version of: Grégory Quin, Philippe Vonnard (2014) “Jules Rimet: un
missionnaire du football” Les grands dirigeants du sport. 23 portraits et stratégies de management

(Ed. E. Bayle) De Boeck: Brussels: 25–43.
We begin by presenting his early life and career, which shows him to have
been a committed promoter of football. We then describe his rise through
the echelons of sports administration to the most powerful job in world
football, and his commitment to both French and international soccer. We
discuss the factors that motivated his actions, highlighting the importance
of his Universalist outlook, which helped shape the first intercontinental
football competition, created in the late 1920s, and underlay his rejection
of the idea of creating autonomous confederations.
Our assessment of Rimet’s career is based on a large number of doc-
uments7 contained in the archives held by FIFA (congresses, executive
committee minutes, correspondence) and by the Swiss (ASF), French
(FFFA) and English (FA) football associations. Because football archives
for the interwar period are incomplete, we also searched the archives of
several French, Swiss and German newspapers, and the file compiled when
Rimet was awarded France’s Légion d’Honneur, which is available online.8
Between Catholicism and Liberalism

Jules Ernest Séraphin Valentin Rimet was born on the 24 October
1873 in Theuley (Haute-Saône), the first of his parent’s five children
(three boys and two girls). His parents moved to Paris soon after he
was born, but Jules remained with his grandfather in Theuley until
he was eleven.9 He finally joined the rest of his family in 1885, mov-
ing to Gros-Caillou, a working-class neighbourhood of Paris near the
Champ de Mars, where his father had opened a shop. Two aspects of
the young Rimet’s upbringing were fundamental to his future career.
The first was his social Catholic education, which forged the young
7Most of these documents were originally obtained for two earlier studies carried out by the
authors: The first—“Une première élite du football européen (1904–1956), ou les prémices d’un
champ footballistique européen” “- was carried out by Grégory Quin under the 2011–2012
UEFA Research Grant Programme”. The second was Philippe Vonnard’s PhD thesis, “Genèse du
football européen. De la FIFA à l’UEFA (1930–1960)”, defended at the University of Lausanne
in December 2016.
8http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/leonore/.
9Guillain, La Coupe du monde: 15.

man’s convictions. The second was discovering football, a new game

that was starting to be played around Paris.10 He immediately began
working in his father’s shop, but nevertheless managed to graduate from
high school and go to university to study law. His first job was for a
debt-collection firm,11 which, along with his social Catholic beliefs,
appears to have shaped Rimet’s relatively liberal views. In fact, he had
quite moderate political opinions, far removed from the intransigence
of hard-line Catholics, who were still vehemently opposed to the French
Revolution. However, he did not embrace the rampant anticlericalism
of the time, which helped secure the separation of Church and State.12
Rimet completed his national service in 1895 and had no further
contact with the military until the outbreak of the First World War,
when, like many other people involved in sports,13 he was called up by
the army. He received his draft notice on 2 September 1914 and was
told to report for duty in the reserve. Caught up in the patriotic fer-
vour that had swept the country—his internationalist and pacifist
leanings would not come to the fore until after the war—and despite
being 41 years old, Rimet volunteered for front-line service. Thanks
to his university degree, he quickly rose through the ranks, promoted
from private to corporal to sergeant to lieutenant and finally, in 1919,
to major.14 He remained in active service for the whole war and was
awarded the Croix de Guerre three times, the first in a long list of hon-
ours he would receive.15
The war and its aftermath convinced him of the need for deep and
gradual reform of French society, so in April 1928 he acted on his
10Sorez, J. (2013) Le football dans Paris et ses banlieues (de la fin du XIXe siècle à 1940): un sport
devenu spectacle, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
11Pfeil, U. (ed.) (2010) Football et identité en France et en Allemagne, Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses
universitaires du Septentrion: 51.

12Hilaire, Y.-M. (2006) “1900–1945. L’ancrage des ideologies” Histoire des droites
(Ed. J.-F. Sirinelli) Paris: Gallimard: 519–565.

13Dietschy, P. (2005) “La Guerre ou le ‘grand match’: le sport, entre représentation de la violence
et expérience combattante” La Grande Guerre: pratiques et expériences (Eds. R. Cazals, E. Picard,

D. Rolland) Toulouse: Privat: 45–54.
14French National Archives, Documents “Léonore”, Documents relating to the attribution of the
Legion d’Honneur to Mr. Jules Rimet (2nd August 1949): 2.

15Ibid.: 4.
convictions by standing for election as member of parliament for a con-

stituency in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. At the same time, he and his
friends took “the initiative of creating a Union Sociale du VIIe in order
to ensure the poor received medical care”.16 Like most French people,
Rimet had been shocked by the horrors of the First World War and
keenly felt the need to bring together nations and peoples. Believing in
the power of sport, particularly football, to do this, he centred his elec-
tion campaign round the need to raise awareness dies of the importance
and benefits of sport among both private and public institutions and
committees. In support of this stance, Rimet could point to the work he
was already doing with sporting bodies. Despite claiming that normally
it “did not do politics”, the sports newspaper L’Auto gave his campaign a
further boost by publishing a profile of him in which he was presented
as “a man of great ambition” who hated “all kinds of empty rhetoric,
which can hide inactivity” and as someone who could “speak for the
world of sport in parliament”.17 In the end, Rimet was defeated at the
polls, but his campaign had given him the opportunity to put his vision
onto the political scene.
The First President of a French Sports Federation

to Embrace Professionalism
Rimet’s career in sport began in 1897, when he helped form the Red
Star Club, a multisport club whose members initially came from the
emerging middle-class of civil servants, shopkeepers and lawyers.
However, rising real estate prices forced it to move to the blue-collar
Saint-Ouen district in 1909, thereby bringing Rimet into closer con-
tact with working-class culture and people. Rimet was one of the prime
movers behind the club’s football section, although his contribution
was motivated more by his passion for the game than by any interest in
administration. He was not a very good footballer, as he later admitted
16Guillain, La Coupe du monde: 16.

17L’Auto, 17 November 1927.
himself,18 but the Red Star football club allowed him to discover his
sporting destiny. Red Star immediately joined the Union des Sociétés
Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), a multisport federation whose
football committee became one of FIFA’s founding members in 1904.
France’s other major sporting association at the time, and the
USFSA’s great rival, was the Catholic Fédération Gymnique et Sportive
des Patronages de France (FGSPF). The differences between these two
organisations came to a head in 1907, when the USFSA opposed the
FGSPF’s proposal to accept professionalism in football, with the result
that the FGSPF created the Comité Français Interfédéral (CFI)19 in order
to improve the game’s status. Despite being a member of the USFSA,
Rimet did not agree with its dogmatic stance on amateurism, believing
professionalism was necessary if football was to open up to all classes
of society.20 Consequently, he helped form the Ligue de Football
Association (LFA), which affiliated itself to the CFI, an organisation in
which he would play a key role. The creation of the LFA meant that
French football no longer had a single, controlling body responsible for
administrating all aspects of the game, including organising interna-
tional matches. So, when FIFA’s 1907 congress asked the USFSA “if it
was the only federation governing football in France”,21 the USFSA was
unable to provide the necessary proof and was excluded from FIFA.22
Following intense negotiations, in 1908 FIFA decided to recognise the
CFI as France’s national football association, thereby allowing the CFI
to become officially affiliated to the international federation in 1910.23
Jules Rimet played an active part in this process, and his work with
Charles Simon and Henri Delaunay contributed greatly to France’s
18Rimet, J. (1954) Histoire merveilleuse de la Coupe du monde, Paris: Union européenne

d’Éditions: 25.
19Wahl, A. (1989) Les archives du football. Sport et société en France (1880–1980), Paris:
Gallimard.
20Holt, R. (1998) “Sport, the French and the Third Republic” Modern and Contemporary France
6(3): 289–299.
21FIFA Archives, Minutes of the 3rd FIFA congress, 1906.
22FIFA Archives, Minutes of the 5th FIFA congress, 1908.
23Groeninger, F. (2004) Sport, religion et nation. La Fédération des patronages de France d’une guerre
mondiale à l’autre, Paris: L’Harmattan.

reintegration into the international federation. Nevertheless, it was

Delaunay and Simon who consolidated France’s position within FIFA,
as Rimet did not attend another FIFA congress until 1914,24 just before
the outbreak of the First World War.
Rimet’s wartime service in the French army kept him away from
the world of football during an important period in the sport’s devel-
opment.25 For example, he took no part in the CFI’s attempt in 1917
to hold the first French Cup. However, he had left the army in time
to contribute to the creation of the Fédération Française de Football
Association (FFFA), which came into being on 7 April 1919. This is a
very important date in the history of French football, as establishing a
dedicated, independent federation meant the game could be governed
more easily. The first FFFA committee meeting elected Rimet president
and Henri Delaunay general secretary, positions these two men would
hold for more than 30 years. During this time they oversaw some of the
most important developments in French football, including the organi-
sation of a ‘national’ championship and the introduction of profession-
alism, in 1932,26 and supervised the organisation of the third World
Cup in 1938. As Hassen Slimani noted, professionalism in French foot-
ball was a highly controversial issue and the subject of heated debate
throughout the 1920s between “those who were interested in explicitly
recognising the real economy of football, including its professionaliza-
tion, and those who were more interested in conserving the advantages
of hidden professionalism”.27 Rimet’s position in this debate is not clear,
as he was in favour of professionalism but he also committed the FFFA
to controlling professionalism in order to

25Mason, T. (2006) “Le football dans l’armée britannique pendant la Première Guerre mondi-
ale” Histoire et Sociétés 18–19: 62–75; Dietchy, P. (2007) “1918–1920, des tranchées au stade.
Quelques éclairages sur la sortie de la guerre des sportifs français et des fédérations de football
européennes” Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société 3 (published online).
26Lanfranchi, P.; Wahl, A. (1998) “La professionnalisation du football en France (1920–1939)”
Modern & Contemporary France 6(3): 313–325.

27Slimani, H. (2000) La professionnalisation du football français: un modèle de dénégation,
Sociology doctoral thesis, Université de Nantes: 109.

“maintain domination over players and clubs… [because] …the FFFA is

not only the governing body for competitions, clubs and players; it (and
its members) is also a stakeholder in the football economy, whose finan-
cial and symbolic interests need to be defended, mainly by disparaging
the building blocks of professionalism.”28
In addition to his work within football, in 1930 Rimet became pres-

ident of France’s National Sports Council (CNS), whose missions were
to increase participation in sport, promote cooperation between the
individual federations formed after the collapse of the USFSA, and help
Olympic athletes with their training. It also acted as a political mouth-
piece for the world of sport.29 As Rimet told a reporter from Match in
1932, CNS
is not a governing body for sport in France. Sport federations are far too
jealous of their independence to accept such an umbrella organisation
interfering in the sporting field and even more so in their own affairs.
CNS is a coordinating body that engages in discussions with the govern-
ment about general issues.30
However, Rimet’s horizons during the years following the First World
War were not confined to becoming a prominent figure in French sport,
he also had his eye on the international stage. In this respect, he was
following in the footsteps of other great names in French sport, includ-
ing Pierre de Coubertin, Robert Guérin (FIFA’s first president, elected
in 1904) and Henri Desgranges (the owner of L’Auto and instigator of
the Tour de France). Like de Coubertin, Rimet championed a French
form of Universalism, believing that sport could bring people together,
but Rimet’s vision was much less elitist and more democratic than de
Coubertin’s.31
28Slimani, La professionnalisation du football français: 144.

29Clastres,P.; Dietschy, P. (2006) Sport, société et culture. Du XIXe siècle à nos jour, Paris: Hachette.
30Match, 8 November 1932.
31Dietschy, P. (2011) “French Sport: Caught between Universalism and Exceptionalism” European
Review 19(4): 509–525.

FIFA President and the Quest for Financial

Independence
Rimet was elected head of FIFA32 during an unofficial congress in
Antwerp in 1920 that also saw Rodolphe Seeldrayers elected vice-pres-
ident and Carl Hirschmann elected secretary-treasurer. The archives
provide little information about this procedure, which was contrary
to FIFA’s rules and constitution. Justifying this unorthodox process in
his 1954 book, Rimet claimed that his election in Antwerp was provi-
sional and later confirmed in a letter sent to all FIFA members by 31
December 1920.33 If this is true, Rimet did not officially become FIFA
president until 1 January 1921.
In its early years, just after the First World War, FIFA was a very
modest institution with just 20 members, mostly from Europe. It had
no official head office (it was run from Hirschmann’s home), no real
financial organisation (the secretary-treasurer managed all FIFA’s funds
personally), and no competitions of its own. In fact, its only direct
involvement with competitive football was through the technical sup-
port it provided for organising the Olympic football tournament.34
This situation changed completely during the 1920s, when its executive
committee and annual congresses addressed two vital issues for FIFA’s
future: the development of autonomous governance and the acceptance
of professionalism, both of which were supported by Rimet.
FIFA quickly realised that it would need a more efficient system of
governance if it were going to effectively supervise the rapidly increas-
ing number of international matches being played and the development
of international football. The first step in doing this was to improve its
financial situation, which meant achieving a higher and more regular
income than could be obtained from annual membership fees alone.
32Before 1930 and its move to Zurich, FIFA did not keep many documents about its own
governance.
33Rimet, J. (1954) Histoire merveilleuse de la Coupe du monde: 25.
34Mourat, A. (2006) “Le tournoi olympique de football: une propédeutique à la Coupe du
monde? (1896–1928)” Aspects de l’histoire de la coupe du monde de football (Ed. A. Wahl) Metz:
Université de Metz: 9–21.
FIFA’s aim was to “carry out more effective propaganda, cover the
expenses of all the committees, produce an annual report, pay a sec-
retary and maybe publish a newsletter”.35 The system suggested at the
1920 congress was to impose a 0.5% levy on income from ticket sales
earned by the organisers of international matches, usually the national
associations. Rimet considered this levy to be fair, as it varied accord-
ing to the size of each country’s football association, but it was not to
the taste of FIFA’s smaller members, who were worried about having
to pay too much. Discussions relating to the affiliation of the United
Kingdom’s football associations36 raised another complication in that
FIFA’s executive committee had to decide whether or not the percent-
age system would apply “to games between the United Kingdom’s foot-
ball associations”.37 In the end, FIFA’s congress rejected the proposal in
favour of maintaining the fees system plus a very modest tax of 0.1% on
international matches. This decision severely constrained Rimet’s objec-
tive of expanding FIFA’s role.
The executive committee tried to modify the system the following
year by increasing the levy to 1%. Once again, the levy was rejected
despite a statement by Rimet designed to win over the proposal’s oppo-
nents. Subsequently, a commission set up by the 1924 congress to
examine the issue suggested a system consisting of “an annual contribu-
tion of 25 dollars plus a tax of 0.75% on income from ticket sales for
international games (with a minimum contribution of 5 dollars)”.38 The
congress immediately accepted this proposition, allowing FIFA to con-
solidate its revenues over the next few years.
With its finances on a more solid footing, FIFA was now able to
expand its activities and improve its governance. Hence, during the
second half of the 1920s the federation appointed four new vice-pres-
idents, increasing their number from three to seven, and doubled its
operating costs. Then, in 1930, it took the momentous decision to

36Beck, P. J. (2000) “Going to War, Peaceful Co-existence or Virtual Membership. British
Football and FIFA, 1928–1946” The International Journal of the History of Sport 20(1): 113–134.
37France football, 4 January 1924.
38FIFA Archives, Minutes of the 13th FIFA congress, 1924 [translated from the French].
organise its own World Cup. At this time, FIFA still did not have its
own bank account or any liquid assets, and all the money the federa-
tion earned was managed and invested by its secretary-treasurer, Carl
Hirschmann. As a result, when Hirschmann went bankrupt due to
a series of poor investments and the disruption caused by the Great
Crash of 1929, FIFA lost most of its finances and its initial reforming
dynamic came to an end. Obviously needing to rethink its financial
management, FIFA decided to appoint a salaried general secretary. The
man they chose for the position, Germany’s Ivo Schricker,39 injected a
new way of thinking into FIFA’s internal affairs, reinforcing the feder-
ation’s governance by introducing double-entry bookkeeping, and set-
ting up FIFA’s first headquarters, on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. Although
the original management team was very small, administration costs
for the new headquarters consumed half of FIFA’s entire budget at
the end of the 1930s. Out of a total income of CHF58,000, approx-
imately CHF25,000 were spent on salaries and CHF3000 were spent
on loans.40 However, very few of these costs were attributable to Rimet,
who did not receive any remuneration for his presidential duties41 other
than expenses for travelling to meetings or to promote football around
the world.
A Professional World Cup Versus an Amateur

Olympic Tournament
The interwar period saw huge growth in the popularity of football,
which soon came to be played all over the world. Enthusiasm for the
sport was particularly strong in South and Central America, whose
national football associations gradually joined FIFA during the 1920s
and 1930s, and thereby sat alongside the European associations at FIFA
39Wahlig, H. (2008) “Dr Ivo Schricker: Ein Deutscher in Diensten des Welt- fussballs”
Hakenkreuz und rundes Leder. Fussball im Nationalsozialismus (Eds. L. Peiffer, D. Schulze-
Marmeling) Göttingen: verlag die Werkstatt: 197–206.
40FIFA Archives, Executive Committee, Minutes from 14 March 1937.
41FIFA Archives, 1933 Status Report, p. 35.

congresses. Football at this time was mostly an amateur game, but the
massive increase in the numbers of working-class footballers, who could
not afford to play full time without a salary, raised the issue of profes-
sionalism in both Europe and South America. British football had had a
degree of professionalism since the late nineteenth century and it was the
British model that countries such as Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia
adopted when they first accepted professional players. In contrast, Italy
muddied the waters42 by introducing a “non-amateur” football model
under the Charter of Viareggio,43 which allowed Mussolini’s Fascist gov-
ernment to claim it had not legalised professionalism. The issue was
the subject of intense debate in Switzerland44 and France,45 as it was in
Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, where there were heated disagreements
between ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’, even though most top-flight players
in these three countries were already fully professional.46 Despite the reti-
cence of certain members of the football community, and although some
historians believe that Rimet was simply “resigned” to the advent of profes-
sionalism,47studies of FIFA’s attitude show that Rimet and his colleagues
were more open-minded about professionalism than their counterparts at
the International Olympic Committee (IOC).48 In fact, Rimet believed it
was better to “embrace professionalism than to accept a form of ‘phony’
amateurism”,49 while ensuring there was still room in the footballing
42Quin, G.; Vonnard, P. (2011) “‘Par delà le Gothard’. Les matches internationaux Italie-Suisse et
la consolidation des champs footballistiques italien et suisse dans l’entre-deux-guerres” Diacronie.
Studi di Storia Contemporanea 5: 1–15.
43Martin, S. (2004) Football under Fascism. The National Game under Mussolini, Oxford: Berg.
44Vonnard, P.; Quin, G. (2012) “Élément pour une histoire de la mise en place du professionnal-
isme dans le football suisse: processus, résistances et ambiguities” Revue Suisse d’Histoire 62(1):
70–85.
45Lanfranchi, P.; Wahl, A. (1998) “La professionnalisation du football…”.
46Davies, D. J. (2000) “British Football with a Brazilian Beat: The Early History of a National
Pastime (1894–1933)” English-speaking Communities in Latin America (Ed. O. Marshall)

London: Institute of Latin American Studies: 261–284.
47Wahl, A. (1998) “Un professionnalisme de résignation en France” Sociétés et Représentations 7:
67–75.
48Carpentier, “Le conflit entre le CIO et la FIFA”.
49Match, 28 February 1933.

world for both amateur and professional players. Consequently, he was

careful to distance FIFA from the IOC’s hard-line stance.
FIFA’s desire to maintain its independence from the IOC was one
of the reasons it decided to hold its own World Cup, which quickly
became one of the world’s greatest sporting events50 and far more
important than any Olympic football tournament. Towards the end of
his life, Rimet helped mythologise the creation of the World Cup in
a book entitled: Histoire merveilleuse de la Coupe du monde, in which
he presented the competition as an unforeseen opportunity that
arose in 1925 during a conversation in Geneva with Enrique Buera,
a Uruguayan diplomat.51 Whatever the truth of this story, recent
research52 suggests that the first steps toward creating the World Cup
were also motivated by rivalry between Rimet and other European
football administrators such as Henry Delaunay, the FFFA’s very
active secretary, and Hugo Meisl, the general secretary of the Austrian
Football Association and a champion of professional football in Central
Europe.53 Different opinions have been expressed as to the reasons for
the friction between Rimet and Meisl, but it may well have been trig-
gered by Meisl’s bid to become FIFA general secretary in 1930 and his
calls for FIFA to be reorganised by abolishing the annual congress and
renewing relations with the British associations.54 What is more, Meisl’s
statements and proposals made him appear more presidential than the
president himself, so it may have been his stature as an international
50Dietchy, P.; Gastaud, Y.; Mourlane S. (2006) Histoire politique des Coupes de monde de foot-
ball, Paris: Vuibert; Mourat, A. (2008) “Le tournoi olympique de football: une propédeu-
tique à la Coupe du monde? 1896–1928” Aspects de l’histoire de la Coupe du monde de football
(Ed. A. Wahl) Metz: Centre Régional Universitaire Lorrain d’Histoire: 9–21; Charroin, P.;
Wacquet, A. (2008) “L’Universalisme professionnalisant du football contre l’amateurisme inter-
nationaliste olympique” Les paris des jeux olympiques de 1924, Volume 2: Les paris sportifs (Ed. T.
Terret) Biarritz: Atlantica: 445–490.
51Rimet (1954) Histoire merveilleuse de la Coupe du monde: 27.
52Quin, G. (2013) “La Coupe de l’Europe Centrale (1927–1938), une compétition internation-
ale oubliée?” Stadion 37(2): 285–304.

53Hafer, A.; Hafer, W. (2008) Hugo Meisl, oder die Erfindung des Modernen Fußballs. Eine
Biografie, Göttingen: Verlag die Verkstatt.

leader that cost him the job of FIFA general secretary. For this post, he
lost out to Ivo Schricker, a man Gabriel Hanot described as a “mere pen
pusher” in an article in the French newspaper Football.55
All these people were, however, committed to football and deter-
mined to develop the game, which they did through numerous initia-
tives, undertaken either in their own name or within an international
body or group of national associations. The earliest attempts to organ-
ise a major international competition were made in 1905 and 1906,
but it was not until 18 November 1926, at a conference in Prague56
chaired by Hugo Meisl and involving the Austrian, Hungarian,
Czechoslovakian and Italian football associations, that the concept of
a true world cup was born.57 According to Rimet the Prague resolu-
tion came about because “no competition existed for non-amateur[s]
and professionals, and given that many countries wanted an interna-
tional competition for propaganda reasons and the increased public
interest in football; [the nations gathered] asked for the creation of
an international competition for the best teams from each country
(with no distinction due to the status of the players) under the name
‘European Cup’”.58
A few days later, during a meeting of FIFA’s executive committee,
Meisl spoke on behalf of the conference and proposed a European
Cup to be played “between the best national teams, whether they are
composed of amateurs, non-amateurs or professionals”.59 In fact, he
suggested creating two competitions, one for clubs (focused on coun-
tries where professionalism already existed) and one for national teams
(open to all FIFA member associations). This initiative—presenting his
proposal to the executive committee—showed Meisl’s awareness of the
need to comply with FIFA’s statutes, article 20 of which states:
55Football,6 August 1931.

56Der Kicker, 2 November 1926.
57Eisenberg, C.; Lanfranchi, P.; Mason, T.; Wahl, A. (2004) 100 Years of Football: The FIFA
Centennial Book, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson: 102.

59L’Auto, 7 Décembre 1926.

The Federation claim[s] the sole right to organise an international cham-

pionship. The organisation of international competitions is based on the
agreement of the Federation. Any international competition has to be
notified to the Federation.60
Although the discussions in Prague did not restrict participation to

European teams or countries, Rimet felt that the wording leaving
open the possibility of including non-European countries was mean-
ingless because “obviously, the promoters of a European Cup surely
want to maintain it as a continental competition”.61 Such exclusive-
ness went against Rimet’s belief in sporting Universalism, so the only
decision he made about the competition in 1926 was to convene
an ad hoc commission, including Henri Delaunay, Gabriel Bonnet
and Hugo Meisl, which met in Zurich in February 1927.62 Once
again, the 1927 congress, held a few months after the ad hoc com-
mission, failed to reach agreement about an international competi-
tion. Nevertheless, progress was being made, with, for example, the
British delegates indicating their willingness to accept the principle of
a Central European competition, whose format would be subject to
further discussion.63
Now that the idea of organising a world cup had been accepted,
the 1928 and 1929 FIFA congresses were able to determine the
shape of the new competition by passing resolutions specifying how,
where and when a competition open to every FIFA member associa-
tion would be organised.64 Continuing discussions by the Delaunay-
Bonnet-Meisl Commission, also known as the ‘World Cup
Organisation Commission’,65 resulted in the competition being open
60FIFA Archives, Status, 1928 status.

62Dietschy “French Sport”: 513.
63Football Association Archives (England), Executive Committee, Report from the English dele-
gates at the 17th FIFA congress, June 1927, p. 2.

64FIFA Archives, Minutes of the 17th and 18th FIFA congress, 1928 and 1929.

to both amateurs and professionals (autumn 1928), but an attempt

to introduce financial rules for the competition (1929) failed to gain
the necessary unanimous approval. In response, Rodolphe Seeldrayers,
a FIFA vice-president decided that FIFA would take only 10% of the
gross revenues from the competition, as the costs of organising the tour-
nament (travel and accommodation expenses, administration expenses)
would be borne by the host country.66 Delegates at the 1929 FIFA con-
gress chose Uruguay to host the first world cup, after Holland, Sweden,
Argentina, Hungary, Italy and Spain withdrew their bids for a variety
of reasons, ranging from Uruguay’s domination of international football
during the 1920s (Argentina) to expressions of friendship for another
potential host country (Italy and Spain).67
Hence, Rimet was by no means solely responsible for creating the
World Cup, despite the impression given by FIFA’s decision to call the
trophy presented between the end of World War II and 1970 the Jules
Rimet Cup. However, Rimet’s Universalist beliefs were a very impor-
tant factor in ensuring the competition was truly international, rather
than being restricted to Europe. Although the first edition of the World
Cup, held in 1930, was only a moderate success in terms of the num-
ber of teams it attracted (just 13) and the media attention it generated
in Europe, it showed football’s popularity, raised awareness of the qual-
ity of the European teams68 that travelled to Uruguay and generated
reflection about considerations beyond the field of play. For example,
René Lehmann wrote in the French magazine Match: “… friendship,
the bringing together of peoples through sport, a kind of happy diplo-
macy consisting of presenting the arrival of European players as messen-
gers to their Latin Sisters from Europe (…). Mr. Jules Rimet’s persuasive
diplomacy deserved this success”.69

67Ibid.
68Belgium, Rumania, Yugoslavia and France.

69Match, 24 June 1930.
Rimet’s Presidency: The Golden Age

of Universalism?
One of Rimet’s greatest attributes was his ability to avoid and/or resolve
conflicts, whether they were caused by sporting rivalries or diplomatic
tensions. In fact, he considered FIFA to be a sporting equivalent of the
League of Nations, which had been set up in Geneva in 1920. He sum-
marised his vision of FIFA during a speech to the 1950 congress, in
which he suggested that the federation’s ambition should be to “move the
ideal human qualities shown on the pitch into everyday life. The team we
can see playing, united, loyal, disciplined, measured, so perfectly united,
isn’t it a perfect reflection of what our civilisation should be?”70
Rimet’s diplomatic talents came to the fore during the 1930s when
relations between FIFA’s South American and European members
almost collapsed over the issue of Europe’s continuing domination of
the world body.71 The growth in South American football since the cre-
ation of the South American Football Confederation in 1916 meant
that South America’s football associations now saw themselves as rep-
resentatives of one of the world’s most important football regions. As
such, they were unwilling to accept Europe’s continuing domination of
FIFA and felt they should have more influence over the world body’s
governance.72 Faced with Europe’s continuing refusal to consider their
demands, South America’s football associations eventually threatened to
withdraw from the world federation unless they were given greater say
in how it was run. Awarding the first World Cup to Uruguay helped
sooth these grievances, as did the creation of a permanent South
American seat on the executive committee, in 1938, but it took a visit
from the president in March 1939 to finally resolve the tensions.

71Dietschy, P. (2013) “Making Football Global? FIFA, Europe, and the Non-European Football
World, 1912–74” Journal of Global History 8: 279–298.
72For more on the relationship between South America and Europe inside FIFA, see: Vonnard,
P., Quin, G. “Did South America foster European football? Transnational Influences on the
Continentalisation of FIFA and the Creation of UEFA, 1926–1959” Sport in Society (published
online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2016.1221208).
However, this delicate balance was immediately overthrown by the

Second World War, which caused such deep divisions between the war-
ring countries that it was difficult to maintain international sporting
relations between 1942 and 1949. Archives from this period, including
Rimet’s correspondence, show the importance of the friendships between
executive committee members, who frequently asked after each other’s
fortunes during the war years, even if they were rarely able to meet. Ivo
Schricker, who continued working at FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich, was
particularly active in maintaining correspondence within the executive
committee. Rimet was able to travel to Zurich only twice between 1940
and 1945, whereas before the war he had gone there several times a year.
Nevertheless, correspondence shows that some delegates managed to meet
outside Switzerland and that football was still the main topic of discus-
sion between them. As the war came to an end, football’s administrators
began examining ways of rebuilding international relations. For example,
Belgium’s Rodolphe Seeldrayers met the Netherland’s Karel Lotsy on sev-
eral occasions, and Rimet, sometimes with Rodolphe Seeldrayers, held
meetings with Germany’s Peco Bauwens. Relations appear to have been
more strained with Italy’s Giovanni Mauro, Finland’s Erich von Frenckell,
Czechoslovakia’s Rudolf Pelikan and Yugoslavia’s Mihailo Andrejevic.
The end of the war was a relief for all FIFA members, but there
was great resentment against the Germans, especially Peco Bauwens.
However, Rimet does not appear to have shared this feeling and con-
tinued to support his German colleague. Was this the result of his
Universalist beliefs or was it simply due to his personal friendship with
Bauwens? The archives do not provide a definitive answer to this ques-
tion, but Rimet’s efforts to avoid antagonism influenced all FIFA’s dis-
cussions during the second half of the 1940s. Although FIFA’s 1946
congress voted to exclude Germany and Japan,73 it was agreed to
“resume relations with Austrian and Norwegian associations, and it
is decided that those associations do not loose their right to be FIFA
members”.74 This decision was justified on the grounds that the changes
in government in Austria and Norway had been imposed, so their
73FIFA Archives, Minutes of the 25th FIFA congress, 1946 [translated from the French].
74FIFA Archives, Executive Committee, Minutes from the 10, 11 and 12 November 1945.
support for the Nazis did not reflect the democratic will of the people.
Nevertheless, enduring tensions in Europe meant the decision was not
unanimous, with the Danish Football Association, in particular, oppos-
ing the rapid reintegration of Norway. Rimet referred to Denmark’s
position in a letter he sent to Schricker on 10 January 1946: “The tone
of this letter does not surprise me. All those countries suffered […] from
the German occupation. Hence, they feel a legitimate bitterness toward
those whom they think—very wrongly from our point of view—did
not fight enough against the invaders of their country.”75
Again, Rimet played a key role in helping FIFA navigate these difficult
waters. In fact, Rimet’s ability to bring people together was undoubtedly
his most important quality as FIFA president. For Pierre Delaunay, who
became general secretary of UEFA after the death of his father, Henri,
Rimet was not an ‘English-style’ president who just set a course to fol-
low and attended meetings; he was more a ‘French-style’ president, who
would shake hands, try to defuse tensions and, sometimes, propose con-
crete solutions to crises.76 Although such stereotypes have to be taken with
a pinch of salt, they may go some way to explaining the often-difficult
working relationship, especially when it came to national issues, between
Rimet, who tended to think in terms of politics and diplomacy, and Henri
Delaunay, who was more inclined to focus on rules and regulations.
Universalism Versus Continentalism

In the early 1950s, as Germany was officially reintegrated into FIFA,77
the federation was hotly debating possible changes to its constitution
and governance. FIFA’s greatly expanded membership78 and increased
75FIFA Archives, Rimet’s correspondence, Letter from Jules Rimet to Ivo Schricker, 10 January
1946.
76Interview with Pierre Delaunay, 18 September 2012.
77Wahlig, H. (2010) Ein Tor zur Welt? Göttingen: Verlag die Verkstatt.
78Between 1935 and 1953, FIFA’s membership increased from 50 countries to more than 80
countries. FIFA Archives, Secretary’s Report, 1954–1955.

head office workload79 led many members to believe it was time for
the federation to be partially decentralised. Vocal support for these
changes came from some of FIFA’s younger representatives, including
England’s Stanley Rous, Italy’s Ottorino Barassi and Switzerland’s Ernst
Thommen, as well as the South American associations. The debate was
also an opportunity for South America’s associations, along with the
Soviet Union, to renew their demand for more power within FIFA, in
the name of equal consideration for all members.80 Their vision was
shared by the United Kingdom’s football associations,81 which wanted
to see FIFA open its doors to the newly decolonised countries of the
Commonwealth. These reforms, which were introduced in the last
few years of Rimet’s presidency, reflected the new world order that was
emerging in the 1950s.
Diminished by old age, Rimet was much less active in the federation’s
affairs and he slowly began to lose his authority. Although he was re-
elected president at the 1950 congress in Rio, just before his 77th
birthday, he had to accept the organisation of an ad hoc commission
to assess proposals for the “re-organisation of FIFA” put forward by the
national associations. The composition of this commission was the sub-
ject of intense discussion, but European countries eventually managed
to maintain their dominance. Nevertheless, it was becoming increasingly
obvious that Rimet was unable to keep up with these developments,
so, following Ivo Schricker’s retirement in 1951, another commission
was set up to run FIFA’s day-to-day affairs and find a future president.
Founding members of this commission included Rous, Barassi and
Thommen. Rimet’s declining influence was further highlighted by the
commission “forgetting” to invite him to one of its meetings “due to a
misunderstanding”.82 Rimet was sent a letter of apology, but this snub
79Vonnard, P. (2012) La Genèse de la Coupe des clubs champions européens. Une histoire du football
européen (1920–1960), Neuchâtel: CIES.
80Kowalski, R.; Porter, D. (1997) “Political Football: Moscow Dynamo in Britain, 1945”
International Journal of the History of Sport 14(2): 100–121.

81Beck “Going to War”.
82FIFA Archives, Executive Committee, Minutes from the 11 October 1950.

showed he was no longer truly in charge at FIFA and that his era was
drawing to a close. In addition, the man chosen to succeed Schricker,
Kurt Gassmann, was a close friend of Ernst Thommen83 who was
appointed ahead of many other candidates even though he had not offi-
cially applied for the post.84
In 1953, FIFA held an extraordinary congress in order to examine
possible changes to the federation’s constitution (statutes and rules).
After much debate, the congress voted to allow national associations
to group together into regional confederations within FIFA and to
give these confederations the power to elect (and dismiss) FIFA’s vice-
presidents and executive committee members.85 Rimet, who was
excluded from this process, was wary of these changes, which he felt
would “interfere with the proper administration of the institution”.86
Although Rimet is less well-known that Pierre De Coubertin, he is
undoubtedly one of the most important sports administrators of the
first half of the twentieth century, a field in which he achieved the rec-
ognition that had eluded him in other areas of public life, most nota-
bly politics. More importantly, he remained true to his faith in sport as
a way of creating a common language between peoples and in football
as a vector of peace. He summarised this belief in a political testimony
he wrote in 1954, in the twilight of his life, entitled “Le football et le
rapprochement des peuples”.
Conclusion
That same year, during his introductory speech at his last FIFA congress,
Rimet spoke about his still youthful passion for the game: “Sir, […] the
melancholy which could affect me dissolves before the certainty that the
83Homburg, H. (2007) “Ernst Thommen, die Schweiz und der Weltfussball, 1946–1962” Basler
Zeitschrifte für Geschichte und Altertumskunde (107): 69–102.
84Archives FIFA, Executive Committee, Minutes from the 17 April 1951.
85Archives FIFA, Minutes of the 2nd extraordinary congress, 1953.

future will build on the past, with the same fervour, the same faith, the
same enthusiasm, the same desire and the same will to serve soccer and,
beyond it, the youth of the world.”87 After lengthy applause, Rimet was
appointed honorary president, as befitted a man who had earned his
place in the annals of football.
Although the most powerful person in any sport federation is usu-
ally the general secretary, a long-serving and charismatic president
can have considerable influence over a federation’s actions and future.
As the ‘irremovable president’ of both FIFA and the French Football
Association for more than 30 years, Rimet was that kind of leader.
Under his stewardship, FIFA created an international competition
that would become the world’s greatest single-sport event, turned foot-
ball into a truly professional sport and created numerous initiatives to
increase participation in football.
Rimet’s contribution to football has led to him being called a vision-
ary, a missionary and a ‘sporting statesman’. To this list, we would like
to add ‘volunteer’, as he was never remunerated for his work. Naturally,
FIFA paid his expenses for attending committee meetings and con-
gresses, but Rimet firmly believed that FIFA’s administrators should be
motivated by their commitment to the sport, rather than by financial
reward.
Like all high-profile figures, Rimet made enemies during his career,
but he also knew how to bring people together to implement the meas-
ures he felt were needed to develop football and to reform the structures
of governing bodies. Nevertheless, the network he had built up was
less effective after the Second World War, as a new generation began to
take over and football had to face new challenges resulting from decol-
onisation, FIFA’s increased membership and the creation of continental
confederations. Rimet’s era was coming to an end, but his moral influ-
ence would continue long after he retired. For example, during his cam-
paign to be elected FIFA president, 20 years after Rimet retired, Brazil’s
FIFA representative, João Havelange, highlighted his commitment to
87Ibid.
reforming FIFA by holding up Rimet’s achievements as a model his

opponent in the election, Stanley Rous, had failed to live up to.88
Biography
1873: Born in Theuley.
1885: Moved to Paris.
1895: Military service.
1897: Foundation of the Red Star Club.
1898: Marriage to Jeanne Peyrègne (they had three children).
1910: Creation of the Ligue de Football Association.
1914: Attended his first FIFA Congress.
1914: Joined the military reserve.
1919: Awarded the Croix de Guerre three times.
1919: President of the FFFA.
1920: President of FIFA.
1930: President of the CNS.
1931: Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.
1949: Resignation as president of the FFFA.
1954: Resignation as president of FIFA.
1955: Honorary president of FIFA.
1956: Died in Paris (23rd October).
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British Football and FIFA, 1928–46. The International Journal of History of
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deux-guerres. Les Jeux olympiques contre la Coupe du monde de football.
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88IOC Archives, João Havelange’s personal file.

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5
Henri de Baillet-Latour: Globalising
the Olympic Movement
Florence Carpentier
In 1925 the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

entrusted Henri de Baillet-Latour with the delicate task of taking
over from Pierre de Coubertin, France’s famous founder of the mod-
ern Olympic Games, who had presided the IOC for almost 30 years.
Baillet-Latour, a Belgian count from Brussels, had joined the Committee
in 1903 but played little part in its affairs until 1920. He owed his
appointment as president to his successful organisation of the Antwerp
Olympics just a few months after the end of the First World War, the
decisive role he played in creating the Executive Board and his trips to
South America to promote the IOC and further its interests. The chal-
lenges facing the new president were both internal and external, and
included meeting calls to replace Coubertin’s autocratic style of man-
agement, protecting the IOC’s institutional monopoly in the face of the
increasing strength of the international sports federations, and expanding
the Olympics across the globe. Elected at the age of 49, Baillet-Latour
would remain president until his sudden death in January 1942.
F. Carpentier (*)
University of Rouen, Normandy, France
e-mail: florence.carpentier1@univ-rouen.fr
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_5
108 F. Carpentier
The Olympic project had been international since its launch in

1894, but, even though Coubertin had taken steps to develop the
Olympics beyond Europe, this initial internationalism was lim-
ited in extent because the IOC remained, to all intents and purposes,
European. Consequently, it was his successor’s expansionist and coloni-
alist approach that truly spread Olympism across the globe, and by the
beginning of World War Two the IOC’s membership had widened con-
siderably to include officials from South America and Asia. In addition,
the Committee sponsored “regional games”, viewed as primers for the
Olympics and which increased participation by South American and
Asian countries in the four-yearly Games. Tokyo’s election as the host
city for the 1940 Olympics was an important step in this globalization
process.
Examination of the IOC’s archives in Lausanne and the Baillet-
Latour family’s private archives shows how Coubertin’s successor’s prag-
matism and authority allowed him to transform the way the IOC was
run and to remain at the head of the organisation for 17 years. He used
his love of travel, diplomatic skill and colonialist ideas to launch the
IOC on the path of expansion across Europe and the world. His aristo-
cratic background and cosmopolitan outlook on the world also greatly
influenced his approach to managing the IOC.
An Heir, a Sportsman and a Cosmopolitan

Socialite
Henri de Baillet-Latour was born in 1876 and belonged to the same
generation as Jules Rimet (1873–1956), who founded the foot-
ball World Cup and who ruled as FIFA’s “irremovable president” for
30 years.1 Although the lives of these two great sports administrators
have a number of points in common, they were irremediably separated
by their very different social backgrounds. Their different origins may
also partly explain some of the disagreements that separated the two
1See the chapter by Grégory Quin and Philippe Vonnard.

5 Henri de Baillet-Latour: Globalising the Olympic Movement 109
institutions, particularly between the two world wars. Just like his pre-
decessor, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, Baillet-Latour, belonged to the
“leisure class”, a category defined by the American sociologist Thorstein
Veblen in 18992 as those whose wealth and position mean they are
required to “abstain from productive work”.3 Consequently, the envi-
ronment in which Baillet-Latour grew up was far removed from Rimet’s
middle-class world. The Baillet-Latour’s wealth and aristocratic status
had been handed down from generation to generation for centuries,
with each generation strengthening or maintaining the family’s position
through astute marriages. By the beginning of the twentieth century,
the family fortune was mostly in real estate.
Henri’s father, Ferdinand de Baillet-Latour (1850–1925), was from
the province of Antwerp (Flemish-speaking area of northern Belgium),
where the family owned a small castle in the town of Brasschaat. It was
here that he and his family lived during the summer and the hunting
season. Although Ferdinand had independent means, he was not idle.
He chose to serve his king by following a career in politics, an elitist
profession that was long open only to Belgium’s nobility. He first held
office as mayor of Brasschaat from 1902 to 1908, representing the then
dominant conservative Catholic party, before being appointed gover-
nor of the province of Antwerp and, finally, a senator (1912–1921). He
died in Brussels at the age of 75, four years after his final term in par-
liament. Henri’s mother, Caroline d’Outremonlt (1853–1933), was the
daughter of the head of one of Belgium’s largest companies and a mem-
ber of one of the country’s richest families. She was close to the royal
family, where she held the prestigious position of “lady’s companion” to
Queen Marie-Henriette.4 The fortune and position she inherited greatly
increased the Baillet-Latour’s wealth and prestige. As the oldest of three
children (he had a brother and a sister), Henri was not only first in line
to the family title and fortune, his shoulders had to bear the weight of
his parents’ ambitions for continuing the Baillet-Latour family line.
2Veblen Thorstein, The Theory of the leisure Class, New York, London, Macmillan, 1899.
3Ibidem.
4Meuwissen Eric, Richesse oblige. La Belle Epoque des grandes fortunes. Bruxelles, Racine, 1999.
110 F. Carpentier
He grew up in the family’s townhouse in the new and exclusive

“Léopold Quarter” of Brussels, where he was surrounded by a reti-
nue of servants. Like every son of the aristocracy at the time, he was
sent to a very strict Jesuit school and then to the Catholic University
of Louvain in 1895, where he studied law for two years. At first, he
seemed destined to follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue a career
in politics or perhaps the diplomatic service, but dramatic changes in
Belgium’s political landscape put paid to these plans. In fact, the early
years of the twentieth century saw a major shift towards greater democ-
racy and Belgium’s two historic political parties—the Catholics and the
Liberals—were forced to adapt to the presence of the new but powerful
Belgian Workers’ Party. At the end of the First World War, when Henri
was of an age to enter politics, Belgium’s elite was forced to heed the
voice of the people and the Catholic Party, to which Henri belonged,
was struggling.5 Politics was no longer the preserve of the country’s aris-
tocracy and Baillet-Latour’s ambitions were thwarted. In some ways, a
career as a sports administrator was an opportune way for him to over-
come this political setback. In fact, it is interesting to note that many
other great administrators of world sport, including Pierre de Coubertin
and Jules Rimet, had reacted to defeat in politics by dedicating them-
selves to developing national and international sport.
When Baillet-Latour joined the IOC in 1903 it was due more to luck
than determination on his part. Pierre de Coubertin was looking for a
dynamic and reliable organiser for the International Congress for Sport
and Physical Education, due to be held in Brussels in 1905. The origi-
nal organiser, Captain Robert Reyntiens, had resigned and Coubertin’s
second choice, Senator Edmond van Grootven, had turned down the
job.6 It was Maxime de Bousies, Belgium’s first IOC member, who
brought Baillet-Latour to Coubertin’s attention. Known for his skills as
an equestrian, polo player and hunter, the 27-year-old aristocrat was a
member of Belgium’s very exclusive Cercle du Parc et Jockey-Club, as was
5Delwit Pascal, La vie politique en Belgique de 1830 à nos jours. Bruxelles, Editions de l’Université
de Bruxelles, 2009.
6Renson Roland et al., Enflammé par l’olympisme…Cent ans de Comité Olympique et Interfédéral
Belge. Roeselare, Roularta Books, 2006.

Bousies. Thus, Baillet-Latour was very well connected in Belgium high

society, single, a sportsman and available; in other words, he was exactly
the sort of person Coubertin wanted. In 1904, Henri married Elisalex
Clary et Aldringen, the daughter of the Austro-Hungarian ambassador
to Belgium. She gave birth to their first child, Guy, a few days before
Henri had presided over the opening of the 1905 Congress. However,
this first experience of organising an important event for coordinating
international sport does not seem to have ignited an immediate voca-
tion, as Baillet-Latour’s less than perfect attendance record at IOC
Sessions and the very few letters he exchanged with Coubertin and
other Committee members show that he contributed only sporadically
to the work of the IOC. Nevertheless, at the 1914 Olympic session he
put forward Antwerp as a possible host city for the 1920 Games. The
outbreak of the First World War, just a few weeks later, brought an
end to the IOC’s activities and Baillet-Latour followed his father to the
Belgian legation in The Hague, where they provided help to Belgian ref-
ugees. At the 1919 Olympic Session, he convinced the IOC’s members
to award the first post-war Olympic Games to Antwerp and from this
moment on he became much more involved in Olympic administra-
tion. After organising a very successful Games with a just a few months’
preparation, he helped create an Executive Committee (EC) within the
IOC to provide a check on Coubertin’s autocratic management style,
made a long tour of South America to promote the IOC and finally,
in 1925, claimed the presidency of the IOC as Coubertin’s successor.
The same year, just before the death of his father, he was appointed
president of the prestigious Jockey-Club de Belgique, a position he kept
until his death, and of the National Committee for Physical Education
and Belgian Olympic Committee, the umbrella organisation for
Belgian sport.7 Thus, at the age of 49, Henri de Baillet-Latour’s career
as a sports official took a completely new turn, both nationally and
internationally.
Henri’s generation, unlike that of his father, grew up with the rise of
internationalism and capitalism. So much so that the progressive decline
7Renson Roland et al. Op. cit.

112 F. Carpentier
of the aristocracy8 forced them to adopt “reconversion strategies”.9 In

both his personal life and his functions as head of the Olympic move-
ment, Baillet-Latour was very cosmopolitan, showed a pronounced taste
for travel and displayed a European and colonialist vision of the world.
Thanks to the vast amount of correspondence conserved in the IOC’s
archives, it is possible to reconstruct the path followed by the president
week by week from his appointment in 1925. His personal fortune
allowed him to travel frequently, both within Europe and further afield,
to satisfy his passion for equestrianism (hunting, buying thoroughbreds),
spend the winter season in the sun, take the waters in exclusive spa
resorts, visit his friends and deal with Olympic business. He travelled by
train, by car and by boat, sometimes with his servants and always staying
in the best hotels. His mother’s death in 1933 and the inheritance he
received undoubtedly helped him get through the economic crisis of the
1930s, which does not appear to have impeded his incredibly luxurious
lifestyle. Although his real estate holdings in Belgium had become less
profitable, numerous investments in African and South American energy
ventures also provided him substantial revenues. His internationalism
and his desire to “reconversions” can also be seen in the educational and
marital choices he made for his son. Rather than following the tradi-
tional study path in Belgium, he sent Guy to Eton College and then to
a prestigious school in Switzerland. Like many late-nineteenth-century
European aristocrats, he also adopted a new marriage strategy, marrying
his son to a rich American heiress. As a result, during the 1930s Guy
became an administrator for a copper-mining company in the Belgian
Congo and a senior member of one of Belgium’s biggest banks. Then,
in 1939 he was appointed Belgium’s Colonies Minister. Having risen so
high at a very young age, he appeared destined for a glittering career in
both politics and business, only to have his life cut short in 1941, in an
aeroplane accident. A few weeks later, at the age of just 65, Henri died
suddenly at his home in Brussels.
8Mayer Arno, The Persistence of the Old Regime. Europe to the Great War. New York, Pantheon
Books, 1981.
9Concept developed by the bourdieusian sociologist Monique de Saint-Martin notably in :
L’espace de la noblesse, Paris, Editions Métailié, 1993.

A Pragmatic Leader and a Return to Autocracy

Henri de Baillet-Latour was one of the driving forces behind the cre-
ation of the IOC’s Executive Board in 1921. Pierre de Coubertin had
been at the head of the IOC for more than 20 years, during which time
the success of Olympic Games grew with each edition. Nevertheless,
his autocratic management style faced growing criticism from the
Committee’s more active members. In fact, the IOC’s 60 members
met just once a year, at the Olympic Session, and were rarely consulted
by the president before he made his decisions. However, by the time of
the 1921 Olympic Session in Lausanne, Coubertin was no longer able
to resist the pressure from Switzerland’s Godefroy de Blonay, France’s
Melchior de Polignac and Baillet-Latour and he was forced to announce
the creation of an EC, supposedly to manage the IOC’s affairs while he
was absent on a long trip.10 Coubertin appointed his friend, Blonay,
who had already run the IOC during the war as the EC’s first chairman.
The other members were the Czech Jiri Guth-Jarkovsky, the Swede
Siegfried Edström, Polignac and Baillet-Latour, who was appointed
vice-president. From the very beginning, Baillet-Latour showed he
was a leader, taking advantage of Blonay’s absence to chair the EC’s
first meeting, held in Paris on 7 November 1921. Here he drew up the
14 points of the EC’s internal regulations almost single-handedly and
appointed his ally Polignac as secretary, against Coubertin’s wishes. The
EC’s decision-making powers extended to the internal functioning of
the IOC, respect for the Olympic Charter and all business relating to
the Olympic Games, sports federations, national Olympic committees
and governments. What is more, the EC took over responsibility for
the debate on amateurism in sport—a regulatory and ideological issue
that ran to the very heart of the sporting and Olympic movement of
the time. Obviously, there was nothing temporary about this new gov-
erning body, which so effectively curbed the excessive power Coubertin
had wielded that he did not even become part of the EC on his return.
10According to Pierre de Coubertin’s own account, published in his Mémoires olympiques,
Lausanne, BIPS, 1931. However, none of his biographers have found any evidence for the “long
trip” used as a pretext.
114 F. Carpentier
However, Baillet-Latour’s election as IOC president in June 1925 was

far from unanimous, as the Committee was split between those who
remained loyal to Coubertin and his opponents. Nevertheless, Godefroy
de Blonay, who Coubertin had chosen as his successor, took sides with
Baillet-Latour, who was finally elected in the second round of voting,
gaining 19 votes out of 27.
There now began a period of reform for the Committee in which the
EC became a permanent part of the IOC’s structure. Quite naturally,
Baillet-Latour took the chair of the first EC meeting of his presidency,
in November 1925, and showed that he wanted to move away from his
predecessor’s practices by stressing his:
desire for close collaboration between all the members of the EC. This
means not taking any important decisions without consulting the EC,
whose work must now been done collectively, although this does not
exclude the possibility of individual tasks. When an important decision is
taken, a copy will be sent to all members of the EC.11
In fact, 10 of the 14 points included in the internal regulations con-

cerned the sharing of information between the president, the EC and all
IOC members, and between the IOC and the outside world. In addi-
tion, the new president reactivated the Olympic Review, which had not
been published since 1914, in the form of a quarterly bulletin for IOC
members and, most importantly, for international and national sports
federations and national Olympic committees. This communication
tool, published in French and English, played a crucial role in raising
awareness of the IOC, its members and its activities around the world.
Very quickly, the EC became the IOC’s sole and uncontested deci-
sion-making body, although some members began to question Baillet-
Latour’s overbearing power. The EC debated all of the IOC’s business
during at least two annual meetings, often supplemented by lengthy
exchanges of letters, and then presented its conclusions to the IOC’s
members at Olympic Sessions. Although these conclusions were put
11Minutes of the Executive Committee, Paris, 3–6 November 1925, IOC’s Archives (AIOC).
forward as “propositions”, as a matter of courtesy, the members never

opposed the EC’s decisions—during this period in its history, the IOC
was still a very elitist organisation, at least a third of whose members
were aristocrats. It was essentially an association of gentlemen whose
actions were guided by good manners and where it was considered bad
form to openly challenge senior members’ decisions. For example, the
terms for members of the EC and the president were never questioned
during elections.
However, almost immediately after his election as president in 1925,
Baillet-Latour started controlling the composition of the IOC in order
to ensure a majority of its members were people he could rely on to
support him personally. Although the number of IOC members did
not increase during his presidency, turnover between 1925 and 1939
was almost total. In fact, 19 out of the 65 IOC members present when
Coubertin left office quickly resigned, either of their own volition or
after being asked to do so by the new president, who had no qualms
about removing IOC members he felt were inactive and therefore use-
less. In their place, he chose men who were known to have influence
in the sporting, political or economic fields, keeping almost exclusive
control over who was co-opted to the IOC throughout his presidency.
He checked up on every potential member, either through his network
of friends and acquaintances or by personally going to the country in
question. His choices were guided by a variety of strategies, specific
needs (organisers for future Olympic Games, infiltrate dissident interna-
tional federations, etc.) or geopolitical considerations (expand into new
continents, combat the “red menace” of bolshevism, etc.). At the same
time, he was wary of people he referred to as “politicians”, who he saw
as being ambitious and opportunistic, or whose power was as unstable
as the governments to which they belonged. Finally, applicants had to
have their own personal fortune, so they were free to contribute actively
to the IOC’s work, and be people of quality and influence. Thus, once
Baillet-Latour had chosen his ideal candidate, he submitted the name to
a vote by the EC, who rarely questioned his suggestions, and then to the
whole IOC. The following passage concerning the co-option of a new
member for Greece in 1925 perfectly summarises the general mind-set:
116 F. Carpentier
I do not personally know M. Averof, but I take it that you would not put
his name forward unless you were satisfied that he was, from every point
of view, a desirable person to replace Count Mercati. On this account I
am prepared to give you my vote in his favour.12
It is clear, therefore, that after Pierre de Coubertin’s autocratic presi-

dency, the running of the IOC fell into the hands of a small group of
administrators who were skilfully controlled by Baillet-Latour. The great
care he took in choosing members for the Committee undoubtedly
helped him consolidate his power as president.
The New Olympic Europe

Just like Coubertin, Baillet-Latour combined his cosmopolitism and his
strategy for expanding Olympism. The new president believed the time
had come to use the IOC’s annual Olympic Sessions to build a great
Olympic Europe. During Coubertin’s presidency, the IOC had tended
to hold its meetings in Lausanne, Paris or the cities of France’s allies,
London, Rome or Brussels. In contrast, Baillet-Latour turned down
a proposal to hold every second Olympic Session in Lausanne on the
basis that it was more valuable for the meetings to move from coun-
try to country in order to promote the IOC with the local authorities
(political, sporting and economic) and evaluate the development of
sport in each country. Consequently, between 1926 and 1939, Olympic
Sessions were held across Western Europe, from Oslo to Barcelona and
from Lisbon to Warsaw. In 1939, the Committee met in Los Angeles
when the city hosted the Olympic Games and in 1938 it crossed the
Mediterranean for what was considered an unforgettable Session on the
Nile (Tables 5.1 and 5.2).
Sessions generally lasted a week, during which half-day meetings
were combined with a programme of social and cultural events (visits
to tourist attractions, clubs, sports exhibitions and traditional games,
shows, numerous official banquets and receptions). These annual
12Letter from Reginald John Kentish to Baillet-Latour, 24 December 1925, AIOC.

Table 5.1 Host cities for Olympic Sessions during Coubertin’s presidency
(1900–1925)
1900 Paris France
1901 Paris France
1904 London Great Britain
1905 Brussels Belgium
1907 The Hague Holland
1909 Berlin Germany
1919 Lausanne Switzerland
1920 Antwerp Belgium
1922 Paris France
1923 Rome Italy
1924 Paris France
1925 Prague Czechoslovakia
Table 5.2 Host cities for Olympic Sessions during Baillet-Latour’s presidency
(1926–1939)
1926 Lisbon Portugal
1927 Monte-Carlo Monaco
1928 Amsterdam Holland
1930 Berlin Germany
1931 Barcelona Spain
1932 Los Angeles USA
1933 Vienna Austria
1934 Athens Greece
1935 Oslo Norway
1936 Berlin Germany
1937 Warsaw Poland
1938 Cairo Egypt
get-togethers were very sociable occasions for IOC members, who often
attended them accompanied by their wives and even their children.
Receptions by local dignitaries allowed them to strengthen or extend
their own social networks across Europe. Moreover, at a time when pub-
lic policymakers were just beginning to realise the possibilities offered
by sport and international competitions, these visits to different coun-
tries allowed the IOC to raise awareness of what was still a relatively
118 F. Carpentier
little-known organisation. Baillet-Latour carefully supervised the proto-

col for these events, which, every year, included receptions with foreign
affairs ministers as well as the country’s highest officials or their direct
representatives. Inspired by the diplomatic world, with which many
members, including Baillet-Latour, frequently rubbed shoulders, the
IOC invented its own protocol and tried to establish itself as a supra-
national organisation for peace, a sort of sporting League of Nations.
Hence, during Baillet-Latour’s presidency, the IOC became much more
widely known and respected across Europe, despite the fragility of the
national Olympic committees, which were still small and confidential,
had little power and were often challenged by their country’s sports
administrators. But the new president’s other ambition was to build on
Pierre de Coubertin’s work outside Europe and spread the Olympic and
western model of sport across the globe.
The Olympics Colonise the World

It was Coubertin, during the First World War, who took the first steps
toward spreading the Olympic model to South America by, for exam-
ple, creating a Latin American Olympic Propaganda Committee in
1917.13 His objective was as much to counter the expansion of the
YMCA’s sporting model as it was to globalise the Olympics. But, after
stormy exchanges with the president of the World Alliance of YMCAs,
Elwood S. Brown, during the 1919 Inter-Allied Games in Paris,
the two men finally reached an accord in which the South American
Games was placed under Olympic patronage. This was also done for the
Indian Empire Games and the Far-Eastern Games, which the YMCA
had organised in Britain’s and America’s colonies during the 1910s. In
exchange, Brown had demanded that the countries participating in
these games be represented on the IOC. This request was granted at the
13Cesar R. Torres, “Spreading the Olympic Idea” to Latin America: The IOC-YMCA Partnership
and the 1922 Latin American Games”, Journal of Olympic History, 16, n°1, 2008, pp. 16–24.
1920 Session in Antwerp, proving that the accord was not a completely
one-sided agreement, as some authors have suggested.14
Professor Sloane listed all the possible advantages to the IOC of officially
recognising the South American and Indian Games, which, in the future,
will be placed under its patronage and control, to the exclusion of inter-
ference by any foreign sports organisation, […] it being agreed that repre-
sentatives of the newly involved countries will be admitted to the IOC.15
What is more, in 1922 Baillet-Latour made the trip to Brazil himself,

ostensibly to observe the first South American Games. In fact, his mis-
sion was more to choose future members of the IOC, so he would not
have to consider candidates proposed by the YMCA, rather than to eval-
uate the development of sport in South America’s republics. This was
the sort of trip that his personal fortune made possible. On his return
from his trans-Atlantic travels, he was warmly congratulated by his col-
leagues at the 1923 Session in Rome, where he presented a list of future
candidates and announced that the new games would be recurrent.16
Thus, he had understood the value to the IOC of setting up regional
games and the value to himself of building a network of loyal mem-
bers. During the same Session he announced the creation of games in
Central America, the first edition of which would be held in Mexico
in 1926. He went on to preside conferences on this topic in Paris in
1924 in order to prepare the next step, the 1925 Far-Eastern Games, to
be hosted by Manila in the American Philippines. Finally, at the 1930
Olympic Congress in London Baillet-Latour and the members of the
IOC decided to work more systematically to spread Olympism across
the Far East. The 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles—the United
14As noted in the article by C. R. Torres, op.cit., 2008, and those by Norbert Müller and Ralf
Tuttas, “The role of the YMCA: Especially that of Elwood S. Brown, Secretary of Physical
Education of the YMCA, in the world-wide expansion of the Olympic Movement during
Pierre de Coubertin’s presidency”, Fifth International Symposium for Olympic research, 2000,
pp. 127–134.
15Minutes of the Olympic Session in Antwerp, 1920, AIOC.
16Minutes of the Olympic Session in Rome, 1923, AIOC.

120 F. Carpentier
States had been lobbying to host the Games since 1920—showed the
strategic value of holding the Olympics closer to the Pacific region in
order to increase participation by Asian athletes. Ten years after his first
propaganda visit, Baillet-Latour used his trip to California as a spring-
board for a tour of Asia. This trip resulted in the co-option of seven new
IOC members and the decision to award the 1940 Olympic Games to
Tokyo, although these Games were soon threatened by the outbreak
of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. As the conflict continued, Baillet-
Latour decided to travel to South Africa in January 1939 to meet the
country’s IOC representative, Henry Nourse, who was monitoring the
war in order to assess whether the Japanese would be able to host the
Games and the Chinese delegation would be able to take part. On his
return from Johannesburg, the president proposed co-opting a second
member for South Africa to help Nourse. Nevertheless, the colonial
ambitions of the Japanese government defeated this next step in the glo-
balisation of the Olympics and Japan had to wait until 1964 to host its
first Olympiad.17
Africa was a different case in that the YMCA had never set foot
there. Here, Baillet-Latour shared Coubertin’s colonialist vision: the
goal behind organising an African Games was to spread the idea of
sport amongst the indigenous population and continue Europe’s
“civilising” work in Africa. Planning for the first games began in 1923
with support from the French, Belgian, British, Portuguese and Italian
colonial authorities, with the first edition due to be held in Algiers in
1925. However, the withdrawal of the Algerian authorities led to the
Games being postponed until 1927 and moved to Cairo. Once again,
and although preparations were at an advanced stage, the local govern-
ment backed out just a few weeks before the start of the competitions.
As a result of the obvious difficulties in organising the games and grow-
ing controversies within the colonial countries, the IOC temporarily
abandoned its project. During the 1938 Session, a Nile cruise, entirely
financed by the King of Egypt, allowed the IOC to renew strategic con-
tacts with Africa. Nevertheless, it was not until the continent had been
17Collins Sandra, The 1940 Tokyo Games: The Missing Olympics. Oxon, Routledge, 2007.
mostly decolonised that Coubertin’s and Baillet-Latour’s dream finally

came true with the staging of the first African Games in 1965, when
Avery Brundage was at the head of the IOC.
The Successful Globalisation of Olympism

Baillet-Latour’s death on 7 January 1942 also marked the end of the
“persistence” (Arno Meyer) of the aristocrats at the head of the IOC
and the dawn of the age of the businessmen, personified by the rise
to the top of the IOC of the Swedish industrialist Sigfried Edström
(1942–1952) and the American property developer Avery Brundage
(1952–1972). Despite initially putting on a more democratic and more
transparent front, Baillet-Latour’s leadership turned out to be no less
autocratic than that of his predecessor, Coubertin. His personal con-
trol over co-options and the loyalty provided by some of its members
undermined the role of the EC. However, his personal fortune gave him
the freedom and time to become the first globetrotting president of the
IOC and thereby spread the Olympic model across the world, while
blocking the expansion of the YMCA. With the finesse of a true diplo-
mat, and despite the geopolitical constraints resulting from colonialism
and the limitations of contemporary means of transportation and com-
munication, he managed to turn the Olympics into a global event. This
process of globalisation would be completed after 1945 with the admit-
tance of the Soviet Bloc into the Olympic arena, the post-war process of
decolonisation and the development of worldwide television coverage in
the 1960s.
If Baillet-Latour is one of the IOC’s lesser-known presidents, it is
perhaps as much because he did not leave any written account of his
actions—unlike Coubertin—as because of suspicions about his contacts
with the Nazis, partly raised by the way his funeral was turned into a
Nazi-propaganda event. Nevertheless, his presidency is still mostly
remembered for the Nazis’ hosting of the Berlin Games and the way
Germany took control of the IOC. As a fierce opponent of Bolshevism
and an anti-Semite, Baillet-Latour seems to have been fascinated by the
order imposed by the Nazi regime. Like many conservatives in Europe,
122 F. Carpentier
he could not accept political instability, in his case, the vicissitudes of

Belgian politics during the 1930s. Although he does not appear to have
ever joined the Rexist party formed by the Belgian nationalist Léon
Degrelle, his relations with the German authorities and with collabo-
rators in occupied Belgium merit further investigation. Unfortunately,
such research has been made difficult by the lack of documentary
archives, many of which have been expurgated by the institutions
involved.18 On the other hand, Sigfried Edström’s presence at the 1936
Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg and admiring letters to Heinrich
Himmler leave no doubt as to his successor’s Nazi sympathies.19
Biography
1st March 1876: Born in Brussels.
1895–1897: Studies law at the Catholic University of Louvain
(Belgium).
1903: Co-opted to the IOC as the member for Belgium (aged 27).
14th July 1904: Marriage to Countess Elisalex Clary et Aldringen.
30th May 1905: Birth of his son, Guy.
9th–14th June 1905: President of the reception committee for the
International Congress for Sport and Physical Education, Brussels.
8th February 1908: Birth of his daughter, Sophie Thérèse.
1914–1918: Helps Belgian refugees as part of the Belgian Legation to
The Hague.
20th August–12 September 1920: Antwerp hosts the Olympic Games,
Baillet-Latour was president of the organising committee.
18Baillet-Latour’scorrespondence from 1940 to 1941 are missing from the IOC’s archives.
19According to correspondence quoted by Yttergren Leif in “Questions of Property. J. Sigfrid
Edström, Anti-Semitism, and the 1936 Berlin Olympics”, Olympika, XVI, 2007, pp. 77–92 and
reinterpreted by Clastres Patrick in “Neutralité politique, compromissions avec le régime nazi,
continuité olympique. Les présidents successifs du CIO (1925–1972) au défi des Jeux de Berlin”,
in Bensoussan Georges, Dietschy Paul, François Caroline & Strouk Hubert (Eds.), Sport, corps
and sociétés de masses. Paris, Colin, 2012, pp. 211–228.
1921: Created and became vice-president of the IOC’s Executive

Committee.
1922–1923: Long tour of South American republics.
1923: President of the Belgian Olympic Committee.
28th May 1925: Elected president of the IOC (aged 49).
1925: Elected president of the Belgian Jockey Club (until his death in
1942).
1932: Los Angeles Olympic Games, long tour of Asia.
7th June 1933: Re-elected president of the IOC.
January–March 1939: Trip to South Africa.
1st September 1941: His son Guy dies (at the age of 36) when his plane
crashes on the Isle of Arran, Scotland.
7th January 1942: Dies in Brussels (aged 65).
Bibliography
Carpentier, Florence. 2004. Le CIO en crises. La présidence de Henri de Baillet-
Latour (1925–1940). Paris: L’Harmattan.
Collins, Sandra. 2007. The 1940 Tokyo Games: The Missing Olympics. Oxon:
Routledge.
Delwit, Pascal. 2009. La vie politique en Belgique de 1830 à nos jours. Bruxelles:
Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles.
Mayer, Arno. 1981. The Persistence of the Old Regime. Europe to the Great War.
New York: Pantheon Books.
Meuwissen, Eric. 1999. Richesse oblige. La Belle Époque des grandes fortunes.
Bruxelles: Editions Racine.
Renson, Roland, et al. 2006. Enflammé par l’olympisme…Cent ans de Comité
Olympique et Interfédéral Belge. Roeselare: Roularta Books.
Saint-Martin (de), Monique. 1993. L’espace de la noblesse. Paris: Editions
Métailié.
Torres, Cesar R. 2008. “Spreading the Olympic Idea” to Latin America: The
IOC-YMCA Partnership and the 1922 Latin American Games. Journal of
Olympic History 16 (1): 16–24.
Veblen, Thorstein. 1899. The Theory of Leisure Class. New York/London:
Macmillan.
Part II
1970–1980s: The “Dassler Revolution”
The sea change embraced by the leaders of world sport between the
1960s and 1980s had nothing to do with ideology or geopolitics; it
was almost entirely linked to structural changes to the world economy
and the sporting media. As television began to dominate the mass-
media market, the 1960s and 1970s saw the development of interna-
tional sport as mass entertainment, which in turn contributed to sport’s
growth as a leisure activity during the 1970s and 1980s. This period
was the first golden age for multinational sports equipment compa-
nies, international sponsorship of sport and sports-based advertising.
The increased financial importance of sport also encouraged the emer-
gence of corruption, a spiral that would entangle names as big as Joao
Havelange, FIFA’s all-powerful president from 1974 to 1998.
Although they were capable of producing world-beating athletes,
the USSR, GDR, Cuba and China were quickly left behind by this
new culture of televised sport, creating a major gap between East and
West that would be widened even further by the growth in air travel
and new means of telecommunication. Amateurism became a trouble-
some legacy for western sport, which was quickly moving into the era
of professional athletes, sponsorship and liberal economics. More than
126 1970–1980s: The “Dassler Revolution”
a decade after tennis embraced open competitions (1968/69), a move

supported by future International Tennis Federation president Philippe
Chatrier, the IOC, under Juan Antonio Samaranch, decided in 1980
to abandon the amateurism rule for the Olympic Games. His “right-
hand man”, Richard Pound was given the task of negotiating the rights
to the Olympic brand and the Olympic Games with television networks
and sponsors, particularly those in North America. His work led to the
creation of the TOP programme in 1985. Athletics (1982) and rugby
(1995), to cite just two examples, followed suit. Naturally, the tiny
administrative structures involved in running international sport federa-
tions found it difficult to absorb the shock caused by the influx of hun-
dreds of millions of dollars from sponsoring and television rights.
6
João Havelange: A Businessman
for World Soccer
Philippe Vonnard and Nicola Sbetti
Introduction
Despite the on-going Rio Olympics and the historic gold medal won
by pole-vaulter Thiago Braz da Silva, Brazil’s media headlines on 16
August 2016 were not all about the Games. João Havelange, one
of the most important men in twentieth-century Brazilian sport,
had died. During a long and illustrious career he had presided FIFA
(Fédération International de Football Association) for 24 years and been
a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 1963.
Nevertheless, reactions to Havelange’s death varied greatly. While the
Brazilian Football Confederation declared seven days of mourning and
P. Vonnard (*)
ISCC, Paris, France
e-mail: philippe.vonnard@unil.ch
N. Sbetti
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_6
128 P. Vonnard and N. Sbetti
several Brazilian newspapers remembered him as “Brazil’s greatest foot-

ball administrator”, the press in most Western countries, especially the
UK and France, described him as the “granddaddy of the corruption
inside FIFA”.1 Havelange was obviously a highly controversial figure
who seriously divided opinion. His supporters would brook no criticism
of someone they felt had devoted his life to developing sport, particu-
larly football.2 His detractors, on the other hand, were just as forthright
in their condemnation of a man they considered morally bankrupt and
“FIFA’s king of corruption”.3
Hopefully, his passing will allow a more balanced assessment of his
life and achievements than the overly categorical pictures currently
painted by his supporters and detractors. What is undisputable is that
during his time at the head of FIFA, from 1974 to 1998, Havelange
transformed the federation into a modern and efficient—but far from
accountable—non-governmental organisation capable of meeting the
challenges of the new global market which emerged with the end of
the Bretton Woods system (1971) and the neoliberal deregulation of the
1980s. As well as substantially increasing its income and expanding its
head office staff from 15 to almost 100 employees, FIFA extended its
membership to over 200 countries and doubled the size of its flagship
competition, the World Cup finals, from 16 to 32 teams. This growth
can be attributed largely to the policies introduced by Havelange and
his team, who worked hard throughout his presidency to develop the
game around the globe while building close ties between FIFA, multina-
tional companies and media groups.
1See, for example, articles in Le Monde (France) and The Guardian (UK) published on 16 August
2014.
2See, for example: Pereira, J.M. and Vieira, S.M. (2010) João Havelange: o dirigente esportivo
do século XX = João Havelange: The Great Sport’s Administrator of the twentieth century, Rio de
Janeiro: Casa da Palavra: 209.
3See, for example: Jennings, A. (2006) Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and
Ticket Scandals, London, New York: Routledge, 2006; Tomlinson, A. (2014) FIFA. The Men, the
Myths and the Money, Oxford: Routledge.
The aim of this chapter is to provide a fuller understanding of

Havelange’s impact on FIFA, addressing the issues of what he did dur-
ing his tenure as president and why he was able to implement what
were, at the time, ground-breaking policies. In order to answer these
questions, we begin by looking at Havelange’s upbringing, training and
career before he made it to the top of world soccer. In fact, Havelange
came from a very different background to his predecessors. As a true
businessman, he brought a new vision to FIFA that put much greater
emphasis on developing soccer, particularly through increased commer-
cialisation and mediatisation of the game. In this respect, he was the
first of a new generation of sports leaders that would also include Juan
Antonio Samaranch at the IOC.
This review of João Havelange’s life, career and achievements at
FIFA draws upon several sources, including its personal files at the
IOC (stored in the IOC’s archives in Lausanne) and at the FIFA
(stored in the FIFA’s archives in Zurich) and academic studies of
changes within world soccer’s governing body during the last quarter
of the twentieth century. Moreover, the research benefit by two inter-
views realised with two former UEFA secretaries (Hans Bangerter,
1960–1989, and Gerhard Aigner, 1989–1998) and by one interview
conducted with Jacques Ferran, a journalist with the French newspa-
per L’Equipe from 1948 to 1998 who had met Havelange on numer-
ous occasions.
We begin by presenting Havelange’s background and career in order
to show how he secured FIFA’s top job and why, in contrast to his pre-
decessors, he placed so much importance on introducing policies to
expand FIFA. We then look at the changes he oversaw, focusing on the
steps taken to maximize FIFA’s income and the programs introduced to
develop soccer around the world. We also examine the system of cor-
ruption that grew within FIFA during Havelange’s reign, proof of which
led to the former president’s final disgrace and forced him to resign
his membership of the IOC (2011) and his honorary presidency of
FIFA (2013).
João Havelange’s Early Career and Election

as FIFA President
João Havelange, who came from Brazil’s more affluent classes, spent a
large part of his life working within national and international sport
federations. He rose to become one of the most important figures in
world sport during the second half of the twentieth century.
An Entrepreneurial Background
Faustin and Juliette Godefroid de Havelange welcomed their second

son, João Marie Faustin Godefroid de Havelange, into the world on 8
May 1917. Originally from Belgium, the couple had emigrated to Peru,
where Faustin Havelange had worked as a mining engineer, before mov-
ing to Rio de Janeiro, where he set up his own business as a dealer for
two arms companies, Belgium’s FN Herstal and France’s SFM. At first,
João’s father prospered and the young Havelange spent his early years in
a relatively wealthy and business-minded environment.
João attended Rio de Janeiro’s Lyceum French high school—a sign
of the family’s social standing—before joining his father’s company to
learn the trade. However, by the 1930s Faustin Havelange was finding
it increasingly difficult to secure government contracts and his business
began to struggle. Probably because of the stress of trying to keep his
company afloat, he suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of just 54.
João, then aged 18, was profoundly affected by his father’s death, which
he blamed throughout his life on the public authorities deserting his
father’s business. This event undeniably strengthened his belief in the
primacy of private enterprise and convinced him that one should never
rely on the state as a sole business partner.4
After studying law at Rio’s prestigious Fluminense Federal University,
Havelange contacted Jules Verelst, a family friend and president of
the Belgian Mining Company (BMC), to ask for a job. The young
4Tomlinson, A. (2000) ‘FIFA and the men who made it’, Soccer & Society, 1(1): 55–71.
Havelange was obviously already adept at using his network of friends

and acquaintances to help him further his career. In fact, this was a
skill he would exploit throughout his life to help him achieve his goals,
especially in the field of sport. He went on to occupy several positions
within the company, gradually rising through the ranks to become head
of the import–export department.5 Nevertheless, the future FIFA boss
did not stay with BMC for long, resigning from the company in order
to follow in his father’s footsteps and start his own business. With his
brother Juan, he moved to Sao Paulo, where the two ambitious young
men hoped to build a successful law practice.
The firm was doing well when circumstances presented Havelange
with an opportunity that would prove decisive to his career. In 1942,
Brazil declared war on Germany and its allies, making it difficult for
people from the Axis countries to run businesses in Brazil. At the time,
Sao Paulo’s largest public transport company, Auto Viacao Jabaquara,
was run by two Italians, Tito Mascioli and Arthur Brandi. In order to
avoid problems for their company, they asked João Havelange to take
over as manager for the duration of the hostilities. Havelange did such
a good job that Mascioli and Brandi asked him to stay on once the war
had ended.6
After the war, the Brazilian government nationalised a number
of industries in an effort to modernise the country. One of its priorities
was to improve Brazil’s public transport system, so, in 1947–1948, the
government took over Auto Viacao Jabaquara and brought it within the
state-owned company, Onibus Braz. Havelange was at the centre of the
operation and, together with several other entrepreneurs, including Tito
Mascioli, he founded Viacao Cometa. Although he was now an impor-
tant and powerful figure in Sao Paulo’s business community—the head
of a giant public transport company, a position he would hold for six-
ty-two years—Havelange had greater ambitions. As a result, he spent the
1950s diversifying into other areas of business, including banking, as a
member of the Advisory Council of Brazil’s Central Bank, industry, as
5Pereira and Vieira João Havelange: o dirigente esportivo do século XX: 209.
6Ibid., p. 210.
the managing director of the Orwec Quimica e Metalurgia Ltda. chemi-

cal company, and insurance, as the president of the Sao Paulo insurance
company Farroupilha.7 He was a talented businessman who described
himself on his 1971 curriculum vitae as a “business administrator”.8 He
also had great conversational skills and spoke English, Spanish, French
and Portuguese perfectly. He would later apply the skills he had learned
in the world of business to his positions within sports federations, but
his interest in sport had begun on the field of play.
A Career in Brazilian Sport
Havelange gained his first experience of competitive sport playing soc-

cer for Fluminense, the club of the Rio de Janeiro elite, most of whose
players during the interwar years came from the upper echelons of
society.9 However, Havelange was a man who needed to excel, so he
abandoned soccer as soon as he realised he was not talented enough
to play for a first division team. Instead, he took up swimming, which
was mostly an upper-class sport at the time. Both he and his brother
failed to qualify for the 1932 Olympic Games,10 but João made it to
the Berlin Olympics in 1936, where he competed in the 400 metres and
1500 metres freestyle events. The brothers went on to gain a degree of
public recognition by becoming Brazilian champions several times over.
In the late 1930s, they began playing water polo for Botafogo, staying
with the team even after they moved to Sao Paulo, where they joined
the exclusive Esperia sports club. As a result, for several years they played
for both teams, competing in two parallel championships, where they
rubbed shoulders with other athletes and, most importantly, numerous
sports executives.
7IOC (International Olympic Committee) archives, João Havelange’s CV, João Havelange’s
‘Biography’ file.
8Ibid.
9Davies, D.J. (2000) ‘British Football with a Brazilian Beat: The Early History of a National
Pastime (1894–1933)’ English-Speaking Communities in Latin America (Ed. O. Marshall)

London: Institute of Latin American Studies.
As Pereira points out in his book, the Esperia club gave Havelange the
opportunity to meet “influential people and, with his discreet, self-as-
sured and courteous demeanour, he quickly won the respect of all and
made (friends) which he kept for life”.11 The contacts he cultivated were
very useful in terms of his business dealings and also helped him rise
through the ranks of Brazilian sports administration. Even though he
competed in a second Olympic Games in 1952, as a member of Brazil’s
water polo team, by the 1940s he had already started moving into
sports administration. The curriculum vitae he sent to the IOC sum-
marises this period in his career, with 9 pages of the 13-page document
detailing the positions he held within Brazilian sports organisations.
He gained his first experience of sports administration as treasurer
of the Botafogo Club and then as director of the Esperia Club, from
where he moved on to become president of the Swimming Association
for the State of Sao Paulo. This post allowed him to help one of his
friends and the head of Rio’s chamber of commerce, Silvio Pacheco,
become a member of the Brazilian sports confederation (CBD), which
controls all sport in Brazil. Pacheco returned the favour by helping
Havelange climb the sports administration ladder, securing him the post
of national director of water sports in 1954. The future FIFA president’s
rise continued when he became a member of the Brazilian Olympic
Committee, in which capacity he accompanied Brazil’s athletes to the
Melbourne Olympic Games (1956) as head of the national delegation.
Shortly after being appointed vice-president of the CBD, he began
campaigning to become the Confederation’s president. His triumphant
election in 1958, where he won 158 of the 177 votes cast, shows both
his popularity within Brazilian sport and the extent of the network he
had built up. His rise through the echelons of sports administration was
so spectacular that just five years later, in 1963, he was co-opted as a
member of the IOC.
Immediately after his election as president of the CBD, Havelange
began implementing an ambitious policy that he would later apply to
FIFA. He launched several financial reforms and took steps to improve
11Ibid.: 210.
the confederation’s image, partly by acquiring new headquarters

through a lease-purchase contract that allowed the premises to be paid
for over several years. The people Havelange gathered around him at
the CBD show his astute political sense. For example, he quickly began
working with Paulo Machado de Carvalho, the owner of the Record
television network and a director of Sao Paulo Football Club since the
1940s.12 Through Machado, Havelange could rely on support from
someone who had detailed knowledge of the footballing world and
substantial influence over the media. Moreover, the Sao-Paulo-born
Machado helped defuse potential regional conflicts the president from
Rio Janeiro might otherwise have faced, especially in the soccer world,
where there were still quarrels over whether the national football asso-
ciation should be run from Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.
Havelange dedicated a lot of time and energy to soccer, the coun-
try’s most popular sport,13 restructuring the Brazilian championship to
create a single national league and launching an ambitious program to
build new stadiums in several of the country’s cities. However, Brazilian
football’s most memorable achievements during this period, and the
events he stressed most strongly during his campaign to become FIFA
president, were the national team’s triumphs in the 1958, 1962 and
1970 World Cups. Havelange had contributed to the team’s success
by hiring doctors, a psychologist, masseurs and a dedicated national-
team manager. Brazil’s 1970 World Cup team included such outstand-
ing players as Pelé, Jairzinho and Rivellino, whose brilliance and art-
istry delighted soccer fans throughout the world. As their victory in
Mexico was the third time the Seleção had won the World Cup, Brazil
became the permanent holders of the Jules Rimet Trophy. However,
Havelange was looking to expand his career far beyond Brazil and was
already planning his next battle: challenging Stanley Rous for the FIFA
presidency.
12Ibid.: 209.
13A lot of books have been written about Brazilian football. See, in particular the special issue
‘Soccer in Brazil’ edited in 2014 by Martin Curi in Soccer & Society 15(1). For a general overview,
see also Goldblatt, D. (2014) A Futebol Nation. A Footballing History of Brazil, London: Penguin.
FIFA’s 1974 Election

Why did João Havelange want to become FIFA president? Was he, as
he claimed,14 chosen by South America’s football associations to defend
their interests against the Europeans and therefore fulfilling what he saw
as a duty? Given his career up until this time, it is difficult to believe
this was his only motivation. As early as 19 November 1963 the French
sports newspaper L’Equipe had noted that he “had a reform plan for the
international federation, an organisation he could one day preside”.15
Havelange undoubtedly saw the FIFA presidency as one of the most
prestigious positions in world sport and an objective worthy of his
ambitions. Moreover, he came from a very different background to the
current president, England’s Stanley Rous, a former schoolteacher and
secretary of the Football Association (from 1934 to 1961), and probably
thought he could bring new ideas for developing football.
FIFA at the Time of João Havelange’s Election

as President
Until the early 1960s FIFA was still a very small organisation that
had changed little since its creation in 1904.16 However, the growing
popularity of football in Africa, Central America and Asia, combined
with the granting of independence to numerous former colonies, had
led to a steady increase in FIFA’s membership, which had grown from
65 countries in 1947 to 124 countries in 1963.17 These developments
made managing FIFA an increasingly complex and demanding task
that required ever-larger numbers of staff. It was also becoming nec-
essary to create closer relationships between the head office in Zurich
14L’Equipe, 28 May 1986.

15L’Equipe, 19 November 1963.
16Wahl, A. (2014) ‘La Fédération Internationale de Football-Association (1903–1930)’ Sport et
relations internationales (Eds. A. Wahl and P. Arnaud) Metz: Université de Metz.

17Information included in the reports by FIFA’s General Secretary for 1946–1947, 1956–1957
and 1962–1963.
and the national football associations, spread across the four corners
of the globe. In 1953, after several months of intense discussion, an
Extraordinary Congress accepted a first step towards decentralisation,18
but FIFA’s failure to distribute power more equitably across the conti-
nents, despite intense debate throughout the 1960s, was a major factor
in the election of a non-European president.
These “centre-periphery” tensions19 became even greater in the
1960s, during Stanley Rous’s presidency (1961–1974). Rous was a for-
mer international referee who had been secretary of England’s Football
Association for more than twenty years. After launching an interna-
tional youth tournament in 1948, he helped create the Inter-cities
Fairs Cup,20 which was held for the first time in 1954. Rous travelled
widely during his presidency, visiting most of the world’s continents
and recording his trips in numerous reports. This penchant for travel
led authors such as Alan Tomlinson and John Sugden to dub him the
football “missionary”.21 Although the work he did to develop the game
was widely acknowledged, many non-European associations could not
forgive his support for the South African Football Association following
the declaration of apartheid, considering his position to be “neo-coloni-
alist”.22 FIFA’s African members felt that FIFA should have responded
to the introduction of apartheid by excluding South Africa’s federation,
thereby sending a strong message condemning racial discrimination.23
The Executive Committee was reluctant to do this, preferring to try and
18FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) Archives, Minutes of the II

Extraordinary Congress, held on 14 and 15 November 1953, file: 29th–30th Congress, 1953–1959
Activity Report/Financial Report Minutes.
19A term suggested by I. Wallerstein.
20For information about the Fair’s Cup, see Vonnard, P. (2016) “How did UEFA Govern the
European Turning Point of football? UEFA, The European Champion Clubs’ Cup and the Inter-
cities Fairs cup (1954–1959)” Building Europe with the Ball. Turning Points in the Europeanisation
of Football, 1905–1995 (Eds. P. Vonnard, G. Quin and N. Bancel) Oxford: Peter Lang.
21Tomlinson, A. and Sudgen, J. (1998) FIFA and the Contest for World Football: Who Rules the
People’s Game? Cambridge: Polity Press: 33.

22Darby, P. (2005) ‘Africa and the World Cup: FIFA Politics, Eurocentrism and Resistance’ The
International Journal of the History of Sport, 22(5): 883–905.

23For more information about South Africa’s position in football, see Bolsmann, C. and Alegi, P.
(2010) South Africa and the Global Game: Football, Apartheid and Beyond, London: Routledge.
reach a compromise,24 so it was not until 1964 that FIFA’s Congress

finally suspended South Africa.25 Even then, this decision did not sat-
isfy the African members, who wanted the annulment of the South
African association, as the African Confederation’s energetic presi-
dent, Yidnekatchew Tessema, frequently reminded both FIFA and the
media.26
Dissatisfaction with Rous among FIFA’s non-European members was
compounded by his stance on the Chile-USSR World Cup qualifying
match in 1973. After a 0-0 draw in the first match of the two-leg play-
off, the second game was scheduled to take place in Santiago, Chile,
on 21 November 1973. However, in September 1973 a military coup
led by General Pinochet had deposed Chile’s democratically elected
left-wing government and president, Salvador Allende, throwing the
country into turmoil. As violence raged, the army took possession of
the National Stadium, which had been built for the 1962 World Cup,
intending to use it as a concentration camp for political opponents.
Given the political situation in Chile and the new government’s disre-
gard for human rights, some FIFA members asked the board to cancel
the match. In response, FIFA sent its secretary, Helmut Kaser, to Chile
to investigate. He reported back that “life (is) normal, there are many
cars and pedestrians look happy”.27 Having also received guarantees
from the new government that the stadium would not be used as a jail,
FIFA’s board decided the match should go ahead. But the Soviet Union
protested the situation in Chile by withdrawing from the competi-
tion on the day of the game, leaving the Chilean team to play a match
against a phantom opponent. In a surreal atmosphere, Chile’s captain
scored in the empty goal and was loudly cheered by the crowd in the
24Darby, P. (2008) ‘Stanley Rous’s “Own Goal”: Football Politics, South Africa and the Contest
for the FIFA presidency in 1974’ Soccer & Society 9(2): 259–272.
25FIFA, Minutes of the XXXIV Congress held on Thursday, 8 October 1964; file: 33rd–37th
Congress, 1962–1970 Activity Report/Financial Report Minutes.

26Jeune Afrique, 3 March 1973.
27Dietschy, P. (2010) Histoire du football, Paris: Perrin: 288.

half-full stadium.28 FIFA validated Chile’s 1-0 victory, allowing the

country to take part in the World Cup finals in Germany the following
year, a decision that was contested by many non-European countries.
In addition to the growing effect of geopolitical tension on football pol-
itics, the arrival of a major new medium—television—revolutionised the
way football was brought to the public. In just a few years, the “goggle-
box” transformed media coverage of the game and unseated newspapers
and radio stations from the dominant positions they had held between
the two world wars. Television’s inexorable rise completely reshaped the
way the economic and political exploitation of matches was viewed and
approached,29 and the popularity of televised football was a decisive factor
in the emergence of a “sport-media complex”,30 which quickly started to
attract the interest of sponsors.
One of the first entrepreneurs to understand the huge potential of
televised football was Horst Dassler, the son of Adidas’s founder, Adolf
Dassler. After splitting with his brother, he took over Adidas-France,
where astute use of the opportunities offered by the new medium com-
bined with a shrewd strategy allowed him to transform the “three-stripe
company” into a global brand. He was also one of the first people to
realise that support from the leaders of international sport institutions
would be a key ingredient in capturing a large slice of an as-yet unex-
plored market.31 Although Rous was not against television, he was
clearly more reluctant than Havelange to create an alliance with it.
Hence, electing Havelange appeared to offer new opportunities, a pros-
pect some of football’s European administrators found very tempting.
For example, Chaim32 recently noted that Havelange’s bid was sup-
ported by the president of France’s professional league, Jean Sadoul,
28Footage of this can be seen in the third part of the BBC’s 1990 documentary The History of
Football.
29Dietschy Histoire du football: 446.
30See Rowe, D. (2004) Sport, Culture and the Media, Maidenhead: Open University Press;
Martelli, S. (2010), Lo sport ‘mediato ’, Milano: Franco Angeli.

31On Dassler, see Smit, B. (2009) Sneaker Wars. The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and
Puma and the Family Feud that Forever Changed the Business of Sport, New York: Harper.
32Chaim, A.R.M. (2016) ‘Playing for power: João Havelange’s Path to FIFA 1958–1974 ’,
70th Bulletin of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE).
who, according to Eric Maitrot,33 was a key proponent of increased

commercialisation in French football in the 1970s.
Campaigning for the FIFA Presidency
Havelange was designated South America’s official candidate for the

post of FIFA president in 1971.34 He immediately began a “journey
that took over two years”,35 travelling the world to solicit support for
his bid. In addition to accompanying the national football team, he
spent enormous sums of money on trips to meet the leaders of world
football, visiting more than 80 countries. He campaigned hardest
in countries that had been most critical of Stanley Rous, focusing on
South America, Africa and Asia. He was very meticulous, even going
as far as taking pictures of all the executives he met and filing them in
an album so he would not forget anyone’s face. He was very candid
about his reasons for doing this, saying: “I cannot run the risk of meet-
ing an acquaintance tomorrow in London, Paris or any other place and
not remembering his or her name. If I do not say hello, I will have an
enemy”.36
Havelange’s election platform included promises to help finance the
development of football in countries outside Europe and to provide
extra funds during the World Cup. In the run up to the election, he
published an 8-point program covering three main objectives:
• Develop FIFA competitions;

• Develop FIFA’s structure;
• Help national associations develop football.
One of Havelange’s proposals was to increase the number of countries

taking part in the 1982 and subsequent World Cup finals from 16 to
33Maitrot, E. (1998) Sport et télé. Les liaisons secretes, Paris: Flammarion.

34L’Equipe, 24 June 1971.
36Ibid., 225.
24, mostly by making more places available to African and Asian coun-
tries. He also wanted to create a world cup competition for young play-
ers and a world championship for clubs to replace the Intercontinental
Cup.37 In addition, he promised to build a modern headquarters for
FIFA, provide material and financial support to the poorest football
associations and set up courses to professionalize aspects of football such
as administration, refereeing and training.38
Havelange used his extensive network of acquaintances in order to
tilt the balance even further in his favour. For example, he persuaded
a senior Lufthansa executive called Thyssen, with whom he had had
regular dealings since the Berlin Olympics, to provide free plane tick-
ets for administrators from small associations in Oceania so they could
vote in the election. Similarly, he asked Silvio Pacheco to help him print
a glossy, 4-page brochure containing photographs from his sporting
career, his curriculum vitae and a summary of why he would be the best
president for FIFA. The text, written in English, French and Portuguese,
refers to Brazil’s World Cup victories, the development of Brazilian
football when he was president of the CBD and his desire to obtain bet-
ter representation for South American, African and Asian associations
within FIFA. He concluded as follows:
This is why the sportsman João Havelange, who has dedicated his life to
the sport, a true IDEALIST comparable to Jules Rimet, a STRONG man
in his will to lead a cause, a LEADER filled with good will to serve, a
PACIFYING SPIRIT and RENOVATOR that has all the necessary qual-
ities to be a candidate to FIFA’s presidency, an association that is in the
capacity of broadening the ties of solidarity and human fraternity through
sport.39
The comparison with Jules Rimet was not made lightly, as FIFA’s former
president, who had held the post for more than 30 years, had left an
37Since 1960, the Intercontinental Cup has been awarded to the winners of a two-leg match
between the European club champions and the winner of South America’s Copa Libertadores.
38Le Figaro, 15 November 1973.
39IOC Archives, João Havelange’s CV, João Havelange’s ‘Biography’ file.

indelible mark on the organisation.40 Referring to Rimet was also a way

of overshadowing the achievements of the Frenchman’s successors, espe-
cially Stanley Rous, Havelange’s opponent. The battle was on!
Winning the FIFA Presidency
FIFA’s 1974 presidential election was held in June, in Frankfurt. The

first round of voting failed to designate a winner, as neither candidate
obtained the necessary two-thirds majority: out of the 122 associations
eligible to vote, 56 voted for Rous and 62 voted for Havelange. In the
second round, Havelange increased his share of the vote to 68, against
Rous’s 52, giving him a majority of 16 and allowing him to become
FIFA’s first non-European president. FIFA could now be considered
a truly global federation. The election was also a pivotal moment for
another reason, as it had given the most powerful job in football to a
man who was intent on making major changes.41
Havelange’s election changed the geographical balance of power
within FIFA by reducing Europe’s dominance and producing a con-
comitant increase in the influence of non-European members. In fact,
the African and Asian associations were an essential part of Havelange’s
power base, backing him despite his right-wing, bourgeois upbringing
because they saw him as a “strong opponent of all forms of racism and a
fighter for multicultural coexistence between developed and developing
countries”.42
The other key factor in Havelange’s election was the support he
received from Horst Dassler, who by 1974 had become such a prom-
inent figure in the world of sport that he could influence presidential
elections at both FIFA and the IOC. In the run up to the 1974 FIFA
presidential election, Dassler, who had previously campaigned for Rous,
40On this point, see Grégory Quin and Philippe Vonnard’s chapter on Jules Rimet in this book.
41Bangerter particularly stressed business-related changes. Interview with H. Bangerter, 1 October
2012.
42Eisenberg, C (2006) ‘FIFA et politique. 1945–2000’ Le football dans nos sociétés. Une culture
populaire. 1914–1998 (Eds. S. Mourlane and Y. Gastaud) Paris: Autrement: 125.

decided to back Havelange as well, believing that Havelange would be

more accommodating than Rous to opening up the commercial side of
football. Dassler’s backing proved decisive.
FIFA’s Growth Under João Havelange
On acceding to the presidency, Havelange immediately began imple-

menting his program, giving FIFA a completely new dynamic with his
stamp on it. As Goldblatt noted, “Argentina 1978 belonged to the Junta
but Spain 82 was João Havelange’s”.43 However, the World Cup was not
the only thing he transformed. According to Jacques Ferran, “Havelange
gave an impetus, a force, a huge boost to FIFA and, at the same time,
to international football; everything he created, such as youth competi-
tions and female competitions, is unimaginable”.44
The New President Makes His Mark
Under Rous and his predecessors, FIFA’s main purposes had been to
administer football and run the World Cup. Football’s governing body
had a large budget, but financial growth was not its top priority. This
was to change when Havelange took the reins, as his aim was to refo-
cus the federation’s objectives towards increasing its financial resources,
introducing programs to promote the game around the globe and
expanding the World Cup.
The measures taken to expand the World Cup were particularly suc-
cessful, as Heidrun Homburg pointed out in 201745 Doubling the
43Goldblatt, D. (2014) ‘Another Kind of History. Globalisation, Global History and the World
Cup’ The FIFA World Cup 1930–2010: Politics, Commerce, Spectacle and Identities (Eds. S. Rinke
and K. Schiller) Göttingen: Wallestein: 23.
44“[João] Havelange a donné un soufflé, une force, une impulsion énorme à la FIFA et au football
du même coup international, tout ce qu’il a pu créer de competitions secondaires, de jeunes, de

femmes, c’est inimaginable” Interview with J. Ferran, 12 September 2012.
45Homburg, H. (2007) ‘Financial Aspects of FIFA’s World Cup or the Structural Challenges of
Growth’ Aspects de l’histoire de la Coupe du monde de football (Ed. A. Wahl) Metz: Université de
Metz.
number of teams involved in the World Cup finals (from 16 to 32)

helped increase spectator numbers by almost a million over a period
of just 20 years, with total match attendance rising from 1,700,000 in
1974 to 2,600,000 in 1994. Revenues from the event also soared, from
CHF8.60 million for Germany 1974 to CHF257.26 million for France
1998. In real terms, taking into account the fact that the Swiss franc
doubled in value during this period,46 income from the World Cup
increased 15-fold in less than 25 years. Havelange’s lead was quickly fol-
lowed by the IOC under Juan Antonio Samaranch, who initiated a sim-
ilar process for the Olympic Games.47
Havelange also transformed the president’s role, most notably by
travelling all over the world to visit FIFA members and preach his doc-
trine for the federation. In a 1986 interview with L’Equipe, he told
Gerard Ernault that he had visited 1000 countries in 12 years.48 These
trips allowed him to use his powers of persuasion to good effect: as a
former FIFA communications manager once put it, Havelange could
“convince you the sky is red, even though it’s blue”.49 During his suc-
cessive terms as president, he helped forge a brand image for FIFA by
building a new headquarters for the federation in the late 1970s/early
1980s and setting up translation, legal and public relations depart-
ments. In addition, he fulfilled many associations’ expectations by
expelling South Africa from FIFA because of the country’s continuing
policy of apartheid.
The widespread protests that greeted the decision to award the 1978
World Cup finals to Argentina, then ruled by a repressive military
junta,50 led Havelange to follow the example of the IOC, which had
worked with UNESCO to introduce a more proactive policy under
which political criteria were taken into account when choosing hosts
46See the Swiss Statistics Office website: http://www.portal-stat.admin.ch/lik_rechner/f/lik_rech-
ner.htm.
47See the chapter by Jean-Loup Chappelet in this book.
48L’Equipe, 29 May 1986.
49Tomlinson ‘FIFA and the men who made it’: 64.
50Dietschy, P., Gastaud, Y. and Mourlane, S. (2006) Histoire politique des Coupes du monde de
football, Paris: Vuibert.

for major competitions. One of the first consequences of this policy was
FIFA’s decision to withdraw its 1993 and 1995 youth tournaments from
Croatia and Nigeria51 due to the political situations in these countries.
Although Havelange’s reforms were wide-ranging, his actions had the
greatest impact in two main areas:
• Increasing FIFA’s financial resources

• Introducing policies for developing football
Increasing FIFA’s Financial Resources
Unlike his predecessors, who had not realised the game’s potential, or
were not particularly interested in exploiting this potential to the full,52
Havelange wanted FIFA to earn as much money as possible from foot-
ball, so he would have the funds needed to carry out his ambitious elec-
toral program and thereby cement his position as FIFA president. He
felt it was essential “to improve the structure of the Federation and to
pursue a development policy without increasing membership fees”.53
In his efforts to do this, he was supported by Horst Dassler and, later,
by Sepp Blatter, who joined FIFA in 1976 and who become Havelange’s
successor in 1998.
Dassler was not only instrumental in Havelange’s election, he was
a crucial figure during the first years of Havelange’s presidency, acting
as a mediator between FIFA and those economic forces, already pre-
sent in football, which wanted to secure a larger and more influential
role. Hence, Dassler’s importance went far beyond his control over
International Sport and Leisure (ISL), a sports marketing company he
created in 1981 and to which Havelange gave total control for man-
aging FIFA’s television rights and marketing operations. Even before
51Lanfranchi, P., Eisenberg, C., Mason, T. and Wahl, A. (2004) 100 Years of Football: The FIFA
Centennial Book, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson

52Lanfranchi, P. (2000) ‘La consommation du spectacle sportif. Une comparaison entre
l’Allemagne, l’Italie et la France dans l’entre-deux-guerres’ Le Mouvement Social 206(1): 115–125.

53Lanfranchi et al. 100 Years of Football: The FIFA Centennial Book: 290.
this, Dassler’s negotiating skills had been vital in convincing Coca-

Cola to provide $5 million in sponsorship for the FIFA World Youth
Championship,54 the first edition of which took place in Tunisia in
1977. The agreement between Coca-Cola and FIFA was Havelange’s
first commercial coup as president. A measure of the change occurring
within the federation is provided by the fact that just five years earlier,
under Rous, FIFA’s executive committee had refused financial support
from Pepsi Cola to organize an international youth tournament.55
In the years that followed, FIFA, through the intermediary of ISL,
built up a network of partners among marketing firms, multinational
companies, media conglomerates and sports organisations. This enabled
the federation to increase its revenues from subsequent editions of the
World Cup by, for example, convincing large brands to pay considera-
ble sums to place advertisements around the field of play. What is more,
in the early 1980s FIFA followed in the IOC’s footsteps and obtained
the copyright to its logo. Another innovation was the development of
tie-in merchandising, sales of which rocketed during the 1980s. A key
figure in this operation was FIFA’s secretary general, Sepp Blatter, a for-
mer journalist who had worked for the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation
and, more importantly, for the Swiss watchmaker Longines, where he
learnt a lot about the sport business.56 He quickly became Havelange’s
right-hand man at FIFA, occupying the post of secretary general from
1981 until he was elected president, 17 years later.
The success of the World Youth Championship, held every two
years from 1977 onwards, led FIFA to take an even larger step in
1991, when they expanded the competition to cover three age groups:
under-17s, under-20s and under-23s.57 The electronics company JVC
quickly joined Coca-Cola as a main sponsor of this bi-annual event.
54Ibid.:245.
55FIFA, Minutes of the session of the Executive Committee of 10 January 1971, file: Executive
Committee Meeting, Agenda Minutes, 1971.
56Longines has been the official timekeeper for several editions of the Olympic Games. Many
thanks to Quentin Tonnerre for this information.

57Herren, A. (1994) 90 Years of FIFA. 20 Years of FIFA President João Havelange: souvenir edition,
Zürich: Fédération Internationale de Football Association: 48.

Competitions such as these fulfil two important objectives for FIFA.

First, they allow countries with little chance of hosting a “mega event”
like the World Cup to stage a world football tournament. Second, they
provide large companies with opportunities to develop new markets, as
the events are awarded to countries in which FIFA’s partners have little
or no presence. This method marked a change from “classic” sponsor-
ship deals in which companies pay to display their name and/or logo on
a stadium or team shirt, for example, to true partnerships.58 Thus, the
final page of the book produced to commemorate FIFA’s 90th anniver-
sary was dedicated to thanking the federation’s biggest sponsors, includ-
ing Coca-Cola, JVC, Fujifilm, Philips and McDonalds.59
Similarly, increasing the number of teams present at the World Cup
finals allowed FIFA to provide more places for non-European countries
and to meet media demands by providing more matches to broadcast.
Havelange fully understood the importance of the media, especially
television, which had been an important player since the 1966 World
Cup.60 In this respect, he fully exploited technological advances and the
arrival of private networks, which consider sport a key area for build-
ing audiences (as is shown by the policies adopted by Canal+ in France
and Mediaset in Italy). With help from ISL, in 1982 FIFA began tak-
ing a more aggressive stance when negotiating television rights.61 In
this light, it is significant that one of FIFA’s vice-presidents, Guillermo
Cañedo from Mexico, was the head of a media group and used his
position to ensure Mexico was awarded the 1986 World Cup when
Columbia, which had originally been attributed the event, was unable
to meet its obligations.62 This growing media interest in FIFA events
58For more on this new type of partnership, see Hamil, S. (2008) ‘Manchester United: the com-
mercial development of a global football brand’ International Cases in the Business of Sport (Eds.
S. Chadwick and D. Arthur) Amsterdam: Elsevier; Milward, P. (2011) The Global Football
League. Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age, Palgrave
Macmillan: Basingstoke.
59Herren 90 Years of FIFA: 87.
60Chisari, F. (2006) ‘Quand le football s’est mondialisé: la retransmission télévisée de la Coupe du
Monde 1966’ Histoire et sociétés 18–19: 222–237.

61Goldblatt Another Kind of History: 23.
62Dietschy Histoire du football: 457.

was accompanied by ever-larger revenues for the federation, with earn-

ings from World Cup broadcasting rights increasing from €30.5 million
in 1986 to €94.3 million in 1998.63
By the second half of the 1980s, sponsorship and merchandising
had largely overtaken ticket sales as the most important sources of rev-
enue both for FIFA and for sports organisations in general. This situ-
ation led to new ways of managing sports organisations64 and clubs,65
and directly affected the organisation of major competitions, including
the World Cup, which have tended to involve ever-larger numbers of
teams.66
Can it be said that FIFA became a commercial company during
Havelange’s presidency? Christiane Eisenberg argues that this is not
the case because, even though one of FIFA’s goals is to make a profit, it
redistributes a large proportion of its earnings to national football asso-
ciations67 in order to, among other things, help poorer countries set up
programs to develop football. Havelange made this point himself after
his election in 1974.
FIFA and the Development of World Soccer
FIFA’s increased resources greatly benefited national football asso-

ciations, either through support programs or through direct grants.
Although courses for coaches and referees existed during Stanley Rous’s
presidency, Havelange oversaw a major expansion of such schemes.
The man he chose to develop them was Sepp Blatter, who was put in
63However, it was under Sepp Blatter’s presidency that this number really exploded, as in 2002
television networks paid a total of 907.8 million (€), ten times more than four years before. For a
brief overview see Hoeppe, F. (2010) ‘Droits TV: l’inflation’, Jurisport 98: 29–30.
64For more on this subject, see papers in Bayle, E., Chantelat, P. (Eds.) (2013) La gouvernance des
organisations sportives, Paris: Ed. L’Harmattan.

65For a good example of this new strategy: Pierpoint, B. (2000) ‘Heads Above Water: Business
Strategies for a New Football Economy’ Soccer & Society 1(1): 29–38.
66Holt, M. (2007) ‘Global Success in Sport: the effective marketing and branding of the UEFA
Champions League’ International Journal of Sport Marketing & Sponsorship, 9(1): 51–61.
67Eisenberg, ‘FIFA et politique. 1945–2000’: 125–128.
charge of “finding funding for organising and coordinating initiatives

for the promotion of soccer throughout the world”.68 He set up a num-
ber of programs during Havelange’s presidency, focusing on Central
America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, and continued this work when he
himself became president. For example, the GOAL program, which
he launched in 2000, is an ambitious initiative to develop football in
several regions around the world. The programs Blatter set up under
Havelange were important enough to be listed individually in FIFA’s
90th anniversary commemorative album. They were:
1976–1979: World Development Program FIFA/Coca-Cola (project 1);

1980–1982: International Academy FIFA/Coca-Cola (project 7);
1984–1986: International Academy FIFA/Coca-Cola (project X);
1987–1990: World Youth Soccer Academy FIFA/Coca-Cola 1987–1990;
1991–1997: Futuro. World Soccer Development Program FIFA/Coca-Cola.69
Development courses, most of which last approximately 10 days, are

very diverse and deal as much with how to administer football organisa-
tions (associations or clubs) as with technical aspects of the game, such
as coaching, refereeing and sports medicine. These programs could not
be run without sponsorship from large companies such as Coca-Cola,
which provided financial support for most of the early programs, and
Adidas, which provided equipment.
Although this policy may appear to be largely philanthropic, certain
aspects have been criticized. For example, it has been said to be too
Eurocentric and to prevent true change due to coaches not adapting
their approaches to each country’s specific circumstances. Furthermore,
the programs also have commercial objectives, as the goal of the mul-
tinational companies sponsoring them is to develop new markets.
However, the main criticism was that all these development programs
68Lanfranchi et al. 100 Years of Football: 224.

69Herren 90 Years of FIFA: 43–44.
were purposely oriented towards “friendly federations”, in order to curry

favour with national association presidents, who would be expected to
return the favour by re-electing Havelange.70 Nevertheless, these criti-
cisms cannot overshadow the fact that FIFA under João Havelange
invested considerable resources in developing soccer around the world,
thereby giving large numbers of young people the chance to play the
game. Today, the fruits of the groundwork accomplished under his pres-
idency can be seen in FIFA’s 12 development offices across the globe,
which are responsible for creating and running a wide range of pro-
jects to refurbish/build stadiums, supply equipment and develop school
sport, etc.71
These development programs may have become a source of corrup-
tion and clientelism, helping to maintain FIFA’s established leaders in
power, but they also played a fundamental role in transforming soccer
from a European-South American game to a truly global game that is
now played and watched by more people than any other sport on Earth.
The Presidency Ends Under a Cloud

After 24 years at the head of FIFA, Havelange finally retired in 1998.
His last action as president was to use his influence to ensure his pro-
tégé, Sepp Blatter, succeeded him as FIFA president. The reason
Havelange gave for supporting Blatter was to ensure the policies he had
instigated during his presidency were continued.72 Following his vic-
tory over Sweden’s Lennart Johansson, who had had quite tense rela-
tions with Havelange,73 Blatter continued working along the same lines
as his predecessor, continuing to build development programs, expand
70Sudgen and Tomilson Fifa and the Contest for World Football: 36–39.
71Information obtained from the 2008 FIFA Activity Report.
73More generally, the relationship between FIFA and UEFA, which had had its ups and downs
since the early 1960s, became increasingly tense. See Sudgen, J., Tomlinson, A. (1997) ‘Global
Power Struggles in World Football: FIFA and UEFA, 1954–1974, and their Legacy’ International
Journal of the History of Sport 14 (2): 1–25.
the horizons of the World Cup to include Africa (2010) and the Middle
East (2022), and increase FIFA’s financial resources.
Although Havelange’s policies had produced rapid growth for FIFA,
they also provoked criticism, especially during the last years of his
presidency. According to Gerhard Aigner, then UEFA’s general secre-
tary, “During the 1990s, Havelange became very dictatorial and began
upsetting a lot of people. He basically dictated things, who became a
member and where, etc. […] He promised the World Cup to Japan, for
example”.74 In addition, voices started to be raised against Havelange,
who had become increasingly secretive over the years. His detractors
questioned his financial management, accusing him of misappropriat-
ing funds. In 2006, an investigative journalist called Andrew Jennings
launched a direct attack on Havelange and his successor in a book alleg-
ing numerous cases of bribery and vote rigging. FIFA attempted, but
failed, to have the book banned.
Continuing suspicions of corruption led Havelange to resign from
the IOC in 2011, after having been a member for 48 years. Two years
later, in July 2013, evidence that he had accepted bribes from ISL,
uncovered during an investigation by the Swiss authorities, forced him
to resign his honorary presidency of FIFA. However, despite the contro-
versy surrounding the later years of Havelange’s life and work, history’s
final judgment will surely take into account much more than his ques-
tionable morality, the bribery with which he was associated and the vote
rigging that enabled him to maintain such a long hold over the pres-
idency. For example, even if Havelange refined and developed a “cul-
ture of backscratching” at FIFA, he almost certainly did not invent it, as
FIFA’s other long-serving presidents, such as Jules Rimet (1921–1954)
and Stanley Rous (1961–1974), are unlikely to have remained in power
for so long without courting the support of their peers.
Havelange was unarguably the first member of a new generation of
sports officials, which included Samaranch at the IOC and Nebiolo
at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), that
opened the door of international sport to economic forces by embracing
74Interview with G. Aigner, 20 August 2012.

commercialisation. Having begun their professional lives in the world of

business, this new generation of leaders wanted to apply the strategies
they had seen in that field to the organisation of sport. Developing a
deeper understanding of these people’s backgrounds and careers is cer-
tain to throw new light onto the transformations international sport has
undergone over the last three decades.
Biography
1916: Born in Rio.
1936: Olympic Games in Berlin (as swimmer).
1938: University licence in Law.
1940: Entry in the Esperia Rowing Club.
1942: Moved to Sao Paulo where he became laywer.
1948: Founder of Viaçao Cometa.
1952: Olympic Games in Helsinki (as water-polo player).
1954: Entry to the Brasiliean Confederation of Sport.
1956: Chief of the Brasilian delegation in Olympic games of Melbourne.
1958: President the CDB.
1963: Entry in OIC.
1974: President of FIFA.
1998: End of this mandate FIFA.
2011: Resignation from IOC.
2012: Resignation from FIFA.
2014: Died in Rio (26 August).
7
Philippe Chatrier: The Fight to Control
Professional Tennis
Emmanuel Bayle
Philippe Chatrier played a central and charismatic role in developing

and organising tennis between 1970 and 1990, in France and around
the world. Here we look more closely at Chatrier’s work, examining
how this exemplary figure transformed the French Tennis Federation
(FFT) by implementing his conceptions of sport federation manage-
ment and the way sport should be conducted, especially with respect
to the relationship between professional/elite sport and grassroots sport.
In fact, the FFT under Chatrier’s leadership pioneered an innovative
vision of how major Olympic sport organisations should be run, as the
management principles and methods he adopted provided a new “stra-
tegic model” for the world of Olympic organisations. Chatrier’s work
at the FFT also throws light onto the struggle between federations and
commercial sponsors for control over the sport business.
E. Bayle (*)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_7
154 E. Bayle
Most of the data and analyses presented here were collated during
research for a management sciences doctoral thesis called “Management
and performance of non-profit organisations: the case of national sports
federations”. The six sport federations studied included the FFT, which
was analysed via direct observations, documents1 and around 40 inter-
views, conducted between 1993 and 1998, with directors, senior man-
agers and employees who had worked for the FFT during Chatrier’s
presidency. The objective was to investigate the management methods
used during the 1980s and 1990s, and determine how these methods
evolved. These data were supplemented by:
• Further interviews to discern more clearly Philippe Chatrier’s per-

sonality and managerial role. These interviews were with P. Darmon
(interviewed in 2006), a former French n°1 tennis player and direc-
tor of Roland Garros, who was close to Chatrier; G. de Kermadec
(interviewed in 2006), a former French n°3 tennis player, national
technical director and the FFT’s technical manager under Chatrier;
Marie-Christine Peltre (interviewed in 2013), assistant general secre-
tary of the FFT during the Chatrier era; Patrick Proisy (interviewed
in 2013 and 2017), a former professional tennis player, finalist at
Roland Garros in 1972 and international vice-president of the IMG
Group; and Jean Lovera, a friend of Chatrier, former tennis player,
architect responsible for modernising Roland Garros, and former
regional tennis league president (interviewed in 2017).
• Numerous press cuttings relating to Philippe Chatrier’s career and
presidency of the FFT, together with FFT internal documents (min-
utes of general meetings) made available by the Tennis Museum.
• An account of Chatrier’s life and work produced by the FFT.
Following a brief review of Philippe Chatrier’s life and career in

sports management, the present chapter focuses on the two decades
(1972–1992) when Chatrier was president of the FFT and the ITF.
1Combination of internal FFT documents (reports of general meetings and board meetings) and
external documents (studies and surveys focusing on tennis and the FFT).
7 Philippe Chatrier: The Fight to Control Professional Tennis 155
We begin by examining the management principles involved in what

can be called the “Chatrier system” and then discuss Chatrier’s work
on the international stage, showing how his approach to management
impacted the FFT, the wider tennis world, the Olympic movement and
international sport in general.
Philippe Chatrier’s Career

Born in 1928 to a middle class family, Philippe Chatrier joined his first
sports club at the very young age of six (1934). His fascination with
the exploits of the all-conquering “Musketeers”, who led France to six
straight Davis Cup wins between 1927 and 1932, inspired him to take
up tennis, which he played at an elite level from 1947 to 1956 (n°6 in
the French rankings in 1951). At the same time, he followed a career as
a journalist (1952), creating the magazine Tennis de France in 1953, “for
the pleasure of being able to berate the Federation…”.2
Chatrier rapidly moved into sports administration. During his time
as president of Chantilly’s prestigious International Club du Lys, from
1965 to 1968, he tried to introduce the principles and methods fol-
lowed by British sport. “He dreamed of creating a great club, inspired by
the English system, with school in the morning and sport in the afternoon.
He began by building 40 tennis courts (including three grass courts) and a
swimming pool, and he also introduced rugby. He recruited the best special-
ists in these fields. That was a constant thread through everything he did.
When there was still a schism between amateur and professional sport, he
organised competitions involving both pros and amateurs, putting together a
tournament with prizes but no money ”.3
After playing a key role in the advent of Open tennis (breaking down
the divide between professionals and amateurs), at the end of 1968
Chatrier was appointed vice-president of the FFT, made captain of
2Delessalle,J.-C.; Navarro, G.; Rebière, G.; Chami, L.; Profession Président, Les Editions du sport,
1992, p. 118.
3Source: interview with P. Darmon.
156 E. Bayle
France’s Davis Cup team and put in charge of sport policy. His ascent to
the top of the FFT was “almost due to chance”,4 because the presidency,
then held by Marcel Bernard, only became vacant due to a Youth and
Sport Ministry rule limiting the tenure of sport federation executives to
two successive terms.
In fact, when Chatrier was elected president of the FFT, at the begin-
ning of 1973, he was much more familiar with the ins-and-outs of
international tennis than with the workings of grass-roots tennis (how
the leagues, départemental committees and clubs functioned).5 Unlike
most of France’s sport federation presidents, he had never been presi-
dent of a regional league. Nevertheless, he went on to hold several key
positions in international and national sports governance during the
1970s and 1980s, including seven successive terms as president of the
International Tennis Federation (ITF), between 1977 and 1991. From
1979 to 1985 he was also vice-president of the Professional Tennis
Council, which administered both the men’s and women’s circuits. As
vice-president of France’s National Olympic and Sporting Committee
(CNOSF) from 1982 to 1993, Chatrier lobbied hard and successfully
for the reintegration of tennis (1988) and other professional sports into
the Olympic programme. Appointed to the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) in 1990,6 the gradual encroachment of Alzheimer’s
disease, first diagnosed at the end of the 1980s, forced him to step
down in 1996. He passed away four years later, on 23 June 2000. The
Philippe Chatrier Foundation, presided by his son, provides financial
support to people suffering from the disease that took his life, thereby
honouring the memory of one of the greatest administrators in the his-
tory of French and international sport.
The young Chatrier was deeply impressed by France’s tennis
“Musketeers”, whose exploits continued to be a source of inspira-
tion throughout his career. He was also fascinated by Wimbledon,
4Source:
interview with P. Darmon.
5Source:
interview with an unpaid manager.
6When Chatrier joined the IOC, President Samaranch appointed him chairman of the important
Olympic Games Program Commission, a position he held from 1992 to 1994.

the temple of tennis traditions, adopting it as his role model for devel-
oping Roland Garros.7 His presidency of the FFT was anchored in
tennis’s traditions and history and marked by the strength of his com-
mitment to the sport. An aphorism coined by Antoine de Saint-
Exupéry—“a position is nothing if it does not give rise to action ”—which
Chatrier often quoted during press interviews, neatly summarises the
way he viewed his presidency of the FFT. The excellent sporting, organi-
sational and financial results achieved by the FFT under Chatrier’s lead-
ership led to him being re-elected unanimously in both 1981 and 1985.
Although he devoted all his energy to his national and international
positions, he never received any financial compensation for his work.
When he was elected president of the FFT, he even appointed an out-
side manager to run his magazine, Tennis de France, in order to avoid
any conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, he was a life-long advocate of
remunerating the presidents of large sport federations. In 1983, at the
age of 55, he said to the press: “It isn’t for my sake that the CNOSF is
studying the possibility of paying administrators and elected officials… …I
am too old; I have my independence… However, it must not become a sine-
cure. After all, it would not be good if the president who succeeds me is not
fully committed and leaves all the work to his senior managers. The boss
has to be fully abreast of all the issues ”8; “I think you need a post of presi-
dent of the ITF, someone who is at the helm seven days a week, 365 days a
year, therefore remunerated, and someone who is elected. I would not put
this measure through for myself ”.9 Partly due to Chatrier’s efforts, his
successors—Brian Tobin, at the ITF, and Christian Bimes, (during his
final term, from 2004)10 and Jean Gachassin (from 2009) at the FFT—
received a salary for their work.
7“For him, Wimbledon was the summit of tradition and excellence that Roland Garros had to try and
attain. The exploits of the “Musketeers” were his reference; he was always paying homage to them ”
(source: interview with P. Darmon). “He had a cult for the Grand Slam tournaments. He thought
they were the guardians of the game and that they were a barrier against “money is all” … his
fight to get tennis back in the Olympics was part of the same outlook” (source: interview with a
former assistant secretary general of the FFT).
8Interview with P. Chatrier in Tennis Magazine, May 1983.
9Interview in Le Figaro 10 November 1989.
10Authorised by Article 6 of the 2002 Finance Act and its Implementation Order of 20 January
2004, but a ceiling was placed on remuneration, which could not be greater than three times the
social security ceiling, that is, a maximum salary of approximately 8500 euros per month.
158 E. Bayle
The “Chatrier System”

From the very start of his term at the head of the FFT, Chatrier had
ambitions for the French Davis Cup team and for developing tennis
at both the professional and grassroots levels, where he recognised the
need to “democratise” the sport. In order to achieve these ambitions,
he realised he would have to expand and restructure tennis, which he
was able to do thanks to the formidable promotional and financial tool
Roland Garros became. He also began introducing a series of manage-
ment principles and methods, which would come to form what can be
called the “Chatrier system”.
A Policy to Expand and Restructure Tennis
French tennis has expanded from its early twentieth-century beginnings

as an exclusive game for the aristocracy into one of the country’s most
popular sports with an exceptionally high media profile. According to
a government survey (Irlinger et al., INSEP 1988), the FFT had almost
1.4 million registered players in 1986 and 4 million French people
played tennis regularly in 1988.
This success is due, at least in part, to the FFT’s ambitious policy
to expand and restructure the sport. Beginning in the early 1970s, the
FFT focused on three main areas: competitions and media coverage,
participation in tennis, and the organisation of tennis. Competitions,
especially major international competitions such as Roland Garros,
were revitalised or created in order to attract spectators and the media
and thereby provide a shop window for tennis. In 1974, the federa-
tion also reformed its ranking system in order to encourage players of
all levels to take part in competitions.11 Efforts to increase participa-
tion in tennis focused on expanding the sport’s appeal across the social
spectrum, which meant reducing the cost of playing tennis. The FFT
did this by urging local authorities to build municipal tennis courts, an
initiative that also helped increase the number of clubs (see Table 7.1).
11See Waser’s article in this book.

7 Philippe Chatrier: The Fight to Control Professional Tennis
Table 7.1 Growth in clubs and players registered with the FFT between 1968 and 1996
Year 1968 1972 1978 1988 1990 1995 1996
Clubs (no. of courts) 1330 (4650) 2151 4050 9755 10,206 (35,000) 9900 9704
Registered players 134,000 224,442 545,254 1,364,902 1,363,962 1,093,398 1,082,809
Mean growth in the number +47.7 +60.1a +2.5b
of registered players belong-
ing to Olympic federations
(1968–1978, 1978–1988,
1988–1996) (%)
Growth in the FFT (%) +314 +146 −20.7
aThis figure includes three newly Olympic sports: Baseball, tennis and table tennis (badminton is not included)
bThis figure does not take into account the addition of triathlon and taekwondo to the Olympic programme
159
160 E. Bayle
Another series of measures, including the opening of tennis schools

(1971), the creation of tennis-study programmes (1972) and a five-
year plan to restructure France’s tennis “leagues” (late 1970s), was
introduced in order to revamp the way tennis was organised. The
timing of these initiatives, at the dawn of the Open (1969) and
mass consumption and leisure eras, could not have been more for-
tuitous.12 What is more, increased media coverage of events such as
Roland Garros13 was turning top tennis players into major interna-
tional stars and the French government had agreed to provide financial
support for the reorganisation of tennis.14 The result was a fifteen-year
period of exponential growth in the FFT’s membership, which
increased from 224,442 in 1972 to 1,364,902 in 1988, a much faster
rate than that achieved by any other French Olympic sport federation
(Table 7.1).
A large part of this growth was due to tennis’s increased attractive-
ness to the middle classes and its development, by 1988, into France’s
number one corporate sport.15 The game’s rising popularity and wider
appeal, achieved largely by harnessing the promotional and financial
power of Roland Garros, led to the birth of a veritable tennis industry
during the 1980s.16
12See Terret T.(Ed.), Education physique, sport et loisirs 1970–2000, AFRAPS, Paris (2003).
13The tournament was first shown on TV in 1973, with the first full TV coverage in 1976.
14“5000 tennis courts” initiative (1980–1985), “Indoor courts” initiative (1986–1990), provision
of technical directors, etc. One interviewee suggested that Philippe Chatrier’s friendship with
Jacques Chaband-Delmas (French politician and talented tennis player) in the 1970s contributed
to the government’s support for the FFT.
15Source: Reneaud, M. and Rollan, F., Tennis: pratiques et sociétés, Talence, Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme d’Aquitaine (1995).

16The racket market grew at a rate of 15% per year between 1970 and 1980, reaching a peak of
1.4 million rackets in 1981. In the mid 1980s, sales began to fall, with the market evolving from
new players to existing players changing their rackets. Source: M. Desbordes et al. (1999). The
decline in racket sales continued throughout the 1980s, reaching 640,000 rackets sold in 1988
(source: Sport Première magazine, July 1989, n°187, p. 52).
Roland Garros, an Essential Promotional

and Financial Tool for the FFT
From the very beginning of his presidency, Chatrier’s aim was to use
Roland Garros, which he saw as a lucrative, unifying and motivating
event,17 to grow club membership and generate financial resources
for the federation. Prior to the 1970s, Roland Garros had had mod-
est resources and had not generated any profits for the FFT,18 but the
tournament’s newfound commercial success helped the FFT increase its
budget from 859,000 francs in 1967 to 3.7 million francs in 1970, and
to 11.9 million francs by 1975.19
When Philippe Chatrier took over at the head of the FFT, the facil-
ities at Roland Garros were far below the level of those at the other
Grand Slam tournaments. This is why, throughout the 1970s, the FFT
reinvested most of the tournament’s profits in extending and renovat-
ing the stadium. Without these investments it is doubtful whether the
tournament would have become as profitable as it did during the late-
1980s and 1990s (Table 7.2), even though most of the growth in turn-
over between 1978 and 1993 was achieved by increasing receipts from
television rights (multiplied by 264) and advertising revenues (multi-
plied by 24. Roland Garros Village, the tournament’s public relations
hub, was created in 1981). It was almost exclusively thanks to Roland
Garros’ profitability that the federation was able to increase its resources
(approximately 300% between 1988 and 1998) and improve its finan-
cial results.
Since the beginning of the 1980s, the FFT has obtained between 80%
and 85% of its income (depending on the year) from Roland Garros,
whose continually growing profits have put the federation in a particu-
larly stable and comfortable financial position. In fact, the structure of
17Source: interview with Pierre Darmon.

18“Roland Garros existed thanks uniquely to ticket sales and a minor contribution from a single spon-
sor (Coca-Cola), who provided 5000 francs per year. Prices were very low, with half-price offers for reg-
istered players, in order to fill the stands. There was also a lot of fraud. Tickets were reimbursed in the
case of rain. The tournament was barely profitable at that time ” (source: interview with P. Darmon).
19Source: FFT archives.
162 E. Bayle
Table 7.2 Increase in earnings from Roland Garros between 1975 and 1998
(Source Interviews with Roland Garros managers and the federation’s accounts)
1975 1984 1988 1993 1998
Turnover of Roland Garros 5.4a 49b 145 (21) 278 (37) 510 (37)
(turnover of Bercy from 1986)
in millions of francs
Earnings (before depreciation 5 70 149 250
and provisions) in millions of
francs
a3,300,000 francs from ticket sales, 1,683,000 francs from advertising revenue
and 425,939 francs from TV rights
b26.5 million francs from ticket sales, 17.3 million francs from advertising reve-
nue and 4.2 million francs from TV rights
the FFT’s resources is very unusual for an Olympic federation, as it is

one of the few that does not rely on direct subsidies from national gov-
ernment. Sports Ministry subsidies account for just 1% of the FFT’s
budget, although the government continued to pay the salaries of a
large number of technical directors throughout the 1980s (68 technical
directors in 1988).
This financial stability allowed Chatrier to build up the federation’s
head office, which had 150 salaried staff by the mid-1980s. In addition,
since the early 1980s a proportion of the FFT’s revenues from Roland
Garros has been channelled to the regional tennis leagues and départe-
mental committees via a series of development contracts, which have
helped clubs improve their facilities and increase their membership.
Providing support to the regional leagues has also allowed the FFT to
decentralise some former head-office functions to the leagues, initially
by subsidising the salaries of the leagues’ administrative and secretarial
staff.20 Christian Bimes, who succeeded Chatrier in 1993, continued
this policy.21 Subsidies for other managerial posts, introduced in the
20Source: General Secretary’s Report, AGM, 1982.

21Subsidies to the leagues in the form of development contracts rose considerably between 1993
and 1998: 50 million francs in 1993, 63 million francs in 1994, 71 million francs in 1996
(including 48.4 million francs for the leagues and départemental committees and 22.6 million
francs for the clubs), and 87 million francs in 1997 (57 million francs for the leagues and com-
mittees and 30.5 million francs for the clubs). Source: FFT’s accounts. Subsidies to the clubs are
channelled through the leagues (increasing the power and authority of the leagues).
late 1980s as a further measure to develop regional tennis, were used to

recruit development advisors (1987),22 federal coaches for the leagues23
(1995) and départemental sports councillors (begun in 1996, widely
implemented from 1998).24
Despite these development policies, the FFT saw a sharp and endur-
ing fall in its membership in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the
number of registered players decreasing by 300,000 between 1986 and
1995. However, this phenomenon was not restricted to France. The
United States, for example, had 13 million fewer regular tennis players
in 1994 than in 1978.25 In addition to losing many teenage players,26
a trend that has hit most sport federations, tennis has been affected
by competition from other sports and leisure activities, especially golf.
Hence, while tennis lost 100,000 registered players between 1987 and
1992, golf gained 120,000 registered players (Reneaud and Rollan
1995). Reneaud and Rollan explain this change by referring to the work
of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu: “the process of renewal in sports recruit-
ment is based on mechanisms of distinction and difference in recrea-
tion. The more the middle classes take up tennis, the more the better-off
classes will turn away from it” (p. 55).
Despite this slump in its membership, the FFT has achieved unpar-
alleled growth compared with other sport federations, and this can be
attributed, at least in part, to the managerial principles introduced dur-
ing the Chatrier era. However, this growth has led to a proliferation of
small clubs (which have received little help from the federation) to the
detriment of France’s great, historic clubs.
22The post was created in 1987, with large-scale recruitment of full-time staff for almost all the
leagues beginning in 1994 (FFT subsidy of 200,000 francs per year, per post).
23Training of top-class coaches within the leagues to assist the regional technical advisors. Subsidy
provided by the FFT of 200,000 francs per year, per post.

24Originally entitled “départemental technical advisors”, these posts were subsidised by the FFT to
the tune of 150,000 francs per year.

25Source: Reneaud and Rollan (1995).
26The system for coaching young people used by tennis schools and at the top level is both very
elitist and collectivist, which discourages many young players.

164 E. Bayle
Innovative Management Principles and Methods
At the beginning of the 1970s, the FFT was run mostly by amateurs
and “cut off from its roots” (Waser 1995). Philippe Chatrier’s election
as president saw a wind of change blow through the old-fashioned
federation, as he introduced three highly innovative ideas about sport
organisation management:
Create a Collective and United Management Team
Chatrier realised it would be easier to apply the federation’s decisions

regarding regional tennis if they were made in consultation with the
presidents of all the regional leagues. In this, he was helped greatly by
his general secretary, who worked tirelessly to ensure the leagues’ sup-
port.27 In fact, the FFT’s executive committee was firmly behind its
president, especially during tennis’s boom years (1975–1985), and was
therefore able to ensure close political cooperation.28
Delegate the Technical and Operational Management

of Projects to Paid Staff
Chatrier’s management system was based on the idea that elected offi-
cials and unpaid administrators should be responsible for defining
policies, but professional managers should be recruited to implement
these policies. Executives should be free to focus on their political
role “so the unpaid administrators could hold onto their control over
27Chatrier’s decision to reduce the influence of the powerful Paris league by dividing it into indi-
vidual leagues for each département in the Paris region (the other leagues cover an entire adminis-
trative region) was a “model of strategic politics” (source: interview with a former assistant general
secretary).
28The FFT’s board met more than 20 times in 1978 (source: 1978 report to the AGM), com-
pared with 12 times a year in the late 1980s and 1990s. These frequent meetings reflect the feder-
ation’s administrators’ need to coordinate the innovative changes being introduced at the end of
the 1970s.
the development of tennis”.29 Importantly, when choosing managers

to carry out these tasks, Chatrier insisted on recruiting top-class peo-
ple who believed in the tennis project (a sort of board he coordinated).
Attracting the best managers not only meant paying higher salaries
(comparable to those offered by large companies),30 it also meant del-
egating many managerial responsibilities and protecting managers’
prerogatives. This Chatrier was able to do, thanks to his authority and
charisma.
Create a Federal Coaching System for Elite-Level Players
Chatrier was well aware of how long it takes and how hard it is to train
world-class athletes. Around ten years are needed to bring even the most
talented athletes to the elite level, and tennis is no exception to this
rule. Hence, his third innovation was a long-term project to create and
finance a new coaching system for elite players.31 His first step, taken
in 1969, was to introduce a training scheme for managers and coaches.
This was followed by a series of measures to open tennis schools (1971),
set up “sport-study” classes (1972), and create of centres of excellence,
first at the INSEP, and then at the National Training Centre32 (1987),
29Source: interview with an unpaid administrator on the executive committee during the 1980s.
30These high salaries were due to Chatrier’s desire to recruit talented professionals: “Recruiting
competent staff was one of the president’s clear wishes as of 1968, so power remained with the elected
officials. In contrast to other people, who may have been tempted to recruit mediocre staff who would
be easier to control, he was clear-sighted enough to realise that an unpaid manager could not be omni-
present or omni-competent. It was a revolutionary idea, when you think that the federation had con-
sisted of a retired colonel and a few secretaries. He wanted to surround himself with talented people,
whose salaries would reflect the commitment expected of them. He wanted to give them a real status
so they would not be tempted by the siren-call of commercial companies ” (source: interview with an
unpaid FFT executive during the Chatrier era).
31See A.-M. Waser’s paper on this subject and Chatrier’s fight during the 1960s, most notably
against J. Borotra, to assist France’s professional players with their training and careers.
32It was during the Chatrier era that the “marriage” between the “private” and “federal” training
systems took shape. A journalist once asked whether the National Training Centre would just
be a “super laboratory for the federation”, Chatrier replied: “not at all. We will encourage move-
ment, comings and goings (between the two systems). This centre must be open to all types of initiative ”
(Interview in L’Equipe on 21 January 1986).
166 E. Bayle
which could provide large numbers of up-and-coming young players

with sporting and financial assistance. In addition, in October 1976
Chatrier appointed a national technical director, J.-P. Loth, whose tasks
included implementing a plan, unanimously approved by the execu-
tive committee, to “detect, teach, guide and train promising players aged
between 12 and 20 ”.33 By the late 1970s, the FFT’s efforts had pro-
duced a highly effective system which quickly acquired an excellent
reputation for the quality of its training and began producing a steady
stream of top-class players. Most of France’s champion tennis players are
products of the “federal system”, in contrast to other countries, where
most elite players train at private facilities (such as the private academy
set up by Nick Bollettieri), outside their federation’s system.34
Despite the uncertainties involved in “manufacturing” a champion,
which Chatrier frequently reiterated during interviews,35 the FFT’s
system has allowed France’s elite tennis players (the “French school”
of tennis) to consistently obtain excellent results at the highest level.
Consequently, every year for the last 30 years France has had an aver-
age of 10–15 men and 10 women in the top 100 of their respective
rankings (ATP for men, WTA for women). No other country since the
advent of professionalism (1973), not even the United States, Sweden
or Australia, has been able to equal this performance. However, even
though France’s national teams have achieved several successes in the
Davis (men) and Federation (women) Cups during this period, few
French tennis players have won Grand Slam tournaments.36 One rea-
son for this may be that, unlike the club–and academy-based coaching
33Source: L’Express, 13–19 December 1976.

34Detractors of France’s elite training system maintain that it is overly protective of young players,
which is why they find it so difficult (“psychologically”) to win the biggest tournaments, most
notably the Grand Slams.
35“I believe that even the best system cannot produce champions; becoming a champion is a personal
thing… …you can’t manufacture a champion. We guide athletes to the riverbank, but the land of
champions is on the other side of the river. In the middle, there are crocodiles in the shape of oversized
egos, the influx of money, media hype, the entourage, all that… If they get across, they are saved. They
get their footing, they become champions ”.
36Source: Presentation by P. Bergues at the Sciences Po/FFT colloquium. Bergues was France’s 8th
most successful player (percentage of matches won) in Grand Slam tournaments between 1968
and 2006.
system in Spain, and the university and private-academy system in the

United States, France’s federal coaching system does not give young
players the mental toughness needed to win individual tournaments.
Chatrier’s Work on the International Stage

Internationally, Chatrier fought several battles, with varying degrees of
success, in a business-minded sport whose international federation often
struggled to impose its will and protect its interests. For example, he
campaigned to keep the largest tournaments, especially the Grand Slams
and Davis Cup, which he considered tennis’s leading tournament, under
federation control in order to protect and develop their sporting and
symbolic value. He also lobbied successfully for tennis to be readmitted
into the Olympic Games, attempted to regulate the commercialisation
of tennis and tried to combat the intrusion of politics into sport.
Keeping Tennis’s Largest Tournaments

Under Federation Control
The dawn of the Open era, in 1968, brought ever-larger sums of money
into tennis. In 1970 the Texan billionaire Lamar Hunt launched a pro-
fessional winter circuit, called World Championship Tennis (WCT),
which posed a serious threat to the so-called traditional tournaments.
As a way of countering this alternative professional circuit, Jack Kramer,
the father of professional tennis, convinced the ITF to set up a Grand
Prix that would include the Grand Slam tournaments. Players won
points based on their performances in these tournaments, with the
number of points attributed depending on the tournament’s standing.
The top eight players in the resulting classification went on to play a
“super final” at the end of the season. Hence, the Grand Prix and WCT
circuits ran side-by-side in 1970.
Now able to make a respectable living thanks to the large sums of
money flowing into tennis, in 1972 professional players formed a
“union”, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) to defend their
168 E. Bayle
interests against the ITF. Chatrier was in favour of players becoming

organised (source: interview with former professional tennis player).
Events quickly led to a trial of strength between the ATP and the
ITF. By 1973 relations between the two sides had become so strained
that some players, notably Pilic, refused to play in the Davis Cup. After
being suspended by his national federation, Pilic appealed to the ITF.
The ATP flexed its muscles in support of Pilic by persuading 79 pro-
fessional players to boycott Wimbledon, whose organisers did not want
Pilic to take part in the tournament. The standoff between the ATP
and ITF revealed a major shift in the balance of power. As Chatrier
said: “That was the day the ATP realised how strong it was. From that
moment on they were a force to be reckoned with. I had a vague feel-
ing that players would sooner or later start playing a more active role in
their affairs”.37
Chatrier was on the players’ side, believing that the federation could
no longer tell them what to do without letting them have their say. One
of the results of the “Pilic” and “Wimbledon” affairs was to give players
a voice through a new advisory body called the Professional Council,
which was set up in 1973. The council, which organises the Grand Prix
circuit and deals with issues within the professional game, consists of
three representatives from each of the three main stakeholders, that is,
players, major tournaments and the ITF. Philippe Chatrier was, from
the very beginning, one of the ITF’s three delegates.
However, an even greater danger was emerging in North America,
with the imminent launch of World Team Tennis (WTT), “an inter-city
tennis tournament that would fill the calendar from May to September
without interruption”.38 These exhibition tournaments were a direct
threat to Roland Garros and traditional tennis. WTT, which was played
between teams representing major American cities and to highly mod-
ified rules, quickly became popular. Consequently, on 14 February
1974 the ITF sent a circular to its member federations announcing
37Delessalle,J.-C.; Navarro, G.; Rebière, G.; Chami, L.; Profession Président, Les Editions du
sport, 1992, p. 137.
38Haedens, Francis; “Le dossier de la crise du tennis”, in Tennis de France, n°244, August 1973,
p. 59.
its decision to recognise the WTT competition, which “will be held

between 6 May and 25 August, except during two weeks to allow play-
ers to prepare for and compete in the Wimbledon tournament”.39
Chatrier, as president of the FFT, was the first person to react, ada-
mantly proclaiming “We are the guardians of a legacy that we must not
abandon to sport’s pimps”.40 He launched his counter-attack on 15
February, clearly setting out his intentions:
We do not accept either of the two proposed solutions. Any player who
signs a contract with WTT will be banned from playing at Roland-
Garros and in Davis Cup and Federation Cup matches. We are also
considering refusing to play any Davis Cup team that includes players
who took part in WTT. I invite the other federations to adopt the same
position.41
Several other national federations joined with Chatrier and the FFT in
their opposition to the ITF.
The situation came to a head at the 1974 edition of Roland Garros,
when the FFT followed up its president’s threat and banned four top
players, John Newcombe, Tom Okker and Jim Connors, who was
not yet a member of the ATP, and Evonne Goolagong. Connors and
Goolagong tried to overturn the ban through the courts, but their
case was thrown out and they were unable to play. Consequently, they
could not attempt that year’s Grand Slam (they had already won the
Australian Open and Connors went on to win Wimbledon and the
US Open), which, for the first time, came with a prize of $150,000.
Connors again sued the FFT, this time asking for damages of two mil-
lion French francs. He finally abandoned his suit in the spring of 1975,
but he continued to boycott Roland Garros until 1979 and he never
managed to complete a Grand Slam.
A few months later, in the light of the ITF’s decisions to recognise
WTT and reject the idea of creating a mixed council consisting of four
39Haedens, Paul; “L’héritage du centenaire”, in Tennis de France, n°252, April 1974, p. 12.
40Quidet, Christian; La fabuleuse histoire du tennis, Nathan, 1984, p. 378.
41Ibid.
170 E. Bayle
members of the ITF and four members of the ATP, Chatrier, in the
name of the FFT, declared: “Last weekend was the most tragic weekend
in the history of tennis”.42 However, the FFT’s president would not give
into the international status quo. Roland Garros was not the only tour-
nament under threat; the Davis Cup was also in danger due to a lack of
interest from players and the fall out from international politics.
Defending the Davis Cup and Winning the ITF
Although the Open era had allowed the Grand Slam tournaments to
regain their former glory, the Davis Cup remained in the doldrums,
partly because it remained an entirely amateur competition and there-
fore unable to benefit from the glamour of tennis’s star players. Even
when professionals were allowed to take part, few would give up the
lucrative earnings of the Grand Prix and WTT circuits for the “simple”
honour of representing their country. The absence of tennis’s leading
nations, Australia, the United States, Great Britain and France, added to
the competition’s lacklustre image and led to some surprise results, as in
1974, when South Africa and India qualified for the final.43
However, the greatest threat to the Davis Cup was world politics,
as international tennis matches became battlegrounds for nationalis-
tic and ideological propaganda. 1976 was a turning point as, tired of
seeing the Davis Cup “tarnished by countries dropping out for polit-
ical reasons”,44 the United States, which had created the competition,
withdrew from the Assembly of Davis Cup Nations. The English and
French federations also announced they would withdraw from the event
in 1977 and were contemplating creating an identical but apolitical
competition in its stead. Finally, all three countries decided to suspend
their decisions for a year. Meanwhile, further incidents deepened the
42“PhilippeChatrier: ‘La fédération internationale mène le tennis traditionnel à la catastrophe’”,

in La Dépêche, 5 November 1973.
43The cup was awarded to South Africa, when India refused to play them in protest over
Apartheid.
44Haedens, Paul; “Le sens caché du Challenge round”, in Tennis de France, n°283, November
1976.
crisis surrounding the Davis Cup, which was in danger of falling apart.
In August 1976 the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the
Philippines withdrew from the Federation Cup (women’s equivalent
of the Davis Cup) due to the presence of South Africa and Rhodesia.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union refused to play their semi-final against
Pinochet’s Chile in protest at “the blood bath and human rights vio-
lations being inflicted on Chile”.45 In the end, given the lack of sup-
port from other countries and worried about “killing off the event”, the
United States, Great Britain and France went back on their decision to
boycott the 1977 Davis Cup.
On 6 and 7 November 1976 the ITF and Davis Cup boards met in
Paris to discuss the situation. Chatrier, who had seats on both boards,
took part in the discussions. This time, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and
the Philippines were excluded from the 1977 Federation Cup, and the
USSR was excluded from that year’s Federation and Davis Cups. This
was the first time a national team had been excluded from the compe-
tition. These countries often claimed they were wronged by the ITF, as
they felt they were just following United Nations policy.
Hence, at a time when tennis was growing in popularity around
the world and gradually entering the age of television and commer-
cialisation, the ITF was being battered by the assaults of entrepre-
neurs and the players’ desire for independence and higher rewards.
Simultaneously, the Davis Cup was foundering in a sea of politics and
indifference. For example, in 1976 French players, some of whom
were also members of the FFT’s executive committee, refused to accept
Chatrier’s unilateral, last-minute decision to play in Portugal during the
“carnation revolution”. Chatrier responded by suspending two members
of the French team for two matches.
During an interview with Tennis Magazine in June 1977, Chatrier
was asked if he would stand for election as president of the ITF. He
replied he would do so only if he were certain he would have the means
to take action. At the time, he felt that the ITF had had its hands tied
by the influx of money into the sport and America’s antitrust laws,
45“Côté court”, in Tennis Magazine, December 1976, n°9, p. 11.

172 E. Bayle
which prevented the ITF putting into some sort of order all the offi-
cial and unofficial tournaments that then existed. The ITF also had
its hands tied with respect to politics, with almost fatal consequences
for the Davis Cup. Nevertheless, in July 1977 Chatrier stood for elec-
tion as ITF president, against America’s Sam Malles, and won 70% of
the votes. After his victory he said he wanted “to give the federation a
new image and greater influence over professional tennis”.46 He was
re-elected in 1979, which made him the first ITF president to serve two
consecutive terms, and went on to be re-elected unanimously at each of
the next five elections. As a result, he remained at the top of the ITF for
14 years, not stepping down until 1991.
In 1979 Chatrier was elected president of the Men’s International
Professional Tennis Council, the body responsible for organising the
Grand Prix and dealing with problems within the professional game.
Thus, for six years he was the most important person in international
tennis and was able to orient the ITF’s policy towards developing ten-
nis around the world. He did this by organising (or reorganising) men’s
and women’s international tennis and providing assistance to national
federations. He began his term as president by setting himself two main
objectives—regulating the commercialisation of tennis and putting an
end to political interference in tennis.
Chatrier’s First Challenge: Combat the Commercialisation

of International Tennis
Although money had been part of tennis since tournaments began at

the end of the nineteenth century, the proliferation of non-official
competitions and exhibition matches in the 1960s and 1970s, not to
mention the payment of agent’s fees and appearance fees, led to chaos.
Hence, Chatrier’s first commitment as ITF president was to stop entre-
preneurs running their own tennis tournaments outside the ITF’s con-
trol and to counter the influence of players’ agents. His battle against
46La Nouvelle république du centre ouest, 8 July 1977.

the professional tennis circuits turned out to be far easier than his
struggle against the agents.
The ITF announced the first major change in January 1978.
Henceforth, at the end of each year a jury would follow a set of well-
defined criteria to designate official men’s and women’s world cham-
pions. In this way “everyone will know who is the real and unique
champion”.47 “The success of tennis has led to endless discussions and
so many classification systems that the public no longer know what
to think”.48 As well as results in Grand Prix, WCT and Masters tour-
naments, the designation as world number one would also take into
account results achieved in Davis Cup matches. The ITF thereby
“encouraged” every player, whether independent or under contract,
to make themselves available for their national team. Chris Evert and
Björn Borg were the first official world champions.
Despite the millions of dollars pumped into it and the ever-increas-
ing prize money, Lamar Hunt’s WCT circuit never seriously challenged
the Grand Prix’s dominance. This was largely because the players, caught
in a tug-of-war between promoters and federations, gradually realised
they could earn as much money while remaining independent. By 1977
the WCT was running out of steam. The following year, Lamar Hunt
finally accepted the ITF’s proposals and entered the official ranks; his
tournaments would now be part of the Grand Prix. It may have been
during these negotiations that Chatrier, in his huge office below the
central court at Roland Garros, firmly explained to Hunt his “elephant
theory”: “The 160 nations within the International Federation are like
elephants. If they are steered correctly, they have enormous strength,
they are irresistible. Whatever you do, there will always be one in front
of you. And another, and another, etc.”.49 The “Texas Ogre” threw
in his hand. However, in a last-ditch effort, Hunt again withdrew
47Bellamy, R.; “ITF to pick world champions”, in The Times, 17 January 1998.
48Frêne, J.; “Seule la F.I.T. décernera le titre mondial”, in La Nouvelle république, 17 January
1978.
49Delessalle, J.-C.; Navarro, G.; Rebière, G.; Chami, L.; Profession Président, Les Editions du
sport, 1992, p. 138.

174 E. Bayle
the WCT from ITF control in 1982 and launched a parallel circuit. Four
years later, Chatrier reflected on his former adversary:
Who still talks of Lamar Hunt as a force? He is reduced to half-a-dozen

tournaments. He is no longer a threat to the system. My battle is to
ensure tennis does not fall into the hands of private entrepreneurs. We
brought Hunt into the system, whereas, if you remember, his goal was
to take over tennis. We swallowed him up. And you think he didn’t
realise it?50
Effectively, Hunt was aware of the situation and, in 1989, he pulled the
plug on the WCT. In the case of the WTT and its intercity tournament,
the situation eventually resolved itself, as the competition was never a
great success and rarely managed to attract “important” players.
Tennis’s ever-growing popularity had brought huge sums of money
into the game, shared between players, businesses, tournaments and
sponsors. Because professional players were always on the road and did
not have the time to look after their own affairs, they hired manag-
ers or agents to help them negotiate contracts (advertising, television,
etc.) and run the business side of their lives. Some companies, such as
Proserv (Professional Services) and IMG McCormack, specialised in this
type of management.
Agents began having so much control over their players’ careers that
their decisions could affect a tournament’s survival. In contrast, Chatrier
firmly believed that money from tennis should be injected back into the
game and was therefore against the intrusion of these private organi-
sations. Nevertheless, experience tempered his views: “I am convinced
that professional sport should be run by non-profit bodies. That being
said, I try to live with my times, to understand players’ appetites. I don’t
blame them or their agents”.51
Faced with the ubiquity of these agents, Chatrier decided that the
best way to control them was to ensure they had a vested interest in
50Bouin,P.; Carducci, J.; “Notre procès est exemplaire”, in L’Equipe, 21 January 1986, p. 9.
51Couvercelle,J., Jean; Delamarre, G.; “Entretien avec Philippe Chatrier”, in Tennis Magazine,
n°86, May 1983, p. 61.
maintaining the tennis system. Hence the FFT hired Proserv’s Donald
Dell (“with whom he was on friendly terms”, source: interview with a
professional tennis player) to deal with the commercial side of television
contracts, and IMG’s Mark McCormarck to manage the “French Open”
brand.
By rejecting the agents’ business but supporting the agents, Chatrier
claimed he was keeping them under control: “They are such an integral
part of the system that they can’t, I don’t think, destroy it”.52
The arrival of agents in the tennis world also generated a practice
that was long denied but widely used, appearance fees, a system that
puts greater value on a player’s media profile and ability to attract
crowds than on his or her ability to win matches. Although appearance
fees were kept secret for many years, invoices entitled “Tournament
appearance” have been issued since at least 1984. “President Chatrier,
who is naturally against this system, has admitted on several occasions
that he is powerless to stamp it out”.53 For a long time, Chatrier hes-
itated between legalising appearance fees and taking more consequen-
tial action. In 1986 and 1987 he locked horns with the largest firms of
agents (notably IMG and Proserv) by banning them from the public
relations village at Roland Garros over conflicts of interest, their power
as the players’ representatives and their influence over the organisation
and marketing of tournaments.
Another conflict over the status of players emerged at the end of the
1970s. The ATP wanted ever-greater independence, as is shown by the
creation of the Nations Cup. The outlook for the Grand Prix darkened
further in the 1980s, and by 1988 the ATP and the ITF were openly at
war (the “Tennis War”). Even though Chatrier preferred to talk about
“growing pains after 20 years of Open Tennis”,54 Ray Moore, presi-
dent of both the ATP and the professional council spoke of numer-
ous deep changes giving players “greater influence over how the game
52Ibid.
53Ibid.
54“Une partie de poker-tennis”, in Le Figaro, 5–6 November 1988.

176 E. Bayle
is organised”.55 These revolutions included the idea of creating a new

circuit, the ATP Tour (managed by the players in conjunction with
tournament organisers) and a new, computerised world ranking system.
In addition, an ATP council was to be formed in order to manage the
professional circuit, although the four Grand Slam tournaments would
remain independent. This would reduce the ITF’s role to overseeing the
Davis and Federation Cups.
Powerless in the face of the players’ revolt, which he undoubtedly
underestimated, Chatrier could only look on as the ATP Tour was born,
in 1990. “I can only wish good luck to the new circuit organised by the
players themselves”,56 responded the ITF’s president, as he saw his pow-
ers reduced. The world’s best players may have united around the ATP’s
executive director, Hamilton Jordan,57 but Chatrier was not giving up.
Swallowing his disappointment, he began thinking of a new project.
The result, announced at the end of 1989, on the eve of the first ATP
Tour, was the Grand Slam Cup, “the most richly endowed tournament
in history”.58 The $6-million prize fund split the players’ coalition. In
fact, the players were already unhappy with the ATP’s proposals, which
had done nothing to reduce the number of tournaments on the calen-
dar. The Grand Slam Cup would be a year-end competition between
the best players from the Grand Slam tournaments and the Davis Cup,
that is, the events still under ITF control. Paradoxically, this new cup
took Chatrier into the ranks of the so-called “pirate” tournament organ-
isers, as the tournament was not recognised by the ATP. He may have
said “the cup is not a war machine against the ATP; we simply want to
mark our territory”,59 but, according to one former professional player,
the event “was clearly an act of vengeance against the ATP”.
55“Ray Moor: ‘Les joueurs défendent leur droit’”, in Le Figaro, 5–6 November 1988.
56Giroud, A.; “‘Bonne chance’”, in La Tribune de Genève, 20 December 1988, p. 35.
57Hamilton Jordan, the man of the second tennis revolution was, in turn, Jimmy Carter’s
campaign manager, a teacher and a writer, before becoming the ATP’s executive director.
58L. R.; “L’argent de la fédé sème le trouble chez les joueurs”, in Libération, 6 November 1989,
p. 39.
59Richard, J.-A.; “La déclaration de paix de Philippe Chatrier”, in Le Figaro, 7 November 1989.
Chatrier defended this controversial move, saying “We created this

Cup to encourage people to take part in the Grand Slam tournaments.
We were frightened when we saw how the players treated the Davis
Cup. We have offered them a huge carrot at the end of the year”.60 Pete
Sampras was the first player to grab the carrot, feeling that his win over
Brad Gilbert in the final was “richly rewarded”.
“Alibi” or “salve for the conscience”, this tournament also allowed
a large development fund to be created in order “to help ‘tennis-poor’
countries grow”.61 But, the press invariably criticised this escalation and
it was many years before Chatrier admitted that he had agreed to create
the Grand Slam Cup “dragging my feet and only on condition that $2
million would be taken from it for the development fund”.62
The Grand Slam Cup disappeared from the calendar in 1999, having
failed to attract anything more than pecuniary interest from the players.
As one former professional player said, “it was one of Chatrier’s main
failures and a commercial fiasco”.
But Chatrier’s long-running battles against tennis’s financiers and the
players’ desire for independence were not his only concerns. He had also
set himself other goals.
A Second Challenge: Reduce the Intrusion of Politics

into Sport and Protect the Grand Slams
Chatrier’s second great objective was to reduce political interference

in sport, mostly with respect to the Davis Cup. However, even if the
Davis Cup was, as Chatrier believed, “one of the International Tennis
Federation’s brightest jewels” and a “fundamental symbol of stability
in an ever-changing game”,63 it went through a deep crisis during the
1970s and 1980s. Some observers went as far as suggesting that the only
60Bouin, P.; “Chatrier: ‘Le dollar… l’arme de la dissuasion’”, in L’Equipe, 22 December 1990.
61Delessalle, J.-C.; Navarro, G.; Rebière, G.; Chami, L.; Profession Président, Les Editions du
sport, 1992, p. 144.
62Ibid.
63Trengove, A.; The story of the Davis Cup, Stanley Paul, 1985, p. xi.
178 E. Bayle
way to preserve the event’s prestige and protect its past glory would be
to draw a line under it. Instead, given his love for the Davis Cup and,
most importantly, seeing that it was the only event still under ITF con-
trol, Chatrier decided to change its aging format.
Immediately after his election as ITF president, he excluded South
Africa and Rhodesia, evoking the need to avoid mixing tennis and
politics. Hence, South Africa was banned from all team events organ-
ised by the ITF until the country had a single, unified and non-racial
federation.64 With the respect to the competition’s unusual format, in
March 1980 Chatrier announced that the Davis Cup “is an old lady
being jostled by the untrammelled growth of tennis around the world.
Therefore, she needs to change and rejuvenate”. Several possible formats
were examined, for example, setting up a finals phase, as in the foot-
ball world cup, or having the semi-finals and finals in the same place.
Nostalgically, Chatrier would have liked to revive the challenge round,
which had been abolished in 1972 (the winner qualified automatically
for the next year’s final, which was held in that team’s country): “Finally,
I believe we have lost a lot with the challenge round,65 as image, as an
event that fired the imagination. I am told: it’s fairer now. It’s not obvi-
ous what we have gained, but I know what we have lost. The challenge
round was something magical. The conquest, having to go and fight for
the cup: was that unfair? If so, so what? Sport is cruel. And the winning
team had the same advantage the following year”.66 Another advantage
of the challenge round format was that it increased the media bubble
around the final, unlike the reform that was finally adopted, in which
all the teams start again in the first round, with groups chosen accord-
ing to a seeding system.
Once the Davis Cup had been saved and put on a firm footing,
Chatrier turned to another endangered tradition: the Grand Slam
tournaments. After restoring Roland Garros as one of the world’s great
64White minority rule in Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, ended in 1980.

65Challenge-round: a system by which the holder of the Davis Cup played only the last match,
at home (the Challenge-round), against the winner of a competition between all the challengers.
This system was abandoned in 1972.
66Couvercelle, J.; “Entretien avec Philippe Chatrier”, in Tennis Magazine, n°36, March 1979,
p. 48.
tournaments, he moved onto the southern hemisphere. In 1983, when

a journalist asked him about the health of the “four great tournaments,
the Grand Slam tournaments”, he replied, cuttingly:
There are three, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and Flushing Meadow,

which everyone knows are great successes. The public can see they have
all the values: tradition, authenticity, stars. I can never stress enough
how exemplary they are. They are also great guardians of the credibility
of modern, elite-level tennis. I am looking forward to the coming renais-
sance of the Australian Open.67
Thus, in the name of the ITF and in support of Brian Tobin, the
Australian federation’s president, Chatrier set about revitalising the fourth
Grand Slam tournament. With increased prize money, comprehensive
media coverage and essential support from the ITF and its president, the
Australian Open took on new life in 1987. January was fixed as the date
for the tournament, in order to ensure a stable position within the inter-
national calendar, and the facilities built for the 1956 Olympic Games in
Melbourne were converted into a vast tennis stadium. Paradoxically, the
solution for saving the Grand Slam tradition involved sacrificing the old
Kooyong stadium, the traditional symbol of Australian tennis.
Although Chatrier believed firmly in tennis’s traditions, having trav-
elled round the world some 35 times, he saw the need to develop tennis
in ‘tennis-poor countries’. According to one former professional player,
this strategy was also about ensuring his re-election because “he owed
his election to the ‘small countries’, against the Anglo-Saxons, who con-
trolled the tennis business”. In this case, the strategy he adopted was to
take on another challenge, re-admitting tennis to the Olympic Games.
Putting Tennis Back on the Olympic Programme
Tennis firmly embraced economic globalisation during the 1970s, but

it was not yet a universal sport. It had, for example, been absent from
the Olympic Games since 1928, due to the supposed professionalism of
67Du Peloux, G.; Lacour, J.-P.; “Renaissance du grand chelem”, in Le Figaro, 13 January 1983.
180 E. Bayle
tennis players and the discord between the IOC and ITF.68 As Chatrier
realised, making tennis an Olympic sport would bring more money to
tennis federations through government subsidies and the redistribution
of Olympic revenues to help develop tennis in countries with little ten-
nis infrastructure. “It was a question of conscience and of responsibil-
ities. I had to put my aside personal feelings (…). As soon as I became
president of the international federation, I saw that out of 104 nations,
70 had to listen to their government, for good reason, as their subsi-
dies came from the government”.69 He also knew that Olympic status
would give the ITF more power in its battles against the people who
wanted to commercialise tennis. Presenting himself as a “huge fan of
Olympism”, Chatrier gave himself over entirely to re-establishing ten-
nis on the Olympic programme. On achieving his objective at Seoul in
1988, he proudly declared: “I immediately realised that that had to be
my top priority”.70
However, the road had been long. The first step was taken in March
1976, when the IOC, presided by Lord Killanin, officially recognised
the ITF. On 20 March 1976, Chatrier was able to announce to the
ITFs board of directors: “tennis has once again been added to the list of
Olympic sports, but this does not presuppose its return to the Olympic
Games…”71 Nevertheless, ITF members attending IOC meetings were
able to raise the issue of tennis’s return as an Olympic event. The sub-
ject was debated at the 1978 IOC congress in Athens, but no major
advances were made until the 1981 IOC Session in Baden-Baden.
Here, the IOC’s new president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, helped ten-
nis, which had become a symbol of the sporting revolution and the end
of amateurism, become a demonstration sport at Los Angeles 1984.
According to Chatrier:
68For more details: La Raquette et les anneaux. Histoire du tennis aux Jeux Olympiques, Tenniseum
Roland-Garros, September 2000.

69Couvercelle, J.; “Entretien avec Philippe Chatrier”, in Tennis Magazine, n°36, March 1979,
p. 48.
70Maria, P.; “L’année Chatrier”, in L’Equipe, May 1988.
71Article 14 of the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting on Saturday, 20 March 1976.
Antonio Samaranch played a very important preparatory role. I obtained

the decision in April, at Seoul, at a meeting of all the national Olympic
committees, thanks to the magic phrase “as an experiment”. Presenting
the problem in this way allowed those opposed to the project to accept
it without feeling they were compromising their principles. Funnily
enough, it was a Soviet executive who made me re-use the magic words
“as an experiment”, which had been very effective in 1968 in gaining
acceptance for open tennis.72
Following the success of the Olympic tournament in California, the

IOC congress in Istanbul confirmed tennis’s return for the Seoul
Olympics in 1988, the ITF’s 75 anniversary year. This was an immense
satisfaction for Chatrier, for whom: “Our sport has regained its spurs
and widened its audience even further. Everyone respects an Olympic
medal”.73 At the IOC, Samaranch hailed the victory of the man René
Lacoste called “Mr Tennis”, “a president who is both pragmatic and a
visionary”. Samaranch attributed Chatrier’s success to his “admira-
ble tenacity” and “diplomatic talents”.74 With hindsight, it could be
argued that the Olympic label did not really help develop tennis around
the world, especially in Africa, Oceania and Asia (apart from China).
Furthermore, some players feel that tennis does not really belong in the
Olympics, that it would be better to make way for other sports, and
that Olympic tennis receives scant media coverage.
In September 1990, Count Jean de Beaumont gave up his seat at the
IOC. Chatrier was chosen to take his place and asked to preside the
important commission responsible for the Olympic programme. A few
months earlier, in June 1990, after seven terms and fourteen years as
ITF president, Chatrier had announced that he would not stand for
re-election in July. He had decided to focus his energies on the IOC.
“If Philippe Chatrier had not fought his main battles, the tennis
world would surely function differently today, and some Grand Slams
might have gone under. He was successful on the international stage
72“LePoint avec le président”, in Tennis de France, n°407, March 1987, p. 230.

73Chatrier,
P.; “Ultime satisfaction”, in Tennis Info, n°233, July–August 1991, p. 1.
74Haedens, F.; “Mort d’un géant”, in L’Equipe, 24 June 2000.
182 E. Bayle
because he spoke English and he was an anglophile who could talk on

equal terms with the Anglo-Saxons, as it was they, mostly the Americans
and Australians, who controlled tennis” (source: interview with a former
professional tennis player).
The “Chatrier system” left a legacy that went far beyond the FFT,
ITF and Tennis Europe (the European Tennis Federation, through
which Chatrier helped structure European tennis). In fact, for many
observers, analysts and members of French and international sport bod-
ies (sports ministry, CNOSF, IOC, etc.) Chatrier’s work, first at the
FFT and then internationally, produced an effective “business model”
for developing any sport, not just tennis.
Chatrier’s Legacy
Chatrier’s legacy is first and foremost philosophical and ethical.
Although he carried out most of his work within a non-Olympic organ-
isation, his philosophical and ethical principles were at the heart of
late-twentieth century Olympism. His legacy was also managerial, as he
was a “non-profit entrepreneur” who injected a modern and revolution-
ary vision of management into sports federations in France and abroad,
and, more generally, into the entire sports and Olympic movement.
Philosophical and Ethical Legacy
The 1970s and 1980s were a pivotal period in the evolution of sport,
which underwent several structural and cultural changes, most notably
in terms of the relationships between sport and money and between
sport and politics, against a background of increasing globalisation.
Moreover, elite sport was becoming increasing professional, especially
following the IOC’s decision, taken in 1981, to remove the reference to
amateurism for participants in the Olympic Games.
Chatrier remained inflexible in his attitude toward the issues of sport
and money and sport and politics, despite the criticism he incurred
during his time as president of the ITF, especially with respect to his
role in creating the “Grand Slam Tour”. His doctrine was clear: “Our
sport must remain outside politics and be run by federations, not by gov-
ernments ”.75 For Chatrier, only sport federations, within a strong sports
and Olympic movement, were capable of guaranteeing the vital link
between elite (national team), professional and grassroots sport. In a
world where sport is dominated by money, Chatrier fought tirelessly to
promote this ideal:
“Agents and sponsors are necessary but you have to make them understand
that, 1, the dividends of sport must be reinvested in its development and, 2,
the independence of sport federations must be maintained.” “I am prepared to
fight for my convictions. Because sport is not immune from being dominated
by money. I don’t want mediocrities to take over sport. That would make them
too smug. You could say I am fighting them with their own weapon, money.
But what’s wrong with that if it helps me achieve my goals.”76
Hence, on both national and international levels, he built and cham-

pioned a model based on solidarity and the reinvestment of money in
sport, so sport remains under the control of the federations, not of pri-
vate entrepreneurs. In addition, helped by Juan Antonio Samaranch,
Chatrier fought strongly to obtain tennis’s readmission into the
Olympic programme, which he saw as a way of globalising the develop-
ment of tennis, especially in former eastern bloc countries. “Promoting
sport requires money and 80% of governments provide money only for the
Olympics. Tennis wins out because, in addition to benefitting from the pres-
tige of the Games, we benefit from the solidarity fund, which allows us to
help, among other things, our development sector ”.77
All Chatrier’s actions as federation president included a message and
a vision of how sport should be developed. This development could
be achieved only by professionalising the sports movement and struc-
turing it so it was able to preserve its independence. Hence, Chatrier’s
legacy was also managerial, as the system he introduced was based on
75Source: interview in L’Express 13–19 December 1976.

76Source: interview in Le Figaro 13 January 1983.
77Source: interview in Le Figaro 13 January 1983.
184 E. Bayle
a management doctrine and management principles that were highly

effective and much more modern than those used by other French
sports federations in the 1970s and 1980s.
Managerial Legacy
When Philippe Chatrier stepped down as president, the FFT was

France’s largest sports federation (Table 7.3).
By the end of his presidency, Chatrier had placed the FFT on a par-
ticularly healthy and stable financial footing (Table 7.4). His successor
was able to continue this financial policy thanks to the enduring success
of Roland Garros.
Table 7.3 Size of the FFT in 1992 (when Chatrier stepped down as president)
compared with the French Football Federation and French Basketball Federation
Tennis Football (including the Basketball
professional league)
No. of registered players 1,330,000 1,953,000 386,000
No. of permanent head- 143 109 18
quarters staff
Budget (million francs) 345 250 41
Total payroll (million francs) 51 32 5
Payroll as percentage of 14.7 12.8 12.1
budget (%)
Table 7.4 Fluctuations in the FFT’s financial situation between 1991 and 1997
Year 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
Net profit 48,000 67,630 67,709 47,618 39,853 32,203 50,659
(in K francs)
after tax
Net worth 185,471 252,379 319,300 366,267 405,400 432,983 483,642
(in K
francs)
Net 334,000 379,091 458,594 560,100 651,800 652,830 715,729
balance
(in K
francs)
Net worth/ 55.5 66.5 70 65.4 62.2 66.3 67.5
net balance
(%)
One of Chatrier’s aims was to ensure the FFT’s capacities were con-
stantly adapted to the sporting, organisational and commercial chal-
lenges it had to face. In 1976, he stated: “My concern is to handover to
my successors a federation fit for the 1980s. That is, one whose day-to-day
operations are supervised by permanent managers. In this way, elected offi-
cials will not have to give over all their time to the federation. They will just
have to define policy and steer the federation’s actions. I am building a tool.
There will be 800,000 registered players in five years and a million soon
after. We need a federation equal to this challenge ”.78
The management methods Chatrier introduced in his federation
focused on five key elements in ensuring high performance:
• An effective system of governance (i.e., one that facilitates the emer-

gence and implementation of strategic projects and the monitoring
of the results obtained);
• An efficient federal network (i.e., the relations and cooperation
between the federation’s head office and its leagues, local committees
and clubs);
• An optimal position within its economic sector;
• A team of professional managers to implement policies under the
supervision of elected administrators;
• A strong organisational culture that unites elected officials and sala-
ried managers behind a common objective.
Governance includes decision-making and control methods, as well

as the roles played by governing bodies (executive committee, steering
committee), elected officials and paid managers. Chatrier wanted this
governance to be based on unity.
On the one hand, he established the tradition of giving each regional
league president a seat on the federation’s steering committee. As well
as ensuring the system was representative, this predominance of league
presidents within the system’s governance had a number of advantages,
including homogeneity, coherent management and the easy circulation
78Interview with P. Chatrier in Tennis magazine, May 1976.

186 E. Bayle
of information. On the other hand, it also had potential drawbacks,

such as cumbersome management and league presidents putting their
leagues’ interests ahead of the federation’s interests.79 However, the big-
gest risk for the FFT was to have too narrow a range of expertise among
the members of the steering committee. In fact, the committee’s 45
members include 12 “college members” and 33 independent candidates,
31 of whom are league presidents.
On the other hand, relationships between elected officials and paid
staff were clearly defined: elected officials determine policies; sala-
ried managers implement these policies. Chatrier filled the role of the
(unpaid) president who coordinated and protected the system.80 His
charisma and authority, and the sporting, financial and organisational
results he achieved, firmly justified maintaining this system.
The quality of the federal network, that is, the quality of the collab-
oration between the federation, regional leagues, départemental com-
mittees and clubs in implementing a development policy, is essential in
determining a sport federation’s capacity for growth (Bayle, 1999). In
terms of developing the clubs, Chatrier favoured action on the regional
level, via help to professionalise the leagues, rather than on the départe-
mental level. By the end of Chatrier’s presidency, the FFT had become
increasingly professional, both at the federation’s head office and at the
leagues, with professional senior staff in three areas: sport, administra-
tion and development. Having such a “triumvirate” of directors remains
unique among France’s sports federations.
The FFT’s position within its economic sector (sale of tennis goods,
linked to subscription fees and tennis lessons, and to events, etc.) has
improved continuously. The economic and financial model Chatrier
developed for the federation was based on the success of Roland Garros,
but it also includes events the federation owns and, to a much lesser
79“At the end of the 1980s, the governors of the FFT realised that the self-election system had been
very positive for building the federation on a united foundation but once built and stable it could turn
into a disadvantage by favouring immobility ” (source: interview with a governor). In fact, Philippe
Chatrier’s successor was criticised for the clientilist way in which he used this governance system.
80“A few politicians, even those close to Chatrier, were shocked by the salaries paid to the main sporting
and even administrative executives. But Chatrier stuck to his guns ” (source: interview).
extent, leisure tennis. Consequently, the FFT has successfully cap-

tured the majority of the financial resources available to French tennis,
much of which it redistributes and re-injects into the federal system.
Significantly, during Chatrier’s presidency France became the second
largest host of ATP and WTA tennis tournaments, which were often set
up in order to generate profits for the leagues and for the tennis ecosys-
tem in general.
The penultimate success factor was delegating management to pro-
fessionals (with specific skills, a passion for tennis and who supported
Philippe Chatrier) under the supervision of elected officials. The FFT
had around 10 paid employees when Chatrier arrived but more than
150 salaried staff when he stepped down (approximately 1/3 at Roland-
Garros, 1/3 at the national technical directorate and 1/3 for federal ten-
nis). “We were sensible enough to hire top-rate professionals to manage our
business. We pay them well and there you are ”.81 He also managed to put
together a group of passionate and highly committed regional officials
who believed in what he was trying to achieve. As a result, Chatrier was
able to create a homogeneous structure for the regional leagues.
Professionalism was achieved within the regional leagues but it did
not filter down to the grass-roots level, where the large number of clubs
and fragmentation of resources (notably caused by the “5000 courts”
project, which was detrimental to the larger clubs) meant it was almost
impossible for all clubs to have professional staff with the managerial
skills that would have helped them increase their membership. The
introduction of a qualitative approach (a new approach to training,
support for clubs, see Bayle 1999) was mostly the work of Chatrier’s
successor.
Finally, the organisational culture created during the Chatrier era
brought together elected officials and salaried staff without creating con-
flicts between the two groups. The result was a professional but close-
knit atmosphere that generated a strong feeling of commitment to the
FFT and its objectives during this incredible period of growth (Bayle
1999).
81Interview with P. Chatrier in Tennis magazine, May 1983.

188 E. Bayle
Although they were developed during the 1970s, these five key
performance factors still seem highly modern in the management of
French and international sports federations. The policies and manage-
ment methods implemented by the FFT under Philippe Chatrier may
have evolved, but they remain the foundations of the federation’s success.
Conclusion
Philippe Chatrier is widely esteemed as one of the greatest administra-
tors in French and world sport. There are a number of reasons for this.
First, thanks to his unceasing commitment to tennis at every level, he
had a perfect grasp of the strategic issues involved in finding a balance
between:
• The Grand Slam and Davis Cup tournaments (controlled by the

ITF), the interests of players and the interests of the entrepreneurs
who set up men’s and women’s professional circuits;
• Elite-level, competition and grassroots tennis;
• Unpaid administrators and salaried managers;
• The federation’s public service mission and its commercial
development.
In addition, his actions were founded on a clear vision of the links, both
intrinsic and financial, between elite, professional and amateur sport.
This vision resulted in him adopting a pioneering position with respect
to tennis’s relations with money and politics, the two major issues of the
time. Finally, although his actions are rooted in sport’s traditions, they
still appear revolutionary and very modern because they were applied
in a context that was both very favourable (era of open competitions,
massive growth in grassroots sport, increased commercialisation of sport
thanks to money from television and sponsors, etc.) and very challeng-
ing, due to commercial operators contesting the monopoly exercised by
the traditional sports and Olympic movement.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Isabelle Aimone for providing

access to documents on Philippe Chatrier held by the Musée du Tennis.
I would also like to thank my colleagues, Carine Erard and Lionel Crognier,
for their precious advice concerning the text. A special thank you must go to
FFT staff and Philippe Chatrier’s friends and family for agreeing to share their
information with me.
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Reneaud, M., and F. Rollan. 1995. Tennis: pratiques et sociétés. Talence: Maison
des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine.
Terret, T. (ed.). 2003. Education physique, sport et loisirs 1970–2000. Paris:
AFRAPS.
Waser, A.-M. 1995. Sociologie du tennis. Genèse d’une crise. L’Harmattan
Logiques sociales.
8
Juan Antonio Samaranch: From Barcelona
Elite to the Olympic World
Jean-Loup Chappelet
Juan Antonio Samaranch’s election as the seventh president of the

IOC (International Olympic Committee) turned him into a major
international figure and allowed him to revolutionise world sport.
However, Samaranch’s interesting career began long before his IOC
presidency and continued for several years after it. This chapter tells
the story of his illustrious life, which, for the sake of convenience, is
examined in three parts: the period before he became IOC president
(60 years), his presidency of the IOC (21 years) and the years follow-
ing his retirement from the presidency (10 years). Quite naturally, the
largest section covers Samaranch’s time at the head of the IOC and,
therefore, at the informal head of world sport.
One of the main sources for this chapter is my own memory, as I
had the good fortune to work for the IOC from 1982 to 1987, during
the early years of Samaranch’s presidency, and I have closely followed
J.-L. Chappelet (*)

Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP),
e-mail: Jean-Loup.Chappelet@unil.ch
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_8
192 J.-L. Chappelet
the rest of Samaranch’s career. These reminiscences have been combined

with information provided by the small number of published biogra-
phies of Samaranch, although these works do not cover the latter years
of his presidency or the final phase of his life.1 Samaranch also wrote
his own memoires, but they provide no additional insights and are only
available in Spanish.2 Numerous publications, especially from the IOC,
describe the main stages of Samaranch’s presidency and include some
very informative photographs. Of particular note is “The Centennial
President”, published uniquely in English.3 Another source was the
third volume of the history of the IOC, commissioned by Samaranch
for the IOC’s centenary.4
Before the Presidency (1920–1980)

Juan Antonio Samaranch was born prematurely on 17 July 1920, in
Barcelona (Spain), to Francisco Samaranch Castro and Juana Torelló
Malvehy. He was the eldest child from his father’s second marriage.
Francisco already had a son and a daughter before Juan Antonio came
along, and would have two more sons after him. The family ran a
1For example, the very critical El deporte del poder, Vida y milagro de Juan Antonio Samaranch
by Boix, J. and Espada, A. (1991), Madrid: Ediciones Thenas de hoy (translated into French
by Pointu, R. (1994) as L’héritage trahi, Paris: Romillat). Another critical book, The Lords of
the Rings, by Simson, V. and Jennings, A. (Stoddart 1992), led to legal action by the IOC in
the Swiss courts. For a hagiographic view, commissioned by Samaranch himself, go to: Miller,
D. (1992) Olympic Revolution, The Olympic biography of Juan Antonio Samaranch, London:
Pavilion Books. Events in Lausanne are covered by Morath, P. (2000) in Le C.I.O. à Lausanne,
Yens: Cabédita. A recent book published in China in 2014 provides very valuable details and
photographs of Samaranch’s life: Palacios, P., Mont-Roig, E. and Surroca, J. M. (n.d.), President
Samaranch, 21 years in the Presidency of the IOC that changed Sport throughout the World, Beijing:
Chinese Olympic Committee, IOC and Samaranch-China Foundation.
2Samaranch, J. A. (2002), Juan Antonio Samaranch: Memorias Olimpicas, Barcelona: Planeta
Singular.
3IOC (1997) The Centennial President (articles by members of the IOC and relatives, compiled by
Marie-Hélène Roukhadzé), Lausanne: IOC.

4Landry, F. and Yerlès, M. (1996) The International Olympic Committee: One Hundred Years: The
Idea—The Presidents—The Achievements, Lausanne: IOC, Volume 3: The Presidencies of Lord

Killanin (1972–1980) and Juan Antonio Samaranch (1980–), Especially the Conclusion, Written
by Samaranch, pp. 415–422.
8 Juan Antonio Samaranch: From Barcelona Elite … 193
prosperous textile company, which allowed Juan Antonio to be educated

at good primary and middle schools in his home city. He spoke
Spanish, Catalan and French, but he did not become fluent in English
until the 1970s. He obtained a non-university business diploma (perito
mercantil ) at a German school in Barcelona, which he had validated by
the new Spanish authorities in 1940, and started work with the family’s
textile business, Samaranch SA, which specialised in making bedspreads.
Although the company ran a model factory at Molins de Rei (near
Barcelona) and was based in the predominantly left-wing region of
Catalonia, then a bastion of the Republic, Samaranch’s political leanings
tended towards the right. The left-wing government in Catalonia was
finally swept away by General Franco at the end of the 1930s, after the
cancelation of the Barcelona People’s Olympiad in 1936 (not recognised
by the IOC).
Businessman, Sportsman and… Politician
He briefly took up boxing (under the name “Kid Samaranch”) and,

more significantly, started playing roller hockey (also known as rink
hockey—a form of hockey played on roller skates that was quite pop-
ular in Catalonia and Spanish-speaking countries) as a goalkeeper.
He quickly became the national roller hockey coach for R.C. Español
(a club that included his favourite football team, which was a direct rival
of Barça F.C.). Largely thanks to Samaranch, the Spanish roller hockey
federation became affiliated to the international roller hockey federation
in 1946 in Montreux (Switzerland), where the federation had gathered
for the Nations’ Cup. It was here that he met the tournament organisers,
the brothers Albert Mayer, a Swiss IOC member, and Otto Mayer, who
was also second in command (Chancellor) at the IOC and who immedi-
ately saw great potential in Samaranch.5 The Nations’ Cup in Montreux
became a regular event for Samaranch and the Spanish roller hockey
team, and was also Francoist Spain’s only contact with the sporting world
until the 1960s (the Soviet Union systematically blocked Spain’s efforts
5Boix, J. and Espada, A. (1991), El deporte del poder, op. cit., p. 216.
194 J.-L. Chappelet
to join international sport as a way of putting pressure on the regime).

As a result, roller hockey allowed Spain to win its first world title after
World War II, at the 1951 World Championships in Barcelona. Spain
won again in 1954 and Samaranch became vice-president of both the
international roller hockey federation and the Spanish hockey federation.
During the 1940s, he had used his column in the Barcelona newspaper
La Prensa, written under the by-line Stick, to raise the sport’s profile,
and it was as the newspaper’s (very critical) special correspondent that he
attended his first Olympic Games, at Helsinki in 1952.
After failing in his first attempt to gain a council seat, Samaranch
was elected to Barcelona city council in 1954 as a representative for the
third district. He was very quickly appointed councillor for sport, and
in 1955 he became president of the provincial council’s sports commis-
sion. That same year, he married María Teresa Salisachs Rowe (known
as Bibis), a member of a wealthy, bourgeois Barcelona family. The cou-
ple had a daughter (María Teresa Jr.) and then a son (Juan Antonio Jr.)
who became IOC member in 2001. Meanwhile, Samaranch’s positions
on the city council allowed him to obtain the post of vice president of
the (local) organising committee for the second Mediterranean Games,
which were held in Barcelona in 1955 (the inaugural edition had taken
place in Alexandria four years earlier). He used his position to invite the
president and chancellor of the IOC to the games (in the end, they did
not attend), as well as all the members of the IOC (five came). For the
first time, he was able to rub shoulders with the Olympic world and
became its leading supporter in Spain.
In 1956, he was appointed Catalonia’s official representative at the
national sports delegation (a department of Spain’s sports ministry
responsible for elite sport) and became its president ten years later.6
Aided by the growing resources obtained from the taxation of bet-
ting on Spanish football, he adopted a very innovative approach to
this position, visiting national federations, inaugurating sports facili-
ties, meeting presidents and making statements in the press, etc. It also
6Samaranch was also the vice-president of the Royal Automobile Club of Catalonia from 1957 to
1985 and a friend of Bernie Ecclestome, President of F1 Management.
allowed him to become a member of the Spanish Olympic Committee

(SOC) and chef de mission (head of the Spanish team) for the Cortina
d’Ampezzo Winter Olympics (1956) and the Rome (1960) and Tokyo
(1964) Summer Olympics. At the end of 1956, during the opening
ceremony of the Melbourne Games, which Spain boycotted, he raised
the Olympic flag at Montjuïc, the venue for the 1955 Mediterranean
Games and one of the sites where the Barcelona Olympics would take
place in 1992. He continued to mix with members of the Olympic
world and was elected president of the SOC in 1967.
The following year he led Spain’s delegation to the 1968 Mexico City
Olympics (which the Franco Government wanted to boycott but which
Samaranch convinced the SOC to attend, thereby saving his future stand-
ing in the IOC). This was a very difficult event for Spain, both politically
and on the field of play. Politically, Mexico, who continued to recognise
the defunct republican regime, not Franco’s regime, snubbed the Spanish
government by raising the republican flag at the Games. As a result,
Spain boycotted all the cultural activities organised alongside the Games.
Nevertheless, Samaranch commissioned a painting by Salvador Dali
(El atleta cósmico) that was shown in Mexico City. Sportingly, Spain’s
results were well below the country’s expectations and raised eyebrows.
Samaranch had become national sports delegate in 1966, but was
sacked from this post in 1970. However, his sporting career had not pre-
vented him pursuing his political career, and, in 1967, he won a seat in
the Cortes (lower chamber of the Spanish parliament) with the largest
majority of any of Spain’s members of parliament. He went on to success-
fully defend his seat in the 1971 election. During the ceremony to admit
him as a member of parliament, he was photographed taking the oath,
hand on the bible and dressed in a Phalange (Franco’s party) uniform, in
front of General Franco. This photograph resurfaced during preparations
for the Barcelona Olympics, leading to harsh criticism from a number of
observers, especially Boix and Espada7 and Andrew Jennings, who pur-
sued him with it to Lausanne.8 Samaranch responded by saying that it
8Simpson, V. and Jennings, A. (1992), The Lords of the Rings, London: Stoddart, p. 84.
196 J.-L. Chappelet
was up to the Spanish people to judge his actions during Franco’s regime,
but, at the beginning of his time as IOC president, Samaranch benefited
greatly from the wall of silence and deliberate forgetfulness that hung
over these years in Spain. He had, however, one of his critics—Andrew
Jennings—condemned by a Lausanne court for criminal libel which
imposed a five-day jail sentence, suspended for three years.
In 1961, the year he left the city council, he founded the Barcelona
Boat Show, which, for several years, provided him an opportunity to
promote Catalonia and invite VIPs to Barcelona. He also left his fami-
ly’s textile business to move into real estate and banking, a career change
that allowed him to perpetuate the family’s fortune. In 1965, he took
part in the IOC Session (general assembly) in Madrid, where he was
due to be co-opted into the IOC thanks to his good relations with the
then president Avery Brundage, cultivated in particular by his wife,
Bibis. But the existing Spanish member, Baron de Guëll, succeeded
in having his son-in-law, Pedro Ybarra, the Marquis of MacMahon,
co-opted instead. Samaranch was finally co-opted into the IOC the
following year, in Rome, becoming Spain’s second IOC member, even
though, at this time, countries that had not yet hosted the Olympics
(with the exception of India and Brazil) were entitled to no more than
one IOC member. In fact, he owed his position entirely to Brundage’s
insistence.9 Samaranch’s appointment could also be seen as compen-
sation for the Session failing to award the 1972 Olympics to Madrid
(with the sailing and swimming events planned in Barcelona). Another
significant event in 1966 was the introduction of a 75-year age limit on
new members. This limit became a hurdle Samaranch had to overcome
before being re-elected IOC president in 1997.
Building a Career in International Sport
After his election as president of the Spanish Olympic Committee

(SOC) in 1967, Samaranch began his involvement in international
Olympism. Although he failed to get elected to the IOC’s Executive
Board (government) the following year, Avery Brundage, acting on the

advice of Monique Berlioux, the IOC’s French director general (number
two), appointed him head of protocol—a position that had not pre-
viously existed. He was finally elected to the IOC Executive Board in
1970, and became IOC vice president four years later.
Samaranch’s political career in Spain also continued to flourish and,
in 1973, at the age of 53, he was appointed president of Barcelona
Provincial Government (Deputación). The Deputación had been
set up under Franco to replace the famous Generalitat de Catalunya
(Autonomous Government), which was re-established after Franco’s
death. In fact, Franco’s demise, in 1975, triggered a major transition
period in Spanish politics, during which Samaranch founded with others
the Concordia Catalana conservative party. However, he was quickly
forced to withdraw from the first post-Franco elections, partly due to a
demonstration in Barcelona in April 1977, where marchers chanted the
slogan “Sa-ma-ranch, fot el camp!” (“Samaranch take a hike”).
In May 1977, he was named Spain’s new ambassador to the Soviet
Union (and Mongolia), an appointment that shows that Franco’s
successors were happy to gloss over Samaranch’s Francoist past.
He handed over the presidency of the provincial council to Josep
Tarradellas, who had been the president in exile (from 1954) of the
Generalitat. Samaranch had hoped to be sent to Vienna, Austria, but
finally accepted Moscow on the advice of King Juan Carlos. Moscow
was due to host both the 1980 Olympic Games and the Session that
would elect the IOC’s next president (the incumbent, Lord Killanin,
had decided not to stand). The ambassadorship allowed Samaranch
to receive numerous senior members of the Olympic Movement in
Moscow before the Games and to launch a campaign to convince the
Soviet bloc (around 20 IOC voting members) that he was the right
man to become IOC president. Following the decision of the United
States and its main allies to boycott the Moscow Olympics, in 1979
Samaranch began making strenuous efforts to ensure as many countries
as possible, especially those from Africa and South America, took part
in the Games. In this, he was supported by Horst Dassler (the then boss
of adidas), the Frenchman André Guelfi (head of Le Coq Sportif, one
of adidas’ brands) and the Mexican Mario Vásquez Raña (president of
198 J.-L. Chappelet
the recently founded Association of National Olympic Committees).

The Soviet Union, which provided financial assistance to help countries
take part, was very grateful to Samaranch,10 even though only about
half the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) recognised by the
IOC sent teams to the Games and many of them participated under the
Olympic flag, rather than their national flag. West Germany, Canada
and New Zealand stayed away, thereby sinking the chances of IOC
members from these countries who may have hoped to become IOC
president. Spain took part under the Olympic flag and forbid its ambas-
sador from attending Olympic ceremonies. However, Samaranch did
attend the ceremonies and the Games in his new role as president of the
IOC, having tendered his resignation as ambassador, although he con-
tinued to use the title “your excellency” until the Salt Lake City scandal
of 1998–1999 (see below).
President of the IOC (1980–2001)

Juan Antonio Samaranch was elected president of the IOC in
Moscow on July 16, 1980, the day before his 60th birthday. His suc-
cessor, Jacques Rogge, would be elected 21 years later, day for day,
and the result announced from the same place (Palace of the Unions).
Samaranch was chosen by the IOC Session after only one round of
voting, winning 47 votes, against 21 votes for the Swiss Marc Hodler
(President of the International Ski Federation), 7 votes for the German
Willy Daume and 4 votes for the Canadian James Worrall.11 The New
Zealander Lance Cross withdrew before the election. It is said that
Samaranch stroke a deal with Marc Hodler to let him in charge of mat-
ters regarding the Olympic winter games.
10A Soviet source has claimed that Samaranch was linked to the KGB (Soviet secret service), after
he had been caught using the diplomatic bag to discreetly send Russian icons back to Spain:
Samuel, H. “Former Olympics Chief Juan Antonio Samaranch linked to KGB, book claims”,
Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2009.
11Details of the result were kept secret, but revealed by journalists. See, for example, Miller, D.
(1992) Olympic Revolution, London: Pavilion Books, p. 20.

Samaranch was backed by Monique Berlioux, the IOC’s Lausanne-

based director general, who had supported him for several years
and who did not want a Swiss from Bern as president (too close to
Lausanne). Samaranch was elected for eight years, which was rapidly
increased to nine years, so the presidential election did not coincide
anymore with the Olympic Games. He was re-elected by acclamation
in 1989, 1993 and 1997, allowing him to serve for a total of 21 years
(at the time, there was no 8 + 4-year maximum term for the IOC
president) and making him the longest-serving IOC president after
Coubertin (29 years). Samaranch was part of the wave of Latino admin-
istrators elected to important positions in the Olympic Movement,
which included Havelange (FIFA) and Vasquez Raña (ANOC) before
him, and Acosta (FIVB) and Nebiolo (IAAF) after him, all supported
by Horst Dassler (adidas).
Strengthening the Olympic Institution and Unifying

the Olympic System
One of Samaranch’s first decisions as IOC president was to move to

Lausanne. He set up home at the Lausanne Palace Hotel, occupying a
junior suite (room 301), which consisted of two bedrooms (one for him
and one for his wife) and a small office whose walls were covered from
floor to ceiling by Olympic souvenirs collected during trips on behalf
of the IOC (he visited all 204 NOCs then recognised by the IOC). He
was later severely criticised for this suite, although it was, in fact, smaller
than the apartment his successor occupied in the same hotel. His prede-
cessors had continued to live in their home cities (Dublin and Chicago,
respectively), so Samaranch’s decision to live in Lausanne came as a
great surprise to Monique Berlioux, the IOC’s director general. Berlioux
was very much against the idea, as it turned the presidency of the IOC
into an executive presidency. What is more, Samaranch set up his office
on the ground floor of the IOC’s headquarters in the Château de Vidy,
and took back the power Monique Berlioux, whose office was on the
first floor, had built up over successive Olympiads since her appoint-
ment in 1967.
200 J.-L. Chappelet
Samaranch’s first preoccupation was to ensure the IOC’s head office

remained in Lausanne, rather than moving to Paris, Munich or elsewhere,
as some had suggested it should. To achieve this, he had to persuade the
Swiss government to award the IOC special status in Lausanne above that
of a simple, Swiss not-for-profit association (article 60–79 of the Swiss
Civil Code). After much negotiation, and to general surprise, on the eve
of the opening of the Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden in September
1981, the Swiss federal government issued an order exempting the IOC
from federal income tax (complemented by a similar exemption from can-
tonal taxes) and allowed the IOC to obtain an unlimited number of work
permits for staff recruited from abroad (at the time, Swiss work permits
were hard to obtain, even for Europeans). This order was renegotiated
into a more balanced agreement between the IOC and the federal govern-
ment in 2000. On the basis of its new status, the IOC decided to build a
new head office in Lausanne, to supplement the Château de Vidy, which
had become too small. The president began building close relations with
Lausanne’s city leaders, with whom he was on excellent terms, and began
building his network in Lausanne with Raymond Gafner, a Swiss mem-
ber of the IOC. He asked the Senegalese member, Keba Mbaye, a for-
mer judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, to set up in
Lausanne the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which soon became
sport’s highest authority for settling sport disputes.
In the early 1980s, Samaranch fought with all his strength to avoid
boycotts of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics by the Soviet Bloc (in
retaliation for the boycott of the Moscow 1980 Games by the United
States and its allies) and of the 1988 Seoul Olympics (South Korea did
not have diplomatic relations with the Eastern Bloc). He lost the bat-
tle for Los Angeles, which nevertheless hosted a well-attended Games
with 140 countries participating (compared with 81 in Moscow), but
won it for Seoul, which was boycotted by only a few small countries
(Cuba, Ethiopia, etc.). Los Angeles was notable for being the first
time a team from The People’s Republic of China had taken part in an
Olympic Games since 1952 (China could have sent a team to Moscow
four years earlier, thanks to Killanin, but decided to boycott the Soviet
Games). The 1984 Sarajevo (Yugoslavia) and 1988 Calgary (Canada)
Olympics—which were then held six months before that Olympiad’s
Summer Games, ran almost without difficulty. Moreover, the Los

Angeles Olympics generated a surplus of around US$225 million for
the organisers, the first time an Olympic Games had made a large
profit. The IOC fought without success to recover some of this money,
which was contractually due to the organisers (who set up with it an
Olympic legacy foundation), the US Olympic Committee (which even-
tually reimbursed other NOCs for their stay in the Olympic villages)
and the city of Los Angeles (the only city to bid for the 1984 Games
and which did not build any facilities for the Olympics). Nevertheless,
the main consequence of these Games for the IOC was to rekindle
interest in bidding for the Olympics. Thus, in 1985, when the selection
process for the 1992 Olympics began, six cities bid to host the Summer
Games and seven cities bid for the Winter Games.
The Quest for Financial Power and Autonomy
Like many other people, Samaranch had detected another problem for the
IOC apart from boycotts: its very heavy dependence (more than 80%) on
the sale of Olympic Games television rights to American networks. At the
time, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) had bought the rights
to every edition of the Olympics since the 1964 Winter Games and 1968
Summer Games, paying about US$116 million for Los Angeles in 1984
(more than 75% of the amount paid for television rights). Samaranch
asked Richard Pound, an IOC member from Canada (see the chapter on
Pound in this book), to preside a commission to investigate new sources
of finance. The commission suggested making the IOC the sole negoti-
ator and signatory of contracts with broadcasters (system introduced in
1992) and to demand higher rights from the European Broadcasting
Union, which had a quasi-monopoly over broadcasting (also done as of
1992). In addition, it proposed setting up a partnership programme called
TOP (The Olympic Programme, then The Olympic Partners). This pro-
gramme allowed multi-national companies, such as Coca Cola, to sign
a single contract with the IOC, the organising committees (OCOG) of
upcoming Winter and Summer Games and all the National Olympic
Committees (NOC), and thereby sponsor forthcoming Olympic Games,
202 J.-L. Chappelet
the IOC and the NOCs’ teams. This system would avoid the situation
that occurred at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where the Japanese
company Fuji sponsored the Games while the American company Kodak,
who felt they had to sponsor an Olympics on home soil, sponsored the
American team through the USOC, the United States’ NOC. The pub-
lic found this situation confusing. The first TOP contract was signed in
1985, after two long years of negotiations with the USOC. The USOC
was to receive 20% of the rights as compensation for it no longer being
able to have its own sponsorship programme with members of TOP or
their direct competitors, nearly all of which were, at this time, American
multinationals. As the IOC did not have its own marketing department,
management of TOP was contracted out to ISL (International Sport and
Leisure), which had recently been set up by Horst Dassler, the head of
adidas, and his four sisters, and which, to general surprise, had just been
awarded the contract to market FIFA (Fédération Internationale de
Football Association) and the football world cup, the world’s second larg-
est sports event after the Olympics.
These new sources of finance enabled the IOC to re-launch Olympic
Solidarity on a solid financial footing. A Spanish director, the former
secretary general of the Spanish Olympic Committee, was appointed
and Olympic Solidarity’s offices were moved from Rome (head office
of the European NOCs, which were large donors at the time) to Vidy,
under the aegis of an ad hoc commission presided by Samaranch.
Pound, who Samaranch relied on to carry out his most difficult
missions, was also involved in the project to share the 1988 Games
between Seoul in South Korea (which had been awarded the Games)
and Pyongyang in North Korea. He later explained in minute detail12
the labyrinthine negotiations where Samaranch finally obliged North
Korea’s leaders to refuse his offer to host some Olympic events north of
the 38th parallel for fear of having to open their borders to the media.
One of the most important issues to affect the Seoul Olympics in
1988, and the 1980s in general, was doping. Seoul was expected to be a
political landmark for South Korea, but the event that made the biggest
headlines was the disqualification for doping of the Canadian sprinter
12Pound, R. (1994) Five Rings Over Korea, Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Ben Johnson after he had won one of the Games’ marquee events—the
men’s 100 m. Doping had already been a major problem at Los Angeles,
four years earlier, but it was mostly pushed to the side-lines by, for
example, the IOC Executive Board only dealing with some 15 positive
drugs tests after the LA Games had closed, when there was less media
attention. Prince Alexandre de Mérode, who Samaranch had entrusted
to tackle doping, was determined not to let himself get caught out by
Samaranch and the IOC Executive Board a second time, so he “leaked”
Ben Johnson’s failed drugs test to the media before the IOC had time to
give its verdict. Other cases were hushed up, but the IOC was forced to
support the Council of Europe’s 1989 anti-doping convention, which
led to the founding of the World Anti-Doping Agency ten years later,
presided by Pound (and not by Samaranch, as originally intended).
From Fighting Boycotts to Marketing the Games

and Bids
All these events led to the final demise of amateurism, a process begun
by Lord Killanin and completed by Samaranch. Although the final res-
olution of the 1981 Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden had included
the statement that the Games should never “become open competi-
tions”, professional athletes were progressively allowed to compete in
the Olympics, with the agreement of their International Federations
(IF). As a result, professional footballers (under 23s) and tennis play-
ers first took part in the Games in Los Angeles in 1984, followed by
NBA (National Basketball Association) basketball players in Barcelona
in 1992 (American Dream Team) and NHL (National Hockey League)
ice-hockey players in Nagano in 1998. But the transition towards pro-
fessionalism was not so straightforward in the Soviet bloc, as has been
told elsewhere.13 Disagreement over professionalism was also the reason
given to the press for the resignation of Monique Berlioux, the IOC’s
13Chappelet,J.-L. (1991) Le Système olympique, Grenoble: Presses universitaires, pp. 213–

227. Samaranch considered this book to be “the best independent analysis of the Olympic
Movement”. See Pound (2012) “Preface” in Ferrand, A. et al. (2012) Olympic Marketing,
London: Routledge, p. xv.
204 J.-L. Chappelet
director general. In fact, a power struggle within the IOC headquarters

at Vidy had made relations between the president and director gen-
eral increasingly tense. Cooperation finally broke down in May 1985,
during the IOC’s meeting in East Berlin, and Monique Berlioux was
forced to resign, albeit with a generous compensation package to ensure
her total media silence which she never broke.
Six cities bid to host the 1992 summer Olympics, including both
Barcelona and Paris (which quickly recruited Berlioux). Fierce com-
petition between the rival cities gave rise to unprecedented practices
in the run up to the final vote in 1986. Although Samaranch did
not vote (as in other IOC elections), his home city won, collecting
47 votes, compared with 27 votes for Paris. The timely award of the
1992 Winter Games to Albertville, a few minutes before the vote for
the Summer Games, can be seen as a consolation prize for France. Just
before the 1992 hosts were chosen, a new head office (Olympic House)
was opened in a public park (very unusual in Switzerland) next to the
Château de Vidy, completing a project Samaranch had announced
immediately after his election.
The Barcelona Olympics, in July 1992, were a testimony to
Samaranch’s strategy, even though he contributed very little to their
organisation (in the hands of the local socialist party). As well as being
a great success in both financial and urban development terms, they
were the first Games for many editions to be unaffected by boycotts.
The new republics that arose after the breakup of the Soviet Union took
part as independent countries or, for the last time, under the title “uni-
fied team”. Yugoslavian athletes competed as “independent athletes” in
order to get round the sanctions the UN had imposed on Yugoslavia
during its civil war, and post-apartheid South Africa sent its first team
since 1956. Some people thought that Samaranch would end his pres-
idency on this successful note, but he could not bring himself to stand
down and was re-elected by acclamation in 1993.
Outside his IOC activities, in 1987 Samaranch had become the pres-
ident of Caixa de Catalunya (one of Barcelona’s biggest savings banks,
formed by the merger of several smaller banks). His position was con-
firmed in 1990 but discreetly terminated in 1999 at the height of the
“Salt Lake City scandal” (see below). At the end of 1991, the King of
Spain had made him the Marquis of Samaranch, a hereditary title. His
successor at the IOC–Jacques Rogge—had received a knighthood in
1992 and was later made a count by the King of Belgium. It is said
that Samaranch wanted to be made a duke, a title that had been given
to Adolfo Suárez, Spain’s prime minister during the post-Franco demo-
cratic transition, but had to make do with a marquisate, like a previous
Spanish member of the IOC.
In 1993, in the presence of the Spanish royal couple and the pres-
ident of Switzerland, Samaranch inaugurated a modern Olympic
Museum at Lausanne-Ouchy. The new building replaced the museum
opened by Coubertin at “Mon-Repos” in the 1920s and which closed
in the 1960s, and a temporary museum near Lausanne station set up by
Samaranch in 1982 and which remained open until 1993. The Ouchy
museum was built on a site that had originally been earmarked for the
IOC’s administrative offices, but this project was abandoned for fear
of local opposition. Most of the museum’s CHF96 million cost14 was
financed by donors, who were thanked by marble “bricks” bearing their
name and displayed in the entrance hall. It is surrounded by an open
park with views over Lake Geneva. The museum was refurbished before
the end of Samaranch’s presidency and Samaranch ran the foundation
that owned the walls until he died.
The 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer (Norway) were the first
to take place two years before the Summer Games, a system intro-
duced following a proposal from Samaranch influenced by a TV exec-
utive. Despite harsh criticism of the IOC and its president before the
Games, Lillehammer was a great media success, mostly thanks to the
public’s enthusiasm and the idyllic winter setting. At the beginning of
the Games, Samaranch, travelling in an armed convoy, visited Sarajevo,
the city that had hosted the Winter Games ten years earlier and
which was now in the middle of a civil war. It has been suggested that
Lillehammer was awarded the 1994 Games, ahead of the great favourite
Falun (Sweden), because the IOC coveted the Nobel Peace Prize, which
is awarded by a committee of the Norwegian Parliament. However,
14Lyberg, W. (1996) Fabulous 100 years of the IOC, Lausanne: IOC, p. 326.
206 J.-L. Chappelet
Samaranch did not get the pleasure of receiving this prize, which has
never been attributed to the IOC, despite an intensive and highly secre-
tive campaign by Samaranch during the 1990s.
Samaranch then turned to the United Nations (UN). He sent a
journalist from Ethiopia who had worked for the UN to represent the
IOC at the landmark 1992 Rio Conference, now known as the Earth
Summit. He made sustainable development a central issue for the
IOC and had it proclaimed the third dimension of Olympism (with
sport and culture) by the centennial Olympic Congress in Paris in
1994. Most importantly, he ensured that, in 1993, the UN General
Assembly passed a resolution proclaiming an “Olympic truce” for the
Lillehammer Games and declared 1994 to be “the year of sport and the
Olympic ideal”. This truce, which puts few constraints on signatory
states, is proclaimed for every Olympic year via a resolution introduced
by the next host country. Inspired by the Ancient truce designed to pro-
tect travellers heading to Olympia, signatories (almost all UN members
sign the truce) undertake not to start armed conflicts during the Games
and for a period of one week before and after them. As such, it provides
a potent symbol of the IOC’s influence (the UN granted the IOC rare
observer status in its general assembly in 2009).
The Olympic movement was at the peak of its strength and
Samaranch talked about a “golden age of sport”.15 Since 1988, the
NOCs have received a minimum payment from the IOC, guaranteed
by Olympic Solidarity, which has ensured the universality of the Games.
Consequently the number of countries taking part in the Summer
Games rose from 140 in 1984 to 203 in 2000. In addition, several IFs
have obtained the inclusion of their sports in the Olympic programme,
which expanded from 21 sports in 1984 to 28 sports in 2000 (through
the addition, in chronological order, of tennis, table tennis, baseball,
badminton, softball, triathlon and taekwondo, plus curling for the
Winter Games).16 Numerous cities were now vying to host the Games,
15Samaranch, J. A. (1996) “Preface” in Chappelet, J.-L. (1996) Sport Management: An

International Approach, Lausanne: Documents of the Museum, p. 5.
16Cf. Chappelet, J.-L. (2013) “Managing the size of the Olympic Games”, Sport in Society, vol.
16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2013.834621.
with six bids received for the 1992 Summer Games and eleven bids for
the 2004 Olympics. The Swiss city of Sion bid to host the 2002 and
2006 Winter Olympics, but was beaten by Salt Lake City (United
States) and Turin (Italy), respectively, despite initial support for Sion’s
2006 bid from Samaranch and the IOC Administration. This defeat in
1999 was very poorly received in Switzerland, where the IOC’s prem-
ises were daubed with derogatory slogans and where the IOC had to
withdraw its request for exemption from VAT (value-added tax), which
Switzerland had just introduced. Nevertheless, in 2000, the Swiss gov-
ernment and the IOC signed an agreement confirming the IOC’s main
privileges (tax exemptions excluding the VAT exemption).
Revising Governance
Increased competition to host the Olympic Games led candidate cities

to use ever more inventive methods to gain IOC members’ votes. The
dubious legitimacy of some of these practices led to a major scandal
at the end of Samaranch’s presidency and the first major changes to
the way the IOC is run since it was founded by Pierre de Coubertin
in 1894. At the end of 1998, an American newspaper published a let-
ter hinting that a member of the IOC had accepted benefits in kind
from the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games bid committee. Swiss
IOC member Marc Hodler, who was responsible for monitoring the
actions of candidate cities, publicly confirmed that numerous IOC
members were involved in similar improper behaviour and raised
enormous media interest. Samaranch was forced to set up a commis-
sion of enquiry to investigate what had become a common practice
that was well known by the media but not prooved. In his report,
published a month later, commission president Richard Pound rec-
ommended excluding six members (four others had resigned or
died) and issuing warnings to ten others. Intense pressure from the
media and sponsors ensured this recommendation was adopted by an
extraordinary IOC Session, held in March 1999 in Lausanne, during
which Samaranch won a vote of confidence by 86 votes to 2 (plus one
abstention and one spoiled ballot).
208 J.-L. Chappelet
In the wake of these events, the IOC changed the way it was
organised, reducing the number of members from 125 to 115 (as a max-
imum) and introducing a 70-year age limit for members (the age limit
had been increased to 80 in 1995 to allow Samaranch to remain presi-
dent). The 115 members were divided into four colleges, consisting of 70
individual members (no more than one member per country to ensure
diversity), 15 representatives of NOCs (who lost their status if they lost
their position, in most cases, of NOC president), 15 representatives of
IFs (also limited in their functions, which Samaranch had always wanted
to do in order to ensure the support of the IFs and have their powerful
presidents at the IOC) and 15 athletes (12 of whom were to be elected
from among participants in successive Summer (4 + 4) and Winter
(2 + 2) Games). In addition, the president’s term of office was limited to
twelve years, consisting of a first term of eight years, possibly followed by
a further four years. The term for IOC members was set at eight years
(renewable). These measures applied only to future members, which
made it much easier to get them accepted. Nevertheless, Samaranch
was not able to pass responsibility for choosing Olympic cities to the
Executive Board (15 members) as Marc Holdler wished, rather than the
general membership (maximum of 70 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 115 members,
see above), due to the staunch opposition of ordinary IOC members who
would have lost their main power. In addition, 1999 saw the creation of
an Ethics Commission and the adoption of a Code of Ethics intended
to regulate the behaviour of the Olympic world. This commission was
not very active during Samaranch’s presidency.17 It even went as far as to
exonerate a member who would be excluded under Samaranch’s succes-
sor, who ensured the commission did its job to the full at the beginning
of his presidency. These important reforms, as well as a number of trans-
parency measures and the ban on IOC members visiting candidate cities,
substantially bolstered the IOC’s position in public opinion. Although
Samaranch’s resignation, demanded by the media, was no longer on the
agenda, he had to testify (in Spanish) to the United States Congress in
order to avoid restrictions being placed on the IOC’s commercial dealings
17Chappelet, J.-L. (2005) “Une commission d’éthique pour la gouvernance du mouvement olym-
pique”, in Ethique publique, vol. 7, n°2, pp. 132–143.
in the US. Despite a similar scandal to the Salt Lake City affair, the last
Olympics under Samaranch’s presidency, held in Sydney in September
2000, were a great success. As these Games opened, Samaranch’s wife suc-
cumbed to cancer. The president flew back to Barcelona in a private jet
for her funeral, returning to the Olympic city a few days later.
Samaranch used the final year of his presidency to prepare his
retirement and pave the way for his chosen successor, the polyglot
Belgian Jacques Rogge, who, among other things, was president of
the European Olympic Committees and the Sydney Coordination
Commission, an orthopaedic surgeon and an Olympian (sailing at the
1968, 1972 and 1976 Games). Rogge had been co-opted to the IOC
in 1991 and elected to the IOC Executive Board in 1998 thanks to
Samaranch’s support. At first, Samaranch had considered Jean-Claude
Killy as his successor, but Killy had declined.
After the Presidency (2001–2010)

Before retiring, Samaranch made sure he would be given both a
permanent seat on the IOC’s Executive Board as an observer and the
position of IOC honorary life president. Only Coubertin had been
given this title before him and it would not be given to his successor,
Jacques Rogge, who became merely an honorary president in 2013.
As honorary life president, Samaranch’s living expenses (hotel, trans-
port, taxes, insurance, etc.), which amounted to US$280,000 in 2009,
the last published full year, continued to be paid by the IOC.18 Long
before his retirement, Samaranch had decided that his successor would
be elected by an IOC Session in Moscow on 16 July 2001, the same
place he had been elected 21 years earlier to the day. There were five
candidates: Jacques Rogge (elected in the second round with 59 votes),
the Korean Un Yong Kim (23 votes), the Canadian Richard Pound
(22 votes), the Hungarian Pal Schmitt (6 votes) and the American
Anita DeFrantz, who was eliminated in the first round. Pound was
18IOC (1999) Shaping the Future, IOC Interim Report 2009–2010, Lausanne: IOC, p. 87.
210 J.-L. Chappelet
very disappointed with the result. His knowledge of the ins and outs
of the IOC, especially with respect to dealings with television networks
and sponsors, had made him the favourite for 1997, but he had lost
Samaranch’s support due to his opposition, in 1995, to increasing the
age limit for the president from 75 to 80, which Samaranch needed
in order to be re-elected for his last term. (Rogge did not wish to raise
the age limit, either, but he had expressed his opinion more discreetly.)
Despite being tainted by his involvement in the Salt Lake City scandal
(the details of which had been exposed by Pound), Kim finished ahead
of Pound, only to be forced to resign from the IOC three years later.
He attributed his defeat to Samaranch.
Now 81 years old Samaranch, returned to Lausanne the day after
the election of his successor. After a few hours at the Palace Hotel, he
was rushed to hospital suffering from the effects of the medication he
had taken in order to keep going for the previous few days.19 He had
to undergo dialysis for several months. Although he attended all the
Olympic Games held before his death (Salt Lake City 2002, Athens
2004, Turin 2006, Beijing 2008 and, finally, Vancouver 2010), as
a guest of honour, he had to be represented by his first vice-president
at the ceremony to hand over the keys to Vidy to his successor, at the
Olympic Museum on 20 July 2001.
Samaranch’s three great successes were reforming the IOC in 1999
(turning a major crisis into an opportunity), achieving major changes
in the notion of amateurism (which had risked making the IOC obso-
lete) and giving the IOC a solid financial base (through broadcast-
ers and multinational sponsors). He summarised these reforms in
a few catchy slogans, such as: “the best must take part in the Games”
(hence, professionals as well as amateurs) and “the commercialisation
of sport is the democratisation of sport” (to justify bringing in spon-
sors). As soon as he was elected, he worked hard to unify the Olympic
Movement, under his guidance, by putting an end to the petty wran-
gling between the IOC, the NOCs and the IFs. From this point of
view, he can be considered the first true “president of the Olympic
19Luzenfichter,A. and Vandeweghe, H. (2008) Jacques Rogge: “Pour la beauté du sport”,

Chapter 6 (Une prise de fonctions mouvementée), Paris: Prolongations, pp. 75–80.
Movement”. As IOC president, he was able to co-opt the president of

the General (now Global) Assembly of International Sport Federations
(GAISF), Un Yong Kim, from Korea, to the IOC, in place of the very
critical Swiss, Thomas Keller (previous GAISF President). He began by
dividing GAISF into three associations (IFs of summer sports, entrusted
to Primo Nebiolo, IFs of winter sports, entrusted to Marc Hodler, and
IFs of sports recognised by the IOC) in order to reduce GAISF’s power
to share broadcasting rights among the IFs. Later, he would also get
elected to the IOC, albeit with difficulty, the president of the NOCs,
Mario Vásquez Raña, from Mexico.
In fact, during his presidency, Samaranch co-opted almost 200 mem-
bers to the IOC (out of a total of approximately 400 members since its
foundation), who remained grateful to him for many years, as is shown
by the number of votes won by Madrid in the first round of voting
to choose the hosts of the Summer Games in 2012 (20 votes), 2016
(28 votes) and, after Samaranch’s death, 2020 (26 votes). In 1981, he
also co-opted the first women to the IOC. The only people he failed
to co-opt were Peter Ueberroth (president of the Los Angeles OCOG,
who had tried to limit members’ privileges during the 1984 Games)
and Adolf Ogi (a former president of Switzerland and future advisor on
sport to the Secretary General of the UN, whose election bid in 2001
failed because Switzerland already had five IOC members). On the
other hand, in 2001—the last possible year—Samaranch succeeded in
obtaining IOC membership for his son, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.
Samaranch died from heart failure, in Barcelona, on April 21, 201020
at almost 90 year-old. He had suffered a first heart attack in October
2009. Three ceremonies were to be carried out in his honour in three
different cities: Barcelona, Lausanne and Singapore. In Barcelona,
a civil ceremony in the Generalitat Palace (where a chapel of rest was
set up and the ceremony ended with a rendition of Amigos para siem-
pre, the official theme of the Barcelona Games) was followed by a ser-
vice in Barcelona Cathedral, where the King and Queen of Spain, his
20Longman, J. (2010), “Juan Antonio Samaranch, Who Transformed the Olympics, Dies at 89”,
The New York Times, April 22, page A27. This article gives a very good summary of Samaranch’s
Olympic career.
212 J.-L. Chappelet
companion, Luisa Sallent, and the IOC President were among the
mourners. Eight sportspeople, including the tennis player Rafael Nadal,
carried the coffin between the two buildings and tributes were paid by
world figures such as Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy.
He was then buried in a private ceremony at the Montjuic Cemetery,
behind the 1992 Olympic stadium. The ceremony in Lausanne was
held in the city’s cathedral in May 2010 and was dedicated mostly to
IOC Administration staff and the people of Lausanne. The Singapore
ceremony, held in August 2010 in the local Catholic cathedral, was for
IOC members, who were in the city for the first Youth Olympic Games,
and who had not been able to come to Barcelona because of the sud-
denness of his death.
A museum in Barcelona and a stadium in Lausanne bear his name;
however, a local controversy prevented a street in Barcelona being
named after him.
Conclusion
Juan Antonio Samaranch’s life was entirely inspired by sport. His com-
mitment to Olympism undoubtedly dates back to 1955, when the host-
ing of the Mediterranean Games by his hometown aroused his interest
in the IOC. Becoming involved in roller hockey, an important sport in
post-war Spain, was a strategic choice, as he had quickly realised that
he could never break through in a more established sport such as box-
ing or football, which he also played at a low level. Thanks to his fam-
ily’s fortune, he was able to raise himself to the top of roller hockey,
both nationally and internationally, thereby allowing him to become an
important figure in Spanish sport. He used his positions to make him-
self known and obtain favourable coverage from the press via contacts
he cultivated from a very young age with the media. He even wrote a
sports column for the Barcelona daily La Prensa. He was elected to the
IOC in 1966 and, supported by the IOC’s president (Brundage) and
directors general (Mayer, then Berlioux), he quickly began climbing the
ladder to the presidency. Samaranch achieved his goal in 1980, thanks
to votes from the Soviet bloc, which was grateful for his help in saving
the Moscow 1980 Games from disaster following the American boycott.
During his long presidency of the IOC (1980–2001) he achieved an
“Olympic Revolution” in which the Games became a truly global event
(by welcoming every country, including China and post-apartheid South
Africa, and all the best athletes, including professionals) and the IOC
became a powerful NGO (with solid private finance), while pacifying
internal discord, especially financial arguments between stakeholders (to
foster the “unity of the Olympic Movement”). Thus, he implemented
long-awaited reforms that his presidential predecessors (Brundage, then
Killanin) did not want to or were unable to accomplish. Towards the end
of his term, at the turn of the century, he even managed to modify the
structure of the IOC, helped by pressure from the media and sponsors,
which gave him the two-thirds majority of IOC members needed to make
such profound changes and which even Samaranch sometimes found dif-
ficult to obtain. His successor wanted to depart from the IOC’s lenient
culture under Samaranch, but did not achieve the necessary changes to
maintain the IOC in the high position established by Samaranch.
Throughout his life, Samaranch took inspiration from Pierre de
Coubertin, the founder of the Olympic Movement, who was an une-
qualled communicator and very pragmatic. Samaranch was similar to
Coubertin in that he was a small man, he was always perfectly turned
out (suit and tie), and he became honorary life president of the IOC
(although Coubertin did not attend any of the Games after his retire-
ment from the presidency in 1925). Samaranch used amateurism to his
own ends, without really believing in it. He inaugurated an Olympic
Museum in Lausanne, a city he liked so much he made it the admin-
istrative centre of world sport (bestowing on it the title “Olympic
Capital”). He presided over the IOC by confiding the most difficult
tasks to highly qualified lieutenants, most notably Richard Pound,
Alexandre de Mérode, Mario Vásquez Raña, Primo Nebiolo, Keba
Mbaye and Jacques Rogge, who he kept out of the media spotlight.
Only Rogge would go on to become IOC president, overseeing a period
of mere consolidation after the great entrepreneurial expansion of the
IOC achieved by Samaranch.
214 J.-L. Chappelet
Key Dates
1920: Born on 17 July in Barcelona.

1940: Recognition of his business degree obtained under the Spanish
Republic.
1943: Coach of the roller hockey team of R.C. Español in Barcelona.
1947: Head coach of the Spanish roller-hockey team.
1950: Member of the International Roller Hockey Federation
Executive Committee.
1951: Spain wins its first roller hockey world championships (in
Barcelona).
1954: Spain becomes world roller hockey champion for the second
time (in Barcelona).
1954: Municipal councillor of Barcelona.
1955: Vice-president of the organising committee of the second
Mediterranean Games (in Barcelona).
1955: Marriage to María Teresa Salisachs Rowe.
1956: Catalonia’s representative to Spain’s national sports delegation.
1956: Member of the Spanish Olympic Committee.
1959: Birth of his son, Juan Antonio Jr., a future member of the IOC.
1961: Founder and president of the Spanish boat show in Barcelona.
1966: Member of the IOC for Spain.
1966: National delegate for sport (until 1970).
1967: President of the Spanish Olympic Committee.
1967: Elected member of the Cortes (lower house of the Spanish
Parliament) with the biggest majority, he swears allegiance on
the Bible in front of General Franco.
1968: IOC head of protocol.
1970: Elected member of the IOC Executive Board.
1971: Re-elected to the Cortes.
1973: Named president of Barcelona Provincial Council
(Deputación) (until 1977).
1974: Elected IOC vice-president.
1977: Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Mongolia (with residence
in Moscow).
1980: Elected IOC president on 16 July.

1985: Signs the TOP sponsorship contract with ISL (International
Sport and Leisure) AG.
1986: Barcelona chosen to host the 1992 Olympic Games.
1987: President of La Caixa (until 1999).
1993: Opening of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.
1994: 100th anniversary of the IOC and Centennial Olympic Congress
in Paris.
1998: Start of the ‘Salt Lake City scandal’, which continued until 1999.
1999: IOC reform and testimony at the US Congress.
2000: Declares the Sydney Games “the best Games ever”.
2001: Leaves the IOC presidency on 16 July and becomes IOC
honorary life president.
2001: President of the Olympic Museum Foundation.
2010: Death in Barcelona on 21 April.
Bibliography
Boix, J., and A. Espada. 1991. El deporte del poder, Vida y milagro de Juan
Antonio Samaranch. Madrid: Ediciones Themas de hoy (Also available in
French, translated by Pointu, R. 1994. L’héritage trahi. Paris: Romillat).
Chappelet, J.-L. 1991. Le Système olympique. Grenoble: Presses universitaires.
IOC. 1997. The Centennial President (Articles by Members of the IOC and
Relatives, Compiled by Marie-Hélène Roukhadzé). Lausanne: International
Olympic Committee (IOC).
Landry, F., and M. Yerlès. 1996. The International Olympic Committee: One
Hundred Years: The Idea—The Presidents—The Achievements. Lausanne: IOC
(Volume 3: The Presidencies of Lord Killanin (1972–1980) and of Juan
Antonio Samaranch (1980 -), especially the Conclusion by Samaranch).
Miller, D. 1992. The Olympic Revolution, Profile of Juan Antonio Samaranch.
Paris: Payot (available in several languages).
Morath, P. 2000. Le C.I.O. à Lausanne. Yens: Cabédita.
Pound, R. 1994. Five Rings Over Korea. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Samaranch, J.A. 2002. Juan Antonio Samaranch: Memorias Olimpicas.
Barcelona: Planeta Singular.
Simson, V., and A. Jennings. 1992. The Lords of the Rings. London: Stoddart
(available in several languages).
9
Richard (Dick) W.D. Pound: The Architect
of Olympic Business
Milena M. Parent and Benoît Séguin
Introduction
Richard William Duncan Pound, better known as Dick Pound, has had
a profound impact on the Olympic Movement and the world of inter-
national sport. Working in conjunction with two other key members of
the International Olympic Committee (IOC), President Juan Antonio
Samaranch and Marketing Director Michael Payne, Pound revolution-
ized the business of the Olympics. Pound oversaw the massive growth
in the IOC’s resources by developing sponsorship programs, such as
TOP (The Olympic Partners), and negotiating lucrative contracts for
broadcasting rights for every edition of the Olympics from the 1988
M. M. Parent (*) · B. Séguin

School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
e-mail: milena.parent@uottawa.ca
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_9
218 M. M. Parent and B. Séguin
Calgary Winter Games to the 2008 Beijing Games. For example, the
$3.5 billion1 broadcasting rights contract for the 2000–2008 Olympic
Games, which Pound signed with the American television network
NBC, represented by its Sports and Olympics Chairman, Dick Ebersol,
helped the IOC increase its revenues to record amounts (Wenn and
Martyn 2005).
Pound was also in the vanguard of the fight against doping through
his leadership of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). It was for
this work that TIME Magazine named him one of the 100 most influ-
ential people in the world in 2005 (Saporito 2005).
After distinguishing himself with the IOC and becoming a household

name with everyone who follows the Olympic Movement, Pound dedi-
cated himself wholly to WADA and its anti-doping mandate. During his
time with WADA, he set his sights on the American track and field team,
the Union Cycliste Internationale and the National Hockey League. It is
worth noting that, today, those organizations are known for their strict
doping policies and restoring the credibility and honor of their athletes.
(Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame 2015, p. 6)
Nevertheless, Pound had to overcome numerous obstacles, pitfalls,

disputes, and challenges over the years. For example, his tireless fight
against doping led to criticism, legal proceedings and threats of repris-
als by some of the people and organizations he named, including Lance
Armstrong (since 2004), the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), and
the National Hockey League (NHL) and its players (Zinser 2006). In
addition, his role in investigating IOC members during the Salt Lake
City scandal may have been a factor in his failed bid for the IOC’s pres-
idency in 2001.
This chapter looks at Dick Pound’s contribution to international
sport, briefly describing his career, presenting the challenges he faced,
and examining his management and leadership styles.
1All amounts are in US dollars.

9 Richard (Dick) W.D. Pound: The Architect of Olympic Business 219
A Short Biography
Dick Pound is undoubtedly Canada’s most distinguished sport-
ing personality. Over his long and distinguished career, he instigated
negotiations for Olympic broadcasting, marketing and sponsoring
rights, served two terms as an IOC vice president (1987–1991 and
1996–2000), and became the first president of WADA (1999–2007).
Pound’s first direct contact with the Olympic Games was as a swim-
mer at the 1960 Rome Olympics, where he finished 6th in the 100 m
freestyle and 4th in the 4 × 100 m medley relay. He also claimed several
national swimming titles and crowned his competitive career by winning
four medals at the 1962 Commonwealth Games, including a gold medal
in the 110 yards freestyle event. In addition to being an accomplished
sportsman, he holds degrees from McGill University in commerce
(1962), accounting (1964) and civil law (1967). A tireless worker, Pound
possessed the skills and qualities required by senior administrators within
the Olympic Movement. In fact, he has been involved in almost every
aspect of the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement.
His sport management career began in 1965, when he was
appointed director and treasurer of the Quebec Section of the
Canadian Amateur Swimming Federation. Then, in 1968, at the age
of 26, he was elected to the Canadian Olympic Association’s (COA)2
board of directors and was asked to fulfill the role of secretary, a post
he held until 1977 when he became president of the COA. Pound
continues to sit on the Canadian Olympic Committee’s (COC) board
to this day. From his start with the COA, Pound built a close rela-
tionship with James Worrall, a prominent member of the Olympic
Movement (CBC 2001).
Worrall’s greatest moment as a sportsman came at the 1936 Berlin
Olympics, where he carried the Canadian flag during the opening cer-
emony and competed in the 110 m and 400 m hurdles. A qualified
2In2003, the Canadian Olympic Association Olympic (COA) changed its name to the Canadian
Olympic Committee (COC).
lawyer, he went on to occupy several different posts within the COA,

including deputy chef de mission for the Canadian Olympic team
(1948, 1952), chef de mission for the Canadian Olympic team (1956,
1960), COA president (1961–1968), and honorary life president of
the COA. He was a member of the IOC from 1967 to 1989, at which
point, he became an honorary member. As well as becoming the first
Canadian to sit on the IOC’s Executive Board, he was a member of
the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (OCOG) for the
1976 Montreal Olympics and for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.
Pound often cites Worrall as his mentor and expresses his gratitude for
Worrall’s unfailing willingness to give advice and support throughout
his career.
The 1970s were a key period in Pound’s rise in the Olympic
Movement. At the beginning of the decade, Montreal was chosen to
host the 1976 Summer Olympics, allowing Pound to work closely with
influential members of both the OCOG and the IOC during the prepa-
rations for the Games. In 1972, he was appointed deputy chef de mis-
sion for the Canadian Olympic team for the Munich Olympic Games.
Then, in 1973, he obtained his first opportunity within the IOC, when
he was appointed to the Emblems Commission, which would become
the Marketing Commission ten years later. Pound’s increasing pres-
ence in Olympic circles meant that his qualities as a manager did not
go unnoticed and helped in his accession to the IOC. His rise through
the ranks of the Olympic world continued in 1977 with his election as
president of the COA. This position, together with the granting of an
additional IOC seat to Canada following the 1976 Montreal Olympic
Games, paved the way for Pound’s appointment to the IOC, granted in
1978, where he served alongside his mentor, James Worrall. By the time
of writing this chapter in 2017, Pound had become the longest serving
current IOC member (Butler 2017).
Even though Pound knew Worrall had little chance of winning the
IOC presidency in the 1980 election, he supported his compatriot’s
candidature (CBC 2001). In the end, the IOC members chose an expe-
rienced Spanish diplomat and businessman, Juan Antonio Samaranch,
as their new president. Samaranch’s election would have a huge impact
on Pound’s career.
When Samaranch took over in 1980, the Olympic Movement was in

complete disarray. Many people were even starting to question its via-
bility, as the sources of revenue available to the IOC, national Olympic
committees (NOCs) and international sport federations (IFs) were pre-
carious, and the financial risks associated with hosting the Olympic
Games (e.g., Montreal 1976) meant very few cities were interested in
submitting bids. Samaranch realized the Olympic Movement could
only survive if it built a solid financial foundation and obtained inde-
pendent sources of revenue. Consequently, in 1982, he set up the “New
Sources of Revenue Commission” in order to identify areas in which the
Olympic Movement could generate revenues (Landry and Yerlès 1996).
Pound played a leading role in this commission, with his influence
increasing considerably when he was elected to the IOC’s Executive
Committee in 1983, a post he held until 2001. In 1983, Pound also
became chairman of the TV Rights Commission. In fact, Pound had
clearly become Samaranch’s right-hand man and, as such, was given
responsibility for every aspect of marketing the Olympic Games and the
IOC until the end of Samaranch’s presidency in 2001. Thus, in addi-
tion to chairing the TV Rights Commission (1983–2001), he was also
head of the Marketing Commission (1986–2001), which meant he was
responsible for the IOC’s overall marketing strategy. His flair for busi-
ness, his talent as a negotiator, and his understanding of new trends
in spectator sport and the world economy helped Pound transform
‘Olympic business’ across the globe.
The changes initiated by the IOC regarding the marketing of the
Olympic Games impacted nearly all aspects of the IOC’s opera-
tions. Pound’s double expertise as an accountant and a lawyer served
him well in his contract negotiations with sponsors, broadcasters,
NOCs and OCOGs. He was elected vice president of the IOC for a
four-year term in 1987 (1987–1991) and then for a second term in
1996 (1996–2000). He also sat on the Olympic Games Programs
Commission (1985–1987), the Legal Commission (1992–), and the
Sport and Law Commission (1995–2001), and was chairman of the
Coordination Commission for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. In
many ways, he had become the cornerstone connecting all the different
aspects of Olympic business.
In 1998, Switzerland’s Mark Hodler, an influential IOC member,

revealed widespread corruption by certain IOC members in the allo-
cation of the Olympic Winter Games to Salt Lake City. The resulting
scandal was one of the worst crises to hit the IOC since its foundation.
In order to defuse the situation, Samaranch asked Pound to head a
commission of inquiry into Hodler’s allegations and to report his find-
ings. This report resulted in the exclusion/resignation of ten IOC mem-
bers and sanctions for ten other members. Although the investigation
was essential to reestablishing the IOC’s credibility, Pound would have
preferred not to be involved (Wenn and Martyn 2005) and his chair-
manship of the inquiry almost certainly damaged his chances of being
elected IOC president in 2001.
That same year (1998), the doping scandals shaking the cycling world
pushed the IOC to organize the first World Conference on Doping,
bringing together all the parties involved in the fight against drug-
taking in sport. This conference, held in Lausanne in February 1999,
paved the way for the creation of an independent international body to
fight doping, the WADA. WADA, which consists of equal numbers of
representatives from the Olympic Movement and from governments,
was set up in November 1999 with Dick Pound as its first president.
Pound then ran for the presidency of the IOC in 2001, only to suf-
fer a bitter defeat, coming third behind the Korean Un Yong Kim, one
of the IOC members sanctioned following the Salt Lake City scandal,
and the new president, Jacques Rogge. Pound resigned his position as
chairman of the Marketing Commission (MacKay 2001), but remained
a member of the IOC and devoted his energies to WADA. Nevertheless,
in 2002, he agreed to chair the Olympic Games Study Commission, set
up to examine the current scale and cost of the Summer and Winter
Olympic Games, suggest measures for managing the size, complexity
and cost inherent in organizing future Olympic Games, and investigate
ways of making the Games more efficient.
As president of WADA, Pound committed himself wholeheartedly to
the fight against doping, building up the agency, raising athletes’ aware-
ness of the problem of doping, chairing international conferences and
overseeing the preparation of a code of conduct for combating dop-
ing in international sport. He also investigated specific cases of doping
(e.g., NHL ice-hockey players, UCI cyclists, skiers during the 2006
Winter Olympics in Turin, and golfers on the PGA circuit). When he
stepped down from the WADA presidency in 2007, he became a mem-
ber of the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS). In rec-
ognition for his work with WADA, Pound was presented with the 2008
Laureus Spirit of Sport Award.
Following his term as WADA President, Pound stood for the presi-
dency of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), but lost. He tried
again in 2010 with the same result. He also failed in his bid to once
more obtain a seat on the IOC executive board, when he lost by one
vote to Anita DeFrantz of the United States in 2013. In 2014, Pound
was appointed by the IOC’s President Thomas Bach as Chairman of
the Board of Olympic Broadcasting Services and in 2015, he became a
member of the Board of Olympic Channel Services.
Since then, he has been a member of the IOC’s Marketing
Commission and continues to be on COC’s Executive Committee (since
1968). He also chaired a WADA Independent Commission, which
investigated Russian doping allegations in track and field/athletics. He
continues to practice law in Montreal and serve as an IOC representative
on the WADA Foundation Board (IOC 2017).
The IOC Challenges and Management Practices

Pound’s behavior, methods, management and leadership styles along
with the challenges he faced, arose, at least in part, from the sense of
justice and fairness generated by his legal training and his passion for
sport and the business of sport. The following section explores these
challenges together with the management style and methods Pound
developed to face them.
Challenges After 1980 Moscow Games
In 1978, when Pound became a member of the IOC, the Olympic

Movement and Olympic Games were facing several major challenges.
One of the gravest problems was the increasing public sentiment across
the world that bidding to host the Olympics was not worth the finan-
cial risk involved. This point of view was strengthened by the huge
debts incurred by Montreal when organizing the 1976 Summer Games.
Two years later, in 1978, Los Angeles was the only city to bid to host
the 1984 Olympic Games. Even then, a referendum by the State of
California meant the organizers could not count on any state funding,
so the Los Angeles OCOG had to finance the Games entirely from the
private sector and promise that it would not apply for any subsidies or
loans from the local, state, or federal governments.
Ensuring the financial security of the Olympic Movement was not
the only major challenge facing the IOC in the latter decades of the
twentieth century. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Olympic Games
were increasingly being used as a political weapon, mostly in relation
to the escalation of the cold war and to the newfound assertiveness of
developing countries, which now outnumbered developed countries.
In 1976, 27 African countries withdrew from the Montreal Olympic
Games following the IOC’s decision not to exclude New Zealand for
maintaining sporting links with the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Four years later, the United States and 61 other countries boycotted
the Moscow Olympic Games to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of
Afghanistan. The USSR retaliated in 1984 by refusing to send a delega-
tion to the Los Angeles Olympic Games on the pretext that its secu-
rity could not be guaranteed. Fifteen other countries, mostly from the
Eastern Bloc followed suit (Perspective Monde, n.d.).
Another important challenge concerned the relationship between the
IOC and IFs, united within the General Association of International
Sports Federations (GAISF), and the NOCs. In 1981, GAISF’s presi-
dent, Thomas Keller, proposed a debate among IFs about the future
of the Olympic Games. As a result, unifying the Olympic Movement
became another of the IOC’s priorities during Samaranch’s presidency
(www.bl.uk/sportandsociety, n.d.).
However, the IOC was facing other problems, too, and Samaranch
knew the years following his election as IOC president in 1980
would be crucial to the survival of the IOC and the Olympic Games.
One of the people he came to rely on most closely during his 21-year
presidency was Dick Pound (Chigbo 2000), who continually

endeavored to critically appraise the Olympic Movement and take steps
to move it forward. Pound’s access to the corridors of IOC power ena-
bled him to make the changes he considered necessary in order to pre-
vent Olympic sport becoming financially dependent on governments
and American television networks. In this respect, he was the first per-
son to realize the huge commercial potential of the Olympic symbols:
the five rings and the flame. He was also able to convince key stakehold-
ers to follow his vision, whether he was working to ensure the Olympic
Movement’s financial independence through the creation of the TOP
program or pursuing the fight against doping in sport as the first presi-
dent of WADA. During his 16 years at the head of the IOC’s Marketing
and TV Rights Commissions, the agreements signed by Pound earned
more than $8 billion for the Olympic Movement (MacKay 2001).
When Samaranch took over at the head of the IOC, he was con-
cerned that 95% of the IOC’s revenues came from television rights
for the Olympic Games, and 83% of this income came from the
American networks (IOC 1989). In 1982, he created the “New Sources
of Finance Commission” in order to identify sectors that could gener-
ate revenues for the Olympic Movement (Martyn 1996). It was also at
this time (1980–1984) that the Los Angeles OCOG was demonstrat-
ing the Olympics’ huge potential as a vehicle for commercial spon-
sorship, achieving marketing revenues of $157 million (Landry and
Yerlès 1996). In fact, Los Angeles based its Olympic sales efforts on
factors associated with the Olympic brand, such as the image, fame,
and “the exclusion of competitors from similarly associating them-
selves with the Games” (Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee
1984, p. 233). Its simple but innovative sponsorship program offered
companies the “exclusive” right to use the Olympic emblems in their
advertising with respect to a limited number of product categories.
However, these rights were restricted to the United States because,
under the Olympic Charter, an OCOG can only carry out marketing
operations in another NOC’s territory with the consent of the local
NOC. In the case of Los Angeles, a sponsor interested in developing
activation programs outside the United States, such as Fuji, had to
negotiate with the NOC of each country in order to use the OCOG’s
Olympic emblems (Pound 1986). In addition, the rights associated

with the NOC of the host country (e.g., USOC—the US Olympic
team) also had to be negotiated separately, opening the doors to com-
petitors. Consequently, even though Fuji was an official sponsor of the
Los Angeles Olympic Games, Kodak was the official sponsor of the US
Olympic team. The OCOG and the USOC had different emblems, but
both enabled sponsors to create an association with the word ‘Olympic’
and the Olympic rings.
The Alliance with International Sports and Leisure (ISL)

for Creating the TOP Program
The possibility of offering a worldwide program giving sponsors com-

mercial rights not only for the Olympic Games but also for each par-
ticipating NOC was presented by the specialist sports marketing firm
ISL. Horst Dassler, the boss of both ISL and Adidas, had close links
with FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association ) and the
Olympic Movement (Pound 2004). Despite certain doubts about
implementing such a program, Pound believed in its potential, as he
knew the contributions of several major companies involved in the
Olympic Movement would increase substantially if the IOC simplified
the international sponsorship process and offered worldwide exclusivity
(Pound 1996). Moreover, Dassler was an influential figure in the sport
business world and had close links with top sports leaders in almost
every country (Pound 2004). For Pound, it was essential to develop
trust with sponsors and to have the skills needed to manage sponsor
relations. He felt this required “an understanding of sponsor needs and
the flexibility to manage those needs in conjunction with our own prin-
ciples” (Pound 2004, p. 145). Although, negotiations with potential
sponsors were carried out by ISL, draft contracts had to be approved
by the IOC’s director general, Monique Berlioux. However, relations
with the director general were difficult. Consequently, at the beginning
of 1985, Samaranch gave sole responsibility for the IOC’s sponsorship
program to Pound, who, despite having little experience in sponsor-
ship, had built a solid reputation within the Olympic Movement and
was perceived as credible by the main stakeholders (ISL, sponsors,

IOC). Pound immediately asked ISL to negotiate, altogether, the IOC’s,
NOCs’ and OCOGs’ marketing rights (Pound 2004).
This marketing program’s success depended on the NOCs, which
would have to cooperate and agree to concede certain marketing rights
to the program. The main challenge was to persuade NOCs that had
their own well-developed marketing programs, notably the USOC, to
come on board. Pound also had to obtain the support of the OCOGs
and the members of the IOC. Opening up the Olympic symbols and
the ideals they represent to commercialism was a revolution in the
IOC’s culture and would have been unthinkable a few years earlier.
Nevertheless, Pound managed to convince the key stakeholders to sign
up to his vision of greater financial independence and the resulting pro-
gram, known as TOP, was approved by the IOC Session in 1985. The
first edition of TOP, set up for the Calgary and Seoul Olympic Games
in 1988, included nine worldwide sponsors and generated $96 million
in revenue (Landry and Yerlès 1996). The TOP program owed its suc-
cess to two key factors: exclusivity and the protection of that exclusivity.
While he was creating TOP, as chairman of the TV Rights
Commission, Pound was also transforming the IOC’s role in negotia-
tions with television companies. In 1992, the IOC went from being
partners with the OCOGs to being the sole negotiator. Revenues
from TOP and television rights increased quickly, rising from
$800 million in 1988 (Calgary/Seoul) to over $1 billion in 1992
(Albertville/Barcelona), $2 billion in 1994–1996 (Lillehammer/
Atlanta), $2.4 billion in 1998–2000 (Nagano/Sydney) and $2.8 billion
in 2002–2004 (Salt Lake City/Athens) (Olympic Movement 2012).
Such high levels of investment by commercial companies showed both
the value they placed on the Olympic symbols and their confidence in
Pound’s ability to deliver on the promises he and his team had made.
Protecting the Olympic Brand
The development of a closer relationship with the world of business

during the 1990s pushed the IOC to modify its operating structure and
adopt solid business and brand management methods. As chairman of

the Marketing Commission, Pound ordered detailed and exhaustive
studies of the Olympic brand in order to: (i) understand consumers’
perceptions of the Olympic Games’ image; (ii) introduce ways of pro-
tecting and improving the Olympic Games’ image, and ensure coherent
marketing; and (iii) use the strength of the Olympic brand to ensure
the IOC’s long-term financial stability and improve value for its part-
ners (O’Reilly and Séguin 2009). In 1998, the IOC took what was, at
the time, a highly innovative step for a sport organization by adopting
a strategic brand management approach to marketing. Although stud-
ies in several countries demonstrated the Olympic Games had very high
brand capital, there were a number of risk factors that could tarnish the
brand in the eyes of both the IOC’s commercial partners and the pub-
lic. These risks included ambush marketing, the lack of serious measures
against doping, and a lack of transparency in decision-making processes
(Séguin 2008).
A key issue for the TOP program was the IOC’s ability to manage the
over-commercialization of the Olympic Games and protect its partners’
exclusive rights by preventing ambush marketing, that is, the unau-
thorized use of Olympic brands by sponsors’ competitors. For spon-
sors, ambush marketing was an important issue because it impacted
the exclusivity of their association with the Olympic brand, thereby
reducing the value of their investment (Séguin 2008). The threat to the
IOC was real, as ambush marketing would reduce the value of its prop-
erty and, therefore, its revenues. Consequently, Pound took an aggres-
sive stance towards ‘ambushers,’ using his contacts with journalists to
denounce (or threaten to denounce) companies, such as American
Express, using this type of marketing. Following the 1996 Olympic
Games in Atlanta, he approved changes that required bid cities to secure
all outdoor advertising space within the city limits of the Games for the
entire month in which the Games were to be held. Furthermore, gov-
ernments were encouraged to pass special legislation in order to protect
the Olympic brand and sponsors against ambush marketing (Ellis et al.
2011). Although it was almost impossible to provide complete protec-
tion, sponsors were happy with the efforts made by Pound and the IOC
to protect their rights.
The Founding President of WADA
Pound was involved in a number of controversial issues during the

1990s. Unafraid to speak his mind, he publicly opposed Samaranch’s
successful bid to raise the mandatory retirement age for the IOC’s
president from 75 to 80. Pound’s position nearly cost him the seat of
vice president in the 1996 election (he won by just two votes). It may
even have damaged his bid to become IOC president in 2001, as some
Samaranch supporters would not have wanted Pound’s “disloyalty” to
go unpunished. Pound accepted another delicate task in 1998 when
Samaranch asked him to head the commission of inquiry into the accu-
sations of corruption surrounding Salt Lake City and its bid to host the
2002 Olympic Winter Games. Pound’s job of “cleaning up” the IOC
made him more enemies. The following year, he took on another “polic-
ing” role when he was appointed head of WADA. These episodes in
Pound’s career are generally considered to have contributed to his failure
to win the presidency of the IOC in 2001.
According to Pound, doping was (and undoubtedly still is) the most
serious threat to the Olympic brand (see Pound 2006), as it is an attack
on the brand’s fundamental values, that is, fair play, playing by the
rules and respecting other competitors. What is more, doping directly
involves the competitions and athletes sponsors use as the channels for
their marketing strategies. For Pound, it was essential for the IOC to
make an effort to fight doping, which meant establishing a control body
to achieve this objective worldwide. This led to the creation of WADA,
set up in 1999 in partnership with the IFs, the NOCs, Olympic athletes
and the world’s governments. Creating WADA was an important step
in protecting the Olympic brand and may even have increased its value.
As WADA president, Pound faced a number of political and finan-
cial challenges (see Pound 2004). On the political level, he had to bring
together and unite a wide range of stakeholders, including members of
the Olympic Movement, sponsors, drugs companies and, most impor-
tantly, governments, in order to form a common front against doping.
Ethical considerations and the health of athletes were at the base of this
fight. On the financial level, the fight against doping was (and is) expen-
sive, costing millions of dollars. Pound worked hard to ensure the IOC
and the governments contributed their shares (50% each) of the funding.
However, commitment to the fight against doping in sport was not

universal, with several international, national and professional fed-
erations seemingly unwilling to tackle the problem in their sport and
certain governments reluctant to contribute to the fight (Pound 2004).
Pound made strenuous efforts to convince federations of doping’s seri-
ousness and its negative impact on sport. For example, he used profes-
sional sportspeople such as baseball’s Mark McGwire to publicize the
issue and sent letters to North America’s professional leagues for golf
(PGA), American football (NFL), basketball (NBA), baseball (MLB)
and ice hockey (NHL). At first, many professional sport federations
refused to admit the extent or seriousness of doping, as is illustrated by
the responses Pound received to his letters: the PGA claimed the prob-
lem did not exist, the NFL, NBA, and MLB said they were happy with
their existing procedures, and the NHL did not reply at all.
One of the challenges for Pound was the lack of tests capable of pro-
viding incontrovertible proof of doping. In fact, when WADA began
its work, doping was much more sophisticated than the methods and
technologies available for detecting drug use. In line with the adage
“offense is the best form of defense,” Pound decided to go on the attack,
making a number of strong public statements that angered many fed-
erations and professional leagues. The heads of MLB went as far as
suggesting Pound should keep his opinions to himself (Pound 2004).
Nevertheless, Pound’s statements were far from unfounded. For exam-
ple, on the day Pound received the PGA’s reply to his letter, the press
published comments by top golfer Nick Price referring to the problem of
doping in golf. One of Pound’s fiercest battles was with cycling, notably
Lance Armstrong and the UCI. In an article published by Le Monde in
January 2004, Pound suggested doping by cyclists in the Tour de France
was an open secret. Lance Armstrong, then at the peak of his reign as a
cyclist, replied that Pound’s words were negligent and unacceptable, even
though Pound had not mentioned any individual names. At the same
time, a French laboratory found a method for detecting erythropoietin
(EPO) and matched several positive EPO samples with Tour de France
cyclists, including Armstrong. The report published by the subsequent
UCI enquiry, chaired by Émile Vrijman, criticized Pound and WADA
for concentrating their attacks on Armstrong. WADA replied the report
was unprofessional, lacked objectivity, and included several errors. In

response, Armstrong wrote to IOC president Jacques Rogge accusing
Pound of reprehensible and indefensible behavior and demanded his sus-
pension or expulsion from the IOC. The IOC replied Pound should be
more measured in his public statements but it did not have any jurisdic-
tion in the case, as Pound was accountable to WADA, not to the IOC.
Pound was proven right in 2012 when Armstrong was given a lifetime
ban from sport because of doping, which he finally admitted in January
2013 (see Wikipedia 2015b for more details).
Leadership Style
Pound’s way of dealing with these challenges was based on his honesty,
integrity, and sense of justice, as well as his trademark straight-shooter
approach. Consequently, he appeared to have few qualms about con-
fronting his opponents in order to uphold his values, principles and
ethical beliefs. His actions were calculated and based on his detailed
appreciation of the world and politics of international sport. In addi-
tion, his legal training meant he knew exactly what he could and could
not do when negotiating with stakeholders.
“Good” timing is essential. However, it is also important to have the
expertise and skills needed to make the best use of opportunities as they
present themselves. Thanks to these skills, Pound’s positions on a range of
IOC commissions allowed him to play a leading role in modernizing and
commercializing the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement. His
timing in the fight against doping was also good, as his work with WADA
coincided with increased awareness of the issue in the United States. For
example, in a speech made in 2004, President Bush spoke about the
problem of doping in sport, the “ridiculous response of the professional
sports (especially baseball),” the criticisms being leveled at American sport
by people like Pound, and the absence of American leadership in this
fight (Pound 2004, p. 66), partly due to a lack of commitment by the
United States’ athletics federation, USA Track & Field (USATF).
Timing was not Pound’s only tool. He also had great business sense
(e.g., to finance the Olympic Movement) and public relations skills.
He recognized the power of the media and used the negative publicity
given to bodies such as the NHL and UCI to put pressure on these
organizations by demonstrating the potential negative repercussions of
doping for the image of a sport and its federation, and to obtain funds
from governments and sports organizations. Pound was a pragmatic
sharpshooter, who gave the media something to talk about while keep-
ing his struggle on the front page. He built up such a reputation for
straight talking that his office at Stikeman Elliot includes a spray can
labeled “Bullshit Repellant. Helps prevent and cure chronic bullshit-
ting” and a bottle of Mr. Clean household cleaner, given to him by
the IOC marketing director’s son, bearing a photograph of Pound and
renamed “Mr. Pound” (Chigbo 2000, p. 7).
Excellent leadership skills combined with immediate charisma and
presence form another of Pound’s qualities. His leadership style is a
mixture of bureaucratic, technocratic, entrepreneurial (see Getz 2005)
and pragmatic/practical approaches. Pound works well with sub-
committees and is comfortable with detailed analyses of situations
(bureaucratic side); he is good with detail, probably due to his swim-
ming and legal training (technocratic side); and his managerial decisions
focus on profits and the bottom line (entrepreneurial side). In addi-
tion, his knowledge of the business, political, legal and sporting worlds
gives him a pragmatic and practical outlook. For example, during his
discussions with the IOC, or, more exactly, with its president, Pound
was able to convince Samaranch of the advantages of contributing 50%
to WADA’s funding, rather than the 40% preferred by Samaranch: By
supplying half of WADA’s budget, the IOC was able to claim 50% of
the voting rights (Pound 2004). When Pound does presentations to stu-
dents, he likes giving them his “Top 5” requirements for success in sport
management. Some of his recommendations refer to behavior, especially
with respect to committee work. Here are two examples:
• There is no need to say something about every point on a meeting’s

agenda. It is better to choose your point and make it count;
• If you are offered the job of secretary at a meeting, take it. The sec-
retary’s job gives you a degree of respect, and the secretary is central
to all decisions, as it is the secretary who writes everything down (or
chooses to write down what they think is important).
These recommendations show Pound’s practical approach to sport man-

agement and the day-to-day work of managers. In addition, he is a
man with great integrity who says what he thinks and who sticks to his
beliefs, even if it means paying a high political price (e.g., opposition to
Samaranch’s proposal to increase the mandatory retirement age for the
IOC president from 75 to 80).
Management Methods: Negotiation and Networking
Pound’s practical sense is allied with a deep understanding of human

nature and the art of negotiation. He is good at surrounding himself
with people who will allow him to make his case when required. Mark
Hodler’s 1998 revelations of corruption by certain members of the IOC
provide a case in point. Media coverage was immense, and the IOC
was under enormous pressure to institute changes. The risks of dam-
aging the Olympic brand and reducing its value were extremely high,
and some TOP partners were threatening to withdraw their financial
support if tangible reforms were not implemented rapidly. At the peak
of the crisis, the IOC called in one of the world’s top public relations
firms, Hill & Knowlton, to manage the crisis, develop communication
strategies, and meet the demands of the media.
Pound is a talented sportsman and lawyer with strong convictions
who appreciates the academic and research world. He is a tireless worker
and a defender of fair play. He is a man who polarizes opinion—either
you like him or you don’t—but he is also capable of resolving differ-
ences when required. One of the loudest voices opposing the creation
of WADA was General Barry McCaffrey, the director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President.
However, support from the United States was crucial to the success of
WADA, so, after a strongly worded exchange of correspondence and
a forthright debate in the media, Pound went to see McCaffrey in
December 1999. They discussed the United States’ demands (see Pound
2004) one by one, mostly with positive results, much to McCaffrey’s
surprise. As Pound noted later, “when sensible people sat down to con-
sider the issues in the fight against doping in sport, they were quite
likely to have much the same lists and arrive at much the same conclu-
sions” (Pound 2004, p. 76).
Networking was also an important element in Pound’s work. He has
a huge network extending from the business world to sports/events and
politics. This network allows him to talk directly to heads of compa-
nies and politicians, and gives him access to substantial resources. It
also means he is seen as a credible negotiating partner (cf. Parent et al.
2009). For example, when the time came to get all the stakeholders to
approve the World Anti-Doping Code, Pound asked the IOC’s direc-
tor general, François Carrard, to stand beside him. Carrard is at his
best in such situations, able to cajole, reprimand or scold as needed in
order to further the discussion (Pound 2004). Pound also asked an out-
side expert in sport law, the American Richard Young, to describe the
code’s main sections to the stakeholders. With great patience and good
humor, Young explained every clause in such a way that no one would
be offended (Pound 2004).
This combination of traits and skills allowed Pound to rise to the
challenges he faced during his career.
Conclusion
Pound was at the vanguard of the Olympic Movement and the Olympic
Games’ professionalization and commercialization. His strong nego-
tiating skills allowed him to fill the coffers of the IOC and ensure its
survival. He also gained a reputation as the ‘go-to guy’ to investigate
allegations and/or tackle highly sensitive cases, most notably during the
Salt Lake City scandal. On the other hand, these actions, despite being
necessary for the survival of the IOC, probably prevented him from
becoming president of the IOC or of the CAS.
His legal, financial, political, and networking skills, his reputation
as a straight shooter, and his sense of timing and of public relations
made him a formidable figure in the world of sport. As Pound himself
noted:
Part of my role with WADA is to raise the level of public perception of

the importance of doping-free sport and the need to deal with those who
cheat. That means I have to be in the face of anyone or any organiza-
tion that is not fully committed to this. I can say things more directly
than someone who has to try to balance other issues… I do not, for
example, regard doping in sport as a matter of diplomacy. It is cheat-
ing… it is destructive of the essential ethical values in sport…
This does not require nuance. It requires firm and consistent action.
(Pound 2004, p. 84)
Pound is not someone who minces his words. This has gained him the
admiration of those who would like to have the courage to say what
they think, but it has also made him enemies and led to personal
attacks. Nevertheless, Pound does not back off from a challenge; he
charges, he attacks.
When asked about the future of the sports movement and his role in
that movement, Pound (2004) said:
The sports movement let the use of drugs get out of hand by not acting
quickly enough or firmly enough at the beginning. It must not make the
same mistake with genetic manipulation.
One way or another, however, as long as I have any connection with
WADA or the Olympic [M]ovement, my approach to cheaters will be
that they may run, for a while, but they can no longer hide. (p. 86)
In conclusion, Pound’s initiatives transformed and modernized the IOC’s

finances, enabling it to become the world’s most influential sport organi-
zation. His success can be attributed to several factors, including his cred-
ibility with the main stakeholders both inside and outside the Olympic
Movement. In fact, his experience as an Olympic athlete, his legal and
business training, and the varied posts he held within the Olympic
Movement allowed him to develop the skills needed to manage the com-
mercial side of the IOC. In addition, a huge capacity for work, an ability
to make coherent decisions, and a direct approach all helped him gain
partners’ trust and, when necessary, win over his entourage.
Key Dates in the Life of Dick Pound

Born on March 22, 1942 in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
1960: Olympic Games in Rome, Italy—6th place in the 100 m freestyle
and 4th place in the 4 × 100 m relay.
1962: Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia—gold medal in the
100 m freestyle, 2 silver medals and a bronze medal in the team relay
events.
1967: Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill University.
1968–1976: Secretary of the Canadian Olympic Association (COA).
1972: Deputy chef de mission for the Canadian delegation for the
Munich Olympic Games.
1977–1982: President of the COA.
1978: Elected to the IOC.
1981–1983: Chairman of the Olympic Games Protection Commission.
1983–1991, 1992–1996: Member of the IOC Executive Committee.
1983–2001: Chairman of the TV Rights Commission.
1987–1991 and 1996–2000: Elected vice president of the IOC.
1988–2005: Chairman of the Marketing Commission.
1991–1997: Chairman of the Coordination Commission for the 1996
Atlanta Olympic Games.
1998–1999: Chairman of the Ad hoc Commission on the Salt Lake
City Scandal.
2002–2003: Chairman of the Olympic Games Study Commission.
1999–2007: Founding president of WADA.
1999–2009: Chancellor of McGill University.
2001–2010: Board member of the bid and organizing committees for
the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.
2007–present: Member of the International Council for Arbitration in
Sport (ICAS).
2008–present: IOC Representative on the WADA Foundation Board.
2009: Became Chancellor Emeritus of McGill University.
2011: Inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
2014–present: Chairman of the Board of Olympic Broadcasting
Services.
2015–present: Member, Board of Directors of Olympic Channel

Services.
(Sources: IOC 2013, 2017; COC 2013; Perspective Monde, n.d.;
Stikeman Elliott, n.d.; TAS 2013, Wenn and Martyn 2005).
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mr-richard-w-pound-q-c-ad-e. Accessed 12 June 2017.
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Zinser, L. 2006. Drug Testing: Pound Builds and Badgers in His Battle
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Part III
1990s–2000s: Commercialisation,
Professionalization and Governance
The massive influx of money into the coffers of the IOC and certain
international federations helped these non-profit institutions assert their
independence from national governments. However, the other side of
the coin was that it made them dependent on their commercial part-
ners. It was now essential for sports institutions and their members—
athletes, officials, coaches and managers—to become more professional,
with the result that many universities began providing courses in sports
management. Hein Verbruggen was particularly active in promot-
ing a more professional approach to sports governance, first within his
own federation, the UCI, and then at other international federations,
through his work at Sportaccord, which he presided from 2004 to
2013. Jacques Rogge used his presidency of the IOC to continue the
professionalization process begun by Samaranch and to further develop
the IOC’s economic model. At the same time, he tried to protect the
autonomy of the international sport movement by adopting measures to
improve the IOC’s governance and encouraging other sports organisa-
tions to follow the IOC’s lead.
However, a huge disparity between public opinion, still greatly
influenced by the idea of sport as free, neutral and apolitical, and the
242 1990s–2000s: Commercialisation, Professionalization …
economic reality of globalised sport (the business of sports event

organisation, which had become highly competitive due to the inflation
in television rights following the appearance of subscription television
networks) was growing, and public incomprehension and distrust of
professional sports leagues and private event organisers remains strong,
especially in Europe. This moral crisis has led to a degree of disaffec-
tion with sport that has been strengthened by revelations of corruption
at the highest levels of the IOC and international federations, and by
sport’s seeming inability to effectively combat doping and match fixing.
The Festina affair in 1998 destroyed the credibility of cycling, while the
Salt Lake City scandal in 1999 had a similar impact on the IOC—new
means of communication such as the Internet have not only enabled
major sports events to grow massively around the world, they have also
made consumers less naïve. The crisis in sport’s governance game to
a head in 2015, when an investigation led by the US Department of
Justice found enough evidence of corruption within FIFA, the world’s
largest sport federation, to topple many of the federation’s top execu-
tives, including its once all-powerful and untouchable president, Sepp
Blatter. A few months after FIFAgate, allegations that members of
the IAAF solicited bribes in order to cover up widespread doping by
Russian athletes resulted in the fall from grace of another of sport’s most
powerful executives, the IAAF’s Senegalese president, Lamine Diack.
As the first African to preside a major international sports federation,
Diack was the pride of African sport. Nevertheless, the Russian doping
cover up, in which Diack’s son was also implicated, brought an end to
Diack’s 15-year reign.
Sport’s governing bodies have attempted in vain to stamp out mis-
conduct and thereby avoid policing actions by the European Union
and individual countries, especially the United States, whose justice
department has been particularly active in pursuing cheats and mafias.
However, regulatory bodies created within the world of sport, such as
the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the Court of Arbitration
for Sport (CAS), have shown their limits, and there is little evidence as
yet that sport will be able to put its own house in order. Consequently,
we are in the heart of the storm and a new form of governance is being
developed under our very eyes.
10
Hein Verbruggen: Bringing a Corporate
Mentality to the Governance of Sport
Josephine Clausen and Emmanuel Bayle
He’s a true politician, patient if necessary, but also almost brutal if necessary
[free translation from French]. (Jean-Marie Leblanc, former Tour de
France Director)1
There are very good and professional people in the international sport federa-
tions. But if you look at the structure and organisation of them it simply can-
not be good. (Hein Verbruggen, November 2014)
The link between international sport federations (IFs) and business is

still a recent phenomenon, a tandem of mutual benefit that has evolved
over the last three decades. Before this, by their very nature, IFs with
their social mission and business as an economic activity constituted
two completely distinct worlds. The former promoting, above all,
J. Clausen · E. Bayle (*)

J. Clausen
e-mail: Josephine.Clausen@unil.ch
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_10
244 J. Clausen and E. Bayle
pastimes and a forum for social encounters; the latter being profit-
and outcome-oriented, optimised by strategic planning, performance
management and quality controls. With increasing public interest in
sport spectating (Robinson 2003) and the explosion of broadcasting
rights in the 1990s, the worlds of sport and business began to converge
under the doctrine of performance and effectiveness (Barbusse 2002).
Through the merging of the traditionally diverging logics of non-profit
sport organisations and business corporations, IFs have become hybrid
constructs (Bayle et al. 2011). These transformations have introduced
a new group of actors: sport managers. For these actors, the business
world, with its rules, constraints and expectations, has become the point
of reference (Barbusse 2002). For transformations to take place, it is
indispensable to have people who envisage, introduce and lead change
(Amis et al. 2004). Hein Verbruggen was such a person.
A businessman at heart and by conviction, Hein Verbruggen brought
new perspectives into the world of cycling and international sport. His
leadership, pragmatic marketing and management approach, which
have profoundly shaped international cycling and the Union Cycliste
Internationale (UCI) as its international governing body, were not
without controversy. Some describe Hein Verbruggen as a person with
“opportunistic behaviour and decisions driven by money ” (former presi-
dent of a national cycling federation) having an “oversized ego ” (former
UCI staff member), and allegations from riders (e.g. Floyd Landis, Paul
Kimmage), the media (e.g. BBC) and a report commissioned by the
UCI publicly accused Hein Verbruggen of wrongdoings.
A chapter about Hein Verbruggen could tell many different stories:
the story of the visionary UCI President; the story of an IOC mem-
ber and President of SportAccord; or the story of Hein Verbruggen as a
highly controversial figure in cycling who was confronted by allegations
of complicity and laxity in the fight against doping. Rather than sketch-
ing a complete picture of Hein Verbruggen as a person, this chapter
seeks to outline his main influences on the international sporting world
through interviews with him and by impartially gathering impressions
from former employees, contemporary witnesses and relevant docu-
ments (e.g. newspaper articles, reports). In particular it focuses on two
developments on which Hein Verbruggen had a significant influence:
10 Hein Verbruggen: Bringing a Corporate … 245
the professionalisation of structures and processes at the UCI by apply-

ing corporate management knowledge and practices; and the trans-
formation of GAISF (General Association of International Sports
Federations, renamed SportAccord between March 2009 and April
2017) to become a service provider to IFs and a multi-sport games
organiser. This chapter is the story of Hein Verbruggen’s strong belief
in, and reliance on, corporate management principles. It is the story of
how he introduced these principles to sport, adapted them to its reality
and how these principles have left a legacy in the world of international
sport. It is also the story of the ambivalent spirit of IFs since the 1990s:
on the one hand, there are all-powerful presidents, a lack of transpar-
ency, doping and corruption scandals and waning credibility; on the
other hand, major sport events bring together thousands of people from
all over the world and event revenues allow IFs to finance development
projects.
The chapter will focus on Hein Verbruggen the marketing expert and
his entry into the world of sports, his managerial vision as a business-
man and its implementation at the UCI and his reform of GAISF to
become a service provider to IFs and a multi-sport games organiser. As
a person who strongly divides opinion, a short overview of some of the
allegations against him is also given. The chapter concludes with a sum-
mary of Hein Verbruggen’s main achievements. Information is based on
ten interviews—three of which were with Hein Verbruggen and seven
with former employees and contemporary witnesses—as well as news-
paper articles and a data analysis of IOC, UCI and GAISF documents.
The Marketing Expert Who Became a Key

Leader in International Sport
Born on June 21, 1941 in Helmond, a city in the province of North
Brabant (Netherlands), Hein Verbruggen grew up in a region where
cycling and enthusiasm for cycling have a long tradition. However, he
had very little to do with cycling in his younger years, besides perhaps
occasions on which his father took him to watch a local cycling race.
Education was highly valued in the Verbruggen family. Hein Verbruggen
completed his studies at the Nijenrode Business School in 1964 and

started his first job as Regional Sales Manager for Carnation Belgium
the same year, where he “received a very good training in sales” (HV, April
2015). Following this first professional experience at Carnation (1964–
1968), Verbruggen’s move to M&M/Mars was, above all, motivated by his
desire to enter the marketing sector. He was hired as a Product Manager
(1969), a job that had a significant impact on his later philosophy and
vision. From the age of 28, his understanding of business, marketing,
management and strategic planning was largely formed during his years
with M&M/Mars, a company he described as “one of the best companies in
the world” (HV, November 2014). Many of the skills he acquired during
this time served him well when occupying pivotal positions in the world
of sports. His strong identification with the Mars principles of “quality,
responsibility, ethics and efficiency” (HV, April 2015) became his point of
reference. But how did Hein Verbruggen get into the world of cycling, a
world that, at that time, was still the reserve of individuals closely involved
with cycling and/or who had an emotional attachment to the sport?
The Mars-Flandria Sponsorship Deal
At first sight, Hein Verbruggen’s entry into the world of sport could
be considered as a mere coincidence: looking for new possibilities to
advertise M&M/Mars’ products in a fast-growing international food
market, the young sales manager convinced his employer to sponsor a
cycling team, proving a subtle instinct for business, strategic alliances
and marketing opportunities. Firstly, sport creates emotional links and
can improve the image of a product by simple association with the
emotional experience of the sport, an event, athletes, etc. Secondly,
in the 1970s and 1980s, sport was discovered to be an ideal platform
to promote products. It became a new advertising tool, marking the
beginnings of sport sponsorship. And thirdly, the particular circum-
stances of the law in Belgium made sport events and teams/athletes
ideal partners for the advertising industry: in the 1970s, Belgium
was one of few countries (along with Scandinavia) where commercial
advertising was banned on radio and television. Verbruggen opened
a new door for M&M/Mars to promote their products by signing a
two-year sponsorship contract with a Belgium cycling team in 1970

(Mars-Flandria). Sponsorship from outside the world of cycling was still
relatively new at this time. Until the mid-1950s, sponsorship and the
organisation of cycle races were strictly limited to cycling manufactur-
ers and newspapers. However, with the increasing popularity of cycling
events and the professionalisation of athletes, bicycle manufacturers
were unable to finance the sport alone. In 1954, Italian cyclist Fiorenzo
Magni became an emblem of this change in cycling: his bike company,
Ganna, was unable to continue financing his team. Magni turned to the
German cosmetic company Nivea and signed a contract with them as
team title sponsor. For the first time in cycling history, a brand outside
the world of cycling became the sponsor of a cycling team.2
In 1975, persuaded by one of the Mars-Flandria riders, Hein
Verbruggen became actively involved in cycling as a member of the
professional cycling committee of the Royal Dutch Cycling Union
(KNWU). From this time on, he began to shape the sport from the
inside. Just four years later, in 1979, he became a board member of
the Fédération Internationale de Cyclisme Professionnel (FICP), then
Vice-President of FICP in 1982 and President in 1984. In 1991 he was
elected President of the UCI. Verbruggen’s career path illustrates how
rapidly he grew into the role of a major actor in international cycling
and in sport in general. This chapter studies the following contributions
of Verbruggen: his pragmatic management approach triggering the pro-
fessionalisation of the UCI and the creation of a support base for all IFs
in the Olympic movement through the services provided by GAISF.
A Pragmatic Management Approach: The

Example of the UCI
If you look around in the world, for me the best management system you
can find is in the multi-nationals. (HV, November 2014)
Hein Verbruggen was at the head of the UCI for 14 years. When
elected President in 1991, the Geneva-based UCI headquarters (trans-
ferred from Paris to Geneva in 1969) consisted of two people: a Polish
Secretary General aged 79 and his assistant. When Hein Verbruggen left
the UCI in 2005, the federation employed 55 staff members, had its
headquarters in a new velodrome in Aigle and enjoyed a stable finan-
cial and patrimonial situation: “I took up a bankrupt federation and when
I left there were a cycling centre, all paid for, and 14 millions [CHF] of
reserves,” (HV, November 2014). Hein Verbruggen has shaped interna-
tional cycling in many ways. The focus will, however, be limited to two
particular achievements that reflect his management style, his fine sense
of policy and his relentless pursuit of improved organisational perfor-
mance. The first of these achievements was the dissolution of the FICP
and the Fédération Internationale Amateur de Cyclisme (FIAC), finally
conferring the UCI with the role of the sole international representative
for the governance, promotion and development of cycling worldwide.
The second achievement was the creation of the UCI ProTour, now
known as the UCI WorldTour.
Reversing the Effects of the Amateur Code
As a member of the Dutch national cycling federation since 1975,

Hein Verbruggen first participated in a FICP/FIAC Congress in 1978
(Munich). He immediately presented himself as candidate for one
of three vacant FICP posts and was elected at the following FICP
Congress held in Maastricht on 20 August 1979. His election allowed
him to attend the UCI Congress (Geneva, 30 November 1979). When
Verbruggen was elected to the board of the Luxembourg-based FICP in
1979, there was still a long way to go before the FICP and the FIAC
would be dissolved. Both federations were formally under the direction
of the UCI but in reality the UCI had no influence. A closer look at
the historical evolution of the Olympic Games is required to under-
stand why the UCI, as the international governing body of cycling, was
flanked by two additional international federations—FICP and FIAC—
of which only the FIAC was recognised by the IOC.
The 1964 amateur code excluded from the Olympic Games those
athletes:
who have participated for money, or who have converted prizes into
money or, without permission of the National Federation within the
Rules of the International Federation concerned, have received prizes
exceeding 50 Dollars in value, and those who have received presents
which can be converted into money or other material advantages.3
In 1965, the IOC under the presidency of Avery Brundage obliged both
the UCI and FIFA to split into amateur and professional branches, a
separation that other IFs had already undertaken. As stated in the min-
utes of the 63rd meeting of the IOC (1965), “the I.O.C. decided to elimi-
nate the sports whose federations govern professional sport and amateur sport
at the same time ”.4 As a result, the UCI established the amateur associa-
tion FIAC and the professional association FICP. It was not until 1981
that the re-admission of professional athletes to the Olympic Games was
accepted by the IOC Congress (Baden-Baden, Germany). By 1984, the
Olympic Games were effectively open to professional athletes.
However, having conceded to the pressure of the IOC, the UCI was
caught in the crossfire of two rival federations for the next 27 years.
The UCI Management Committee comprised 50% FIAC members and
50% FICP members. The two-bloc arrangement was symbolic of the
time: while communist countries from the Eastern bloc dominated the
FIAC, the FICP was characterised by a capitalist mindset. “Everything they
[FIAC] said, we [FICP] said no. And everything we said, they said no,” (HV,
November 2014). In this 50/50 deadlock, the UCI President could steer
a vote in one or other direction by his casting vote. It also meant that
decisions supported by the majority were rare. This situation virtually par-
alysed the development of the UCI for 27 years. And it was only with the
UCI’s official recognition by the IOC in 1993 that professional cyclists
could finally participate again in the Olympic Games, the first being the
1996 Games in Atlanta. Verbruggen’s efforts were key to the reintegration
of the UCI into the Olympic Movement and the concentration of deci-
sion-making powers within the UCI as the sole governing body.
How did the situation unfold? In 1984, the FICP sought a new pres-
ident to complete the mandate of the deceased Josy Esch. Two candi-
dates stood for election: Hein Verbruggen and Germain Simon (France).
Verbruggen was elected FICP President on 28 November 1984.
Six years later (July 1990), the UCI found itself without a president
after the death of Louis Puig (Spain). Verbruggen stood for the post and
was elected on 29 November 1991 at the UCI Congress in Berlin. With
the division into three international federations (FIAC, FICP, UCI) of
which only the FIAC was recognised by the IOC, the UCI was clearly
not in a position to promote the sport it represented as the international
governing body. The dissolution of the FIAC and the FICP therefore
became Hein Verbruggen’s first objective as the newly elected UCI
President.
Two events facilitated the unification. On the one hand, the separa-
tion of amateurs and professionals became superfluous from a sporting
point of view due to the abolition of the amateur code (1981). On the
other hand, the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1989 simplified the destruction
of the “iron curtain” in cycling. The path was clear for the rapproche-
ment of the FIAC and FICP blocs. With the support of Juan Antonio
Samaranch (IOC President from 1980 to 2001), Hein Verbruggen
succeeded in his first mission: in 1992, the decision to dissolve the
FIAC and FICP was passed by the UCI Congress (Orlando, USA).
The decision was finalised in August 1993, leading to the reintegra-
tion of the UCI into the Olympic Movement in the same year. Instead
of FIAC and FICP, two new councils were created—the Amateur and
Professional Councils—but these only existed for a short time. During
the 1996 UCI Congress (Lugano, 11 August), the two councils were
abolished. The Professional Council was subsequently replaced by two
commissions: the Road Elite Commission and the Road Commission.
Four years later, in order to better respond to the growing popular-
ity and success of professional cycling, the UCI announced the cre-
ation of the Professional Cycling Council (PCC) at the 2000 UCI
Congress (Sint Michielsgestel, 28 January). This Council still exists
today and is, among other things, responsible for carrying out the tech-
nical and administrative organisation of the UCI WorldTour, draw-
ing up the WorldTour calendar and drafting regulations specific to
UCI WorldTour Teams. The events leading to the creation of the PCC
demonstrate the UCI’s strong focus on road cycling.
The Creation of the ProTour: A Means to Control

the International Cycling Calendar
Cycling lives on the myths of seemingly insurmountable challenges

such as the first cycling race in 1891, from Paris to Brest and back
over a total of 1300 km, mostly on rough cobbled roads. Since then,
and because of its potential to attract and fascinate people, cycling has
always been exploited by different pressure groups: “Historically, sport
has always been organised in function of something else. This makes sport
in general very vulnerable, and cycling in particular as cycling teams have
no political backing and very little regional embedding ” (HV, May 2015).
The creation of the Tour de France is a perfect example of the instru-
mentalisation of cycling by press groups:
The creation of the Tour de France and its success

At the end of the 19th century, Le Vélo was the only daily sports mag-
azine in France. Its Chief Editor, Pierre Giffard, supported Alfred Dreyfus
in the Dreyfus affair5 to the extreme discontent of the cycling and car
industries. Nevertheless, the cycling and car industries had gained visibil-
ity through advertising in the magazine. In 1900, when the industrialists
created their own daily sports magazine, L’Auto-Vélo, printed on yellow
paper, a dispute broke out about naming rights. As Le Vélo had reserved
the rights for “vélo”, L’Auto-Vélo finally had to accept legal defeat three
years later and rename its magazine L’Auto. In the same year, in response
to the prospect of losing considerable marketing opportunities, L’Auto
launched a new strategy to increase its readership: organising the biggest
cycling race ever seen—the Tour de France. The success of the first Tour
de France (1903) afforded L’Auto a considerable advantage over its com-
petitor and Le Vélo withdrew its magazine the following year. The yellow
paper upon which L’Auto was printed became the distinctive colour of the
Tour de France leader’s jersey.
Today, the mythical Tour de France is organised by ASO (Amaury Sport
Organisation). The Tour not only has a long tradition, it also generates sig-
nificant revenues. Tour de France net earnings in 2014 totalled approxi-
mately EUR 35 million (Aubel 2015). In 2013, 12 million spectators lined
the roads for the stages of the Tour de France, a total of EUR 2.2 million
prize money was distributed, 4500 people were involved in the daily
organisation of the event, 35,000 beds were booked by the organisation
during the Tour’s three weeks, 1700 journalists were accredited and the
Tour was broadcast to 195 countries, representing a total of 3.5 billion
spectators worldwide.6 It is beyond doubt that an organisation like ASO

does not need the UCI to make its economic model work. On the contrary,
the UCI has often been an unwanted presence, imposing rules on an event
that was created just three years after the UCI itself (1900), an event that
has given rise to myths and stories of glory and defeat, and that has an
economic impact like no other cycle race in the world. So far, neither Hein
Verbruggen nor his successors have managed to control ASO as much as
they would have liked. In 2014, 56 out of 154 race days on the WorldTour
calendar were organised by ASO (Aubel 2015), giving the organiser con-
siderable visibility and power.
In the years following the dissolution of the FICP and the FIAC, Hein
Verbruggen concentrated his efforts on strengthening the UCI’s influ-
ence on cycling events which, up until then, had been under the con-
trol of private commercial organisers, professional teams, broadcasters,
sponsors, etc. This lack of control not only weakened the UCI’s deci-
sion-making role, but also its financial capacities. Verbruggen was
convinced that an IF has to control its international event calendar in
order to govern its sport. During his time as a member of the FICP,
he recognised the overwhelming power of some race organisers, notably
the “Société du Tour de France” (now known as ASO), the organiser of
the Tour de France. The international cycling calendar in this era was
literally in the hands of Félix Lévitan, Director of the Tour de France
from 1962–1987: “ASO, or rather the Sport Director Felix Lévitan, took
the decisions, the UCI merely approved them without opposition, reducing
its own rights and power to an all-time low ” (HV, November 2014).
Very quickly, Verbruggen realised that race owners were rather
opposed to his vision for developing cycling. “The cycling calendar was to
70% France, Spain, Italy and Belgium. And these federations didn’t want
to change. Every new race that came in was a big fight, ” (HV, November
2014). By introducing the ProTour as a UCI-owned circuit, he initiated
a dynamic offensive against the all-powerful race organisers. Launched
in 2005 during his last year as UCI President, the ProTour brought
together the 18 strongest cycling teams at the most popular cycle
races. Participation was no longer a question of good contacts with the
organiser (as was previously common practice), but was instead based
on a team ranking that had its origin in the French classification sys-
tem. Baulking against the curtailment of their so far unlimited rights
to choose teams and dates, a power battle arose between ASO and the
UCI. This struggle continued even after the UCI ProTour had been
launched in 2005, culminating in 2008 when ASO declared that it
would quit the UCI calendar and organise its races independently.
Having joined forces with other major organisers such as RCS (Giro
d’Italia) and Unipublic (Vuelta a España), ASO once again demon-
strated its powerful position. In the end, the IOC had to intervene as a
mediator to break the deadlock.
According to Verbruggen, the ProTour was pursuing a strategy of sta-
bilising teams’ financial situations by guaranteeing top-level participa-
tion. “The weak situation of teams was at the basis of the ProTour creation
because teams are very vulnerable. We wanted to open new sources of rev-
enues for the teams and bind sponsors via participation guarantees,” (HV,
April 2015). A process of the professionalisation and globalisation of
cycle races and teams followed the creation of the ProTour (renamed
WorldTour in 2011). Nowadays, race organisers have to follow a precise,
very strict organisation guide, the implementation of which is controlled
by professional UCI technical delegates. In addition, commissaires offi-
ciating at WorldTour races are specifically trained and WorldTeams, in
order to receive their licence, have to prove their compliance with finan-
cial, ethical and sporting criteria defined by the UCI. Nevertheless,
the economy of the system continues to be very fragile. Teams still rely
entirely on their main sponsors, there is no redistribution of TV rights to
the teams and athletes receive poor prize money compared to other top
professional sports such as tennis (in 2015, number one player Novak
Djokovic earned USD 21.6 million7 in prize money alone) or golf (for
the 2015 PGA8 Championship, a total of USD 10 million was distrib-
uted to the top 21 players, the winner getting USD 1.8 million9). Even
for the UCI, the UCI WorldTour has not been very profitable, some-
times even returning a deficit: in 2013, high legal costs (CHF 718,000)
and expenses for meetings (CHF 812,000) led to a WorldTour loss of
CHF 96,000 (UCI Annual Report 2013). In 2014, the UCI WorldTour
generated modest revenue of CHF 240,000 (UCI Annual Report 2014).
Furthermore, cycling fans, potential sponsors and partners do not
display much recognition of the “UCI WorldTour” brand whereas they

are highly aware of the three biggest races of the WorldTour: the Tour
de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España.10 The continuing reform
of men’s professional road cycling, with implementation planned for
2017–2019, in conjunction with the opposition of key stakeholders
(e.g. race organisers, teams), emphasises the ongoing struggle between
the UCI as the governing body of international cycling and stakeholders’
individual needs and interests.
Hein Verbruggen’s Achievements as UCI President
Hein Verbruggen’s legacy to cycling and the UCI results from a well-
thought out and well-conducted transformation of a traditional, volun-
teer-run and slightly dusty sport federation into a dynamic, professional
and trendsetting federation. According to Verbruggen, one of his most
important achievements is hardly mentioned: the reform of professional
riders’ working conditions by introducing social protection measures
through an agreement between the UCI and economic partners (in
particular social insurance guarantees and minimum salaries for road
cyclists), signed in Lisbon on 12 October 2001. Before this, “riders were
slaves, often paid in kind, not in cash. And the UCI Rulebook of a meagre
seven to eight pages didn’t contain any social protection for riders,” (HV,
April 2015). Today, the major challenges of guaranteeing viable working
conditions for professional cyclists are still considerable as significant
(budgetary) differences exist amongst teams and short-term sponsor
agreements undeniably introduce uncertainty.
Another important change of paradigm under Hein Verbruggen
was the creation of the ProTour (now known as the WorldTour). Even
though the ProTour didn’t entirely wrest the overwhelming power
from race organisers such as ASO, it is today a solid component of the
international road cycling calendar, bringing together the world’s best
road cycling teams and delighting millions of fans on the roadside
and in front of the television. Critics claimed that the new series for-
mat embodies several disadvantages: teams are mainly racing for points
(as these allow them to participate in major races) and riders have to
accumulate a questionable amount of race days; the stars and figure-

heads have disappeared behind the “team” product while, at the same
time, this product is extremely fragile and dependent on short-term
sponsorship contracts. Twelve years after launching the ProTour (2005),
race organisers and cycling teams are voicing significant dissent to the
ongoing Reform of Men’s Professional Cycling, which was supposed to be
finalised by 2017. The criticisms come from several sides. WorldTour
teams, for example, do not see their sporting needs reflected in the
reform as race days are set to increase, contrary to an initial agreement.
Hein Verbruggen also promoted the commercialisation of the
UCI World Championships and UCI World Cups. Cycling World
Championships and World Cups now guarantee the UCI a major
source of income, mainly through the sale of sponsorship and TV rights.
Verbruggen marketed these rights at “a time where it was still rare to buy
and/or sell TV rights” (former UCI staff member, March 2015). When
contracting TV rights with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in
the early nineties, the UCI immediately harvested some ten million Swiss
francs. The contract with EBU included the commercialisation of all UCI
World Championships with broadcasting guarantees, as well as penalties
should the contract not be respected. A beneficial side effect of this TV
deal was that it allowed the UCI to attract new international sponsors
such as Tissot and Shimano, generating considerable additional income.
From an administrative perspective, staff numbers at the UCI grad-
ually increased in line with the changes initiated by Verbruggen: three
paid staff members in 1991, five in 1993, 20 in 1997 and 55 in 2005
(not including the staff of the World Cycling Centre). As a consequence
of this increase, the UCI headquarters moved to its new home, the
World Cycling Centre (WCC) in Aigle, Switzerland, inaugurated on
14 April 2002. Since this time, the WCC has been a driving force in
the worldwide development of cycling (e.g. coaching and mechanics’
courses, athletes’ training).
As UCI President, Hein Verbruggen was a strong, forward-thinking
leader who was calculating and tireless in the pursuit of his objectives.
The evolution of the UCI, its professionalisation and the globalisation
of cycling are in many ways the result of his vision and the implemen-
tation of this vision. However, Hein Verbruggen admitted, with a note
of self-criticism, that his last term as UCI President lacked the motiva-
tion with which, hitherto, he had restructured and developed the UCI to
become one of the biggest international sport federations: “I was fed up
after 10 years and I had to stay another 4 years because Samaranch told me:
‘You should not only build it [World Cycling Centre], but you should also
run it.’ And that was just 4 years too much. I didn’t do the job at the level as
I did before because my motivation was gone,” (HV, November 2014).
Hein Verbruggen retired as UCI President in 2005, becoming a UCI
Honorary President and co-opted member of the UCI Management
Committee until 2008. The move to become a co-opted member was
unusual for an honorary president as the latter role typically means
quitting all executive functions. Some interpreted this situation
as Verbruggen’s desire to cling on to power. But it was also a tactical
move undertaken in light of his ambitions regarding the IOC. Hein
Verbruggen became an IOC member in 1996. To remain an IOC
member and continue his work on the Coordination Commission for the
Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing in 2008 (2001–2008), to which
he had been elected as Chairman in November 2001, he had to occupy
an executive function within an IF. And the UCI Constitution offered
a solution: according to Article 47, the UCI Management Committee,
comprising 15 members at this time, could co-opt two additional mem-
bers. Verbruggen was co-opted as a member of the UCI Management
Committee in 2005, immediately after the election of his successor Pat
McQuaid. He was also named UCI Vice-President of International
Relations due to his numerous contacts with, and functions within, the
IOC (President, Chairman and active member of various commissions),
SportAccord (President from 2004–2013) and ASOIF, the Association
of Summer Olympic International Federations (Vice-President from
2000–2003).
GAISF/SportAccord
Under the Presidency of Verbruggen the organisation has been able to
move forward in a way that perhaps would not have been possible under
any other President. (former SportAccord staff member, March 2013)
Though Hein Verbruggen relinquished his function as UCI President

in 2005, it was clearly not to take a break or retire from international
sports. In 2004, as GAISF Vice-President, he replaced Un-Yong Kim
to become acting President. Kim was forced to resign over allegations
of bribery and illegally acquiring public money intended for the World
Taekwondo Federation (WTF) over which he presided. After three years
as acting President, Verbruggen was officially elected GAISF President
in 2007. Established in 1967, GAISF represents all IFs. However, its
role as a link between IFs and the IOC and as a platform for exchange
and the defence of IFs’ common interests dates back to the 1920s.
The collective representation of International Sport Federations

Through the Conseil National des Sports (CNS), which brought together
the leaders of the principal sport federations, France actively organised a
counter-power to the IOC by promoting initiatives to organise collective
world championships. In 1918, the CNS established the conditions for the
creation of international groups, the equivalent of today’s IFs. This project
could have resulted in France assuming a hegemonic position within each
IF and in a Comité International des Sport (CIS). Aware of the threat to the
Olympic movement, Pierre de Coubertin, with the help of some interna-
tional leaders and IOC members, interrupted this attempt. As an alternative
he established a Permanent Office of International Sports Federations in
1921, with headquarters in Paris (Grosset and Attali 2009). The office organ-
ised regular meetings between Olympic federations and the IOC, facilitat-
ing dialogue. However, non-Olympic federations were excluded. Having no
representation vis-à-vis the IOC and no platform for exchange between fed-
erations to defend their common interests, 26 federations came together
in Lausanne in 1967 to create the General Assembly of International
Sports Federations, replacing the Permanent Office of International Sports
Federations. The Assembly was rebranded the General Association of
International Sports Federations (GAISF) in 1976 and became SportAccord in
2009. In April 2017, it was renamed the Global Association of International
Sports Federations, hence adopting its former acronym GAISF.
Hein Verbruggen became a leading figure in international sport through

his position at GAISF. However, he came close to turning his back on
GAISF in 2004: “GAISF didn’t do anything. Nothing. We had two meet-
ings per year that never lasted longer than 59 minutes. I was wonder-
ing what I was doing there! ” (HV, November 2014). The inactivity of
GAISF does not come as much of a surprise if one takes a closer look
at the power structures of international sport in the late 1980s and
through the 1990s. Under Juan Antonio Samaranch, Avery Brundage’s
concerns about the Olympic Games’ losing Coubertin’s values of ama-
teurism were quickly thrown overboard and an accelerating commer-
cialisation of the Games and international sports in general began.
Before 1984, organising the Olympic Games was regarded as a financial
risk that consumed considerable public funds. This changed with the
1984 Los Angeles Games. A private group under the direction of Peter
Ueberroth (President and General Manager of the 1984 Los Angeles
Olympic Organising Committee) organised the Games through a com-
bination of corporate sponsorships, private fundraising and television
deals. For the first time, the Games were not sponsored by a govern-
ment, yet they generated a considerable profit of USD 250 million.11
Nowadays, this strategy is common practice.
The huge success of the Los Angeles Games opened up new finan-
cial opportunities for the IOC. However, athletes remained the main
element in attracting spectators, sponsors and broadcasters to invest in
the Games. The IOC itself does not have direct control of athletes; ath-
letes are registered with their national sport federations who, in turn, are
affiliated to their IF or continental federation. In other words: to organ-
ise the Games and monetise its increasing popularity by selling broad-
casting and sponsorship rights, the IOC depends on the IFs and their
athletes. Though Samaranch knew this, he did not want to afford the
IFs too much power and freedom of action. What Samaranch needed
was an organisation to control the IFs. Supporting a person such as
Un-Yong Kim to head the GAISF, with his dreams of becoming IOC
President one day, was an astute move by Samaranch. Kim’s efforts to
consolidate his position as a future candidate for the IOC presidency
made him easily influenced; it seems clear that he followed Samaranch’s
instructions. To Hein Verbruggen, in turn, the inactivity of GAISF was
a thorn in his side: “We were trying to put some life in this organisation
and he [Kim] just wanted to keep us down and low,” (HV, November
2014). Kim’s and Verbruggen’s presidency strongly contrasted with each
other.
A Service Provider to International Sport Federations
The [international sport] federations are poorly organised. It’s not always
a matter of competences. It’s often the lack of resources, financial but
also human resources. So I thought that we should have an organisation,
SportAccord, to help the international sport federations. (HV, November
2014)
Once he became GAISF President, Hein Verbruggen quickly set up var-

ious departments. From his time as UCI President he knew the prob-
lems and challenges that IFs have to face only too well. One major
challenge was the lack of consensus. With between 150 and 200 mem-
ber federations (i.e. national sport federations) and each member being
primarily interested in improving its own situation, Verbruggen com-
mented: “it’s like a bucket full of frogs which all go in different directions ”
(November 2014). According to Verbruggen, the almost impossible
mission of gathering members’ objectives into shared goals is at the
root of organisational and structural problems in international sport. In
addition, rising expectations from stakeholders and spectators, the com-
mercialisation of sport events and competition between top-level sports
to be accepted (or remain) on the Olympic Programme exposes IFs to
severe pressure. Considering the growing need for specific competen-
cies and expertise (e.g. anti-doping), the old structure of a volunteer-run
association had reached its limits. At the same time, many IFs were not
in a financial position to hire experts. Against this background, GAISF
gradually assumed the role of a service provider for IFs. Verbruggen set
up different departments to encourage and facilitate knowledge sharing
among members and provide resources and expertise in relevant areas
such as anti-doping, integrity, good governance, social responsibility
and digital media.
In 2009, GAISF became SportAccord. By this time, its services no
longer solely supported IFs, but also the IOC. The IOC divides IFs into
four categories: summer Olympic IFs (ASOIF—Association of Summer
Olympic International Federations), winter Olympic IFs (AIOWF—
Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations),
IOC-recognised IFs (ARISF—Association of Recognised International

Sport Federations) and non-recognised IFs (AIMS—Alliance of
Independent Recognised Members of Sport). All are members of
SportAccord/GAISF. For a non-recognised IF to be recognised, the feder-
ation has to fulfil a number of criteria. Officially, the power to recognise
an IF lies with the IOC. But as the federation first has to be a member of
SportAccord/GAISF, the initial due diligence of verifying whether the IF is
in compliance with IOC criteria falls to SportAccord/GAISF. This makes
SportAccord/GAISF an important pillar of the IOC’s recognition policy.
Over the years, IFs’ efforts to become recognised posed a new but
basic question: what is a sport? Under Verbruggen, SportAccord estab-
lished a set of criteria to define what a sport is, a task that not even the
IOC has ever undertaken. The full list of criteria is given below:
List of criteria to define what is a sport

• “The sport proposed should include an element of competition ” (thus
excluding e.g. yoga or Pilates).
• “The sport should not rely on any element of ‘luck’ specifically
integrated into the sport ” (such as e.g. horse racing).
• “The sport should not be judged to pose an undue risk to the health
and safety of its athletes or participants ” (such as e.g. base-jumping).
• “The sport proposed should in no way be harmful to any living
creature ” (thus excluding e.g. fishing).
• The sport should not rely on equipment that is provided by a single
supplier.
To be recognised by the IOC, IFs further need to prove the existence of

an anti-doping policy compliant with the WADA Code, regularly stage
World and Continental Championships, exhibit independent govern-
ance structures and “the sport it governs must be practised and organised
in more than 50 countries worldwide ”.12 Even though IFs’ recognition
by the IOC is officially governed by the Olympic Charter (Rules 26
and 27), the actual evaluation is conducted by SportAccord/GAISF. The
IOC, on the other hand, through its “Evaluation criteria for sports and
disciplines ”, carries out an assessment of the contributions of Olympic
IFs to the overall success of the Olympic Games (number of tickets sold,
number of spectators, TV audience, etc.).
SportAccord Convention
In an environment where Samaranch was pursuing maximum control

over the IFs and where GAISF President Kim sought to increase his
own influence within the IOC, even if this meant thwarting suggestions
and initiatives from IFs, new and innovative ideas were not a priority
for GAISF. But this did not stop Verbruggen trying. As the IOC has
to meet its four associations (i.e. ASOIF, AIOWF, ARISF, AIMS) at
least once a year, he suggested organising an annual meeting over sev-
eral days, bringing together all IFs. Thus the idea of the SportAccord
Convention was born. Despite the successful first organisation of the
SportAccord Convention in 2003, Kim continued to vehemently reject
Verbruggen’s initiative, almost causing him to give up. But with Kim’s
forced departure in 2004, the SportAccord Convention lost its harshest
critic and Verbruggen became acting GAISF President in the same year.
Emphasising the significance he assigned the SportAccord Convention,
Verbruggen rapidly created a separate structure for the convention,
owned 50% by GAISF, 30% by ASOIF and 20% by AIOWF. Since
2003, the SportAccord Convention has been an annual must for IFs.
Over several days, it brings together about 2000 delegates, key deci-
sion-makers from sport governing bodies and the sports industry. It
constitutes a platform for connecting, exchanging knowledge and par-
ticipating in shaping the world of international sport. Today, revenues
from the SportAccord Convention represent the most important source
of GAISF income.
Hein Verbruggen stepped down as SportAccord President in 2013.
Under Marius Vizer, Hein Verbruggen’s successor at the head of
SportAccord, the convention was rebranded as SportAccord Convention
World Sport & Business Summit, thus accentuating Vizer’s goal of fur-
ther converging the world of sport and the world of business. However,
his idea of organising joint World Championships every four years
did not receive a favourable response from the IOC. Joint World
Championships would strongly resemble the Olympic Games, with the
difference that all IFs, Olympic or non-Olympic, IOC-recognised or
not, could participate. For the first time since 2003, and as the result
of growing discrepancies between Vizer’s objectives and the IOC, the
IOC did not hold an Executive Board meeting at the 2015 SportAccord
Convention (Sochi). The subliminal conflict between the IOC and
SportAccord exploded into a crisis when, in his opening speech and
in the presence of IOC President Thomas Bach, Marius Vizer openly
decried the IOC as being “expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at
all transparent ”.13 Lacking the support of its members (20 SportAccord
members cut ties or suspended membership in the aftermath of the
2015 Convention), Vizer ultimately stepped down from his position
as SportAccord President in May 2015. Since this time, SportAccord’s
structure has been considerably reduced and the organisation of
multi-sport games entirely.
SportAccord: Organiser of Global Multi-Sport Games
Supporting IFs to professionalise against a background of growing

external expectation and financial pressures was Hein Verbruggen’s first
objective upon becoming GAISF President. Affording IFs, in particular
small IFs, a certain visibility was another. The Olympic Games are one
of the world’s most important international sport events. At the time of
writing this chapter, 35 of the 92 IFs that are full members of GAISF
are on the Olympic programme (28 summer + 7 winter). Recognising
the potential of the 57 sports that are not, and perhaps never will be,
on the Olympic programme, Verbruggen had the idea of grouping
sports together to organise multi-sport games: “Amongst the 92 federa-
tions I had 14 or 15 martial arts. So I had Martial Arts Games. I had 4
or 5 federations that were mind games, bridge, chess and so on. So I cre-
ated the Mind Games,” (HV, November 2014). Thanks to Verbruggen’s
close relationship with Jacques Rogge (IOC President 2001–2013), the
IOC supported the idea at the time. The economic model of the mul-
ti-sport games was similar to the Olympic Games: SportAccord owned
the rights and appointed a local organiser who paid an organising fee
(approximately CHF 3 million for the Martial Art Games and CHF
1.2 million for the Mind Games). SportAccord coordinated the devel-
opment of the games together with its member IFs. Under the auspices
of SportAccord, the SportAccord multi-sport games gave non-Olympic
sports and disciplines worldwide exposure. Since 2010, two World

Combat Games (2010 in Beijing 2013 in St. Petersburg) and four
World Mind Games (2011–2014 in Beijing) have taken place. The first
edition of the World Urban Games were scheduled for 2016 and the
World Beach Games for 2017. However, not everyone welcomed this
evolution: “Some people in the IOC wondered if it was the role of inter-
national sport federations to organise games,” (HV, November 2014).
The concept of SportAccord multi-sports games ground to a sud-
den halt with Marius Vizer’s opening speech at the 2015 SportAccord
Convention and his replacement as SportAccord President shortly after.
Verbruggen insisted that, under his presidency, SportAccord was not
seeking to rival the Olympic Games, nor was it meant to be a coun-
ter-power to the IOC. He considered SportAccord primarily as a service
provider to the IFs and the multi-sport games as a means of affording
visibility to IFs that will perhaps never be included on the Olympic
Programme. While his goal for SportAccord was to be financially
independent of the IOC through the organisation of the SportAccord
Convention and the multi-sport games, he recognised the need to work
closely with the IOC for the benefit of the federations: “If you want
to be a service operator to the federations, if you want to do something for
them, you can’t do it without the IOC, without a close cooperation between
SportAccord and the IOC,” (HV, May 2015). The immediate dropping
of multi-sport games and other services (except anti-doping) and the
return to its former acronym (GAISF) in 2017 under the new president
demonstrate the current priorities of GAISF: maximum alignment with
IOC requirements and minimum conflict, even if this means diminish-
ing services to IFs.
Allegations Against Hein Verbruggen

While his time as UCI President passed generally uncontested and
was rather evaluated in relation to the UCI’s growing prosperity and
structure, rumours and allegations came to the surface after Hein
Verbruggen relinquished the UCI presidency in 2005. In 2008, a BBC
investigation into UCI finances pointed a finger at payments made
to the UCI nearly two decades earlier. The investigation focused on

payments of USD 3 million to the UCI in the 1990s by a Japanese
cycling event organiser. These payments coincided with the admis-
sion of the keirin into the Olympic programme. Keirin racing is one
of the most popular disciplines for betting in Japan, “commanding
tens of millions of dollars in gambling revenue every year ”.14 The disclo-
sure of the payment fed rumours that keirin racing had bought its way
into the Olympic Games and spawned allegations against the UCI for
having accepted money in exchange for their support. Voted onto the
Olympic Programme in 1996, keirin made its first appearance at the
2000 Olympic Games. However, although rumours persisted for some
time, the BBC could not offer definitive proof of bribery. According to
Verbruggen, “the whole thing was an idea of the IOC, who suggested the
UCI to arrange a deal with the keirin organiser, including a payment to
support UCI projects,” (HV, March 2015).
After the keirin accusations, other allegations against Hein
Verbruggen followed. In 2010, Floyd Landis claimed that cycling’s
governing body, and Hein Verbruggen and his successor Pat McQuaid
respectively, had helped cover up a positive test by Lance Armstrong
at the 2001 Tour de Suisse. The UCI brought a case against Landis
who was found guilty of defamation by a Swiss court in 2012. And in
2011, both Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid launched suits against
Paul Kimmage, a journalist and former rider, for defamation. The
Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) gave its verdict in May 2016,
ruling that Kimmage should pay CHF 12,000 in defamation damages
to Verbruggen and barred him from claiming that the latter “know-
ingly tolerated doping, concealed test results, is dishonest, does not behave
responsibly, did not apply the same rules to everyone, did not pursue Lance
Armstrong after he had been provided with a backdated certificate ”.15
Finally, the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC)
report, published in March 2015 after a year-long investigation by
an independent UCI Commission, cleared Pat McQuaid and Hein
Verbruggen of outright corruption, but queried their governance meth-
ods and accused them of preferential treatment in specific cases. The
CIRC Report states that Verbruggen ran the UCI “in an autocratic man-
ner without appropriate checks and balances ”.16 Verbruggen undeniably
governed the UCI with a strong executive power, himself overseeing

internal, external and political issues and taking decisions “almost
unchallenged ”.17 And he knew how to deploy his charm and use argu-
ments to get people to act as he desired.
All these allegations underline the picture of Hein Verbruggen as
a highly controversial figure. A lot of people who worked with him
describe him as a charismatic, professional and tireless visionary who
transformed the UCI, international cycling and sport in general: “Not
many had the capacities of Hein Verbruggen to manage politics and busi-
ness. He has an exceptional capacity to approach people and always find
support ” (former UCI employee, March 2015). Meanwhile, his oppo-
nents, including former cyclists and leading administrators in cycling
(e.g. former UCI President Brian Cookson) and anti-doping (e.g.
Richard Pound), criticised him repeatedly for his management style and
alleged wrongdoings related to doping practices in cycling. This chapter
has no intention of taking a position regarding the above allegations.
Meanwhile, with doping allegations being a dominant and recurring
topic in the last years of Verbruggen’s life, the following section suggests
an alternative view of doping based on the general perception and evo-
lution of, and motives for, the fight against doping in sport. While the
issues of the perception and evolution of the fight against doping are
perhaps less publicly discussed, they strongly influence the current dis-
course on doping in cycling.
An Alternative Perspective on Doping
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the use of performance-

enhancing drugs was more often considered a scientific miracle than
an immoral, fraudulent or even health-threatening practice. It was
only in the 1960s that a number of interrelated rumours and events
began to change the perception of doping. A first rumour theorised
that, during World War II, German soldiers were given steroids to cre-
ate “hyper-masculinised, ultra-aggressive combat soldiers ” (Beamish and
Ritchie 2005). The second rumour was that athletes from communist
countries had been consciously given steroids during the Cold War to
boost performance in international sporting competitions and hence

symbolically emphasise the power of the Eastern Bloc. The spectacular
success of Eastern Bloc athletes together with a growing awareness of
the health risks of using performance-enhancing drugs led to a change
in the perception of doping. And with the death of Tom Simpson on
Mont Ventoux in front of spectators and the TV audience, doping sud-
denly also had a face in cycling. Simpson died on 13 July 1967 from
a combination of amphetamines (found in his jersey pocket), immense
physical effort and heat. He has since become the emblematic figure of
doping in cycling.
In the following years, doping bans were, above all, dominated by
considerations about the riders’ health. However, it wasn’t until the
1990s with the rise of EPO and the Festina Affair that doping was
considered morally unacceptable. While for decades conventional dop-
ing and its relatively predictable impact on performance seemed to be
widely accepted among cyclists, the emergence of EPO unhinged the
entire system. The performance increase through EPO was without
precedent. Cyclists were alarmed as an equality of opportunity was no
longer a question of chemical substances but of sophisticated, expensive
medical procedures. In 1995, the UCI, under the presidency of Hein
Verbruggen, commissioned a Lausanne-based laboratory to develop a
procedure to detect EPO. But even this could not prevent the negative
effects that the Festina Affair would have on the perception of cycling.
The image of a sport engrained with doping persists to this day as much
as the question of who is to blame.
As described above, the perception of doping has changed over the
decades: from first being considered as a scientific achievement, then
as a health-threatening product and finally as a morally illicit prac-
tice. Today, and more than in any other sport, the fight against dop-
ing in cycling seems to be exploited not only for moral arguments
but also as a political tool under the guise of which individuals or
groups of individuals pursue personal interests. With the general
commercialisation of sport since the 1980s (Robinson 2003), there
is more than just the practice of sport and the athletes themselves
at stake. As the market value of sport has grown, so have the inter-
ests and investments of various actors including the media, sponsors
and sport officials. In this context, doping represents an economic

threat to sports in general and a detriment to the image of interna-
tional sport federations in particular. Perhaps the important ques-
tion is not “Whose fault is doping in cycling? ” but “What dimensions
other than moral principles should/could be taken into consideration in
the fight against doping?” How about actors’ economic motives (e.g.
threat of losing sponsorship money because of doping scandals) and
key individuals’ political objectives (e.g. election campaigns in which
the fight against doping sells well)? To this we can also add Aubel’s
(2013) sociological perspective, which focuses on cyclists’ working
environments (e.g. team structure, functional and economic model,
physical preparation conditions and the employment framework
offered to riders) and the question of elements that trigger doping
practices and how the working environment should be modelled to
prevent them.
A recent paper by Kayser and Tolleneer (2017) in the Journal of
Medical Ethics discusses yet another interesting perspective. It picks
up on the debate of two diametrically opposed discourses on ethics
and doping. The first discourse “defends strict prohibition enforced by
surveillance and punitive repression ” (p. 1), but is practically impossi-
ble to meet in terms of technology and surveillance; the second “finds
anti-doping illogical and calls for the liberalisation of doping ” (p. 1), but
is likely to encourage excessive drug use by some athletes. Thus consid-
ering both discourses as non-realisable idealistic goals and raising the
question of the possible aggravating effects of anti-doping policies, the
authors adopt a systemic analysis to debate ethical aspects of relaxed
anti-doping rules accompanied by harm-reduction measures. Kayser
and Tolleneer acknowledge the incompleteness of their analysis (e.g.
not taking athletes’ decision-making capacities into account). However,
their critical questions on the ethics of doping, situated at the interface
of two extreme discourses, put forward the experimental dimension of
their idea, rather than moralising a topic with an immensely complex
and ambivalent past (scientific miracle, superhuman strength, humans
as war machines) and the current problem of assessing often intangi-
ble parameters including “limits to testing technology and surveillance
density ” (p. 1).
Conclusion
Hein Verbruggen undeniably divides opinions; he has as many support-
ers as opponents. Verbruggen has been celebrated as the person who
made the UCI a successful, professional IF. Yet he has been attacked with
serious allegations regarding his leadership style and approach to the
fight against doping. The aim of this chapter is not to provide a com-
plete picture of Hein Verbruggen as a person or comment on the differ-
ent allegations, but rather to identify his impact on the organisational
and functional structure of sport organisations during his time at the
UCI and SportAccord/GAISF as well as his ability to implement cor-
porate principles in sport organisations and to explore new ideas. His
legacy is twofold: with regard to his time as UCI President, Verbruggen
professionalised the administrative structure. He also triggered globali-
sation and the worldwide marketing of cycling by concentrating regula-
tory power in the UCI. “He came from business and it is his achievement
that cycling professionalised” (former UCI employee, March 2015). Hein
Verbruggen had a vision and his pragmatic, charismatic management
became the guarantor of this vision. At the same time, critics reproach
him for a failure to effectively combat cycling’s internal ethical problems,
such as widespread, organised doping practices and the associated dangers
(athletes’ health, fair-play, sporting ethics, etc.), in order to favour the
sporting spectacle and financial profits and to create mythical champions
such as Lance Armstrong. The image of Hein Verbruggen as a powerful,
almost invincible president evokes other strong leaders from the same
period such as Primo Nebiolo (International Association of Athletics
Federations—IAAF President from 1981 until his death in 1999), Ruben
Acosta (Fédération Internationale de Volleyball—FIVB President from
1984 to 2008) or Sepp Blatter (FIFA President from 1998 to 2015).
These federations (UCI, IAAF, FIVB, FIFA) have in common that they
were all coordinated by strong executive presidents who were committed
to capitalising on sporting events, hence laying the foundation for the
commercialisation of their federations. Hein Verbruggen was a guiding
hand as President of the UCI and SportAccord/GAISF, surrounded by
capable helpers thanks to his “fine sense for people, their motivation and
their competencies” (former UCI staff member, 2005). Many who worked
closely with him over the years described him as a tirelessly dedicated
visionary, a good listener, always available, a perfectionist. His opponents
accuse him of corruption and autocratic management. Hein Verbruggen
died on 14 June 2017 at the age of 75.
Notes
1. Jean-Marie Leblanc, former Tour de France Director, about Hein
Verbruggen in 2005. Source: “Le president ”, a book offered to Hein
Verbruggen by the UCI at the end of his presidency in 2005.
2. Source: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/oct/24/fiorenzo-magni.
3. Source: 1964 Olympic Charter Eligibility Rules of the IOC.
4. Source: Minutes of the 63rd meeting of the IOC.
5. Dreyfus affair: in 1894, French artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was
accused of revealing French military secrets to the German Embassy in
Paris. Two years later, investigations by the counter-espionage service
found evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence. However, instead of admitting
a judicial error, the army used falsified documents to accuse Dreyfus
of additional charges. Under the pressure of activists (e.g. Émile Zola),
the affair became a political and judicial scandal, dividing French
society into supporters of Dreyfus and those who condemned him.
Accusations against Dreyfus were finally found to be baseless and he
was exonerated in 1906.
6. Source: http://lifestyle.boursorama.com/article/le-tour-de-france-en-dix-
chiffres-insolites_a828/1.
7. Source: www.atpworldtour.com/en/media/rankings-and-stats.
8. PGA: Professional Golfers’ Association.
9. Source: http://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/2015-pga-championship-
prize-money-every-golfers-payout-from-10m-pool/.
10. Source: http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/opinion-the-uci-worldtour-
is-a-failing-brand.
11. Source: Official Report of the Games of the XXIIIrd Olympiad Los
Angeles, 1984.
12. Source: http://www.arisf.org/14-uncategorised/30-ioc-recognition.
13. Source: http://playthegame.org/news/news-articles/2015/0044_sport-
accord-president-vizer-steps-down-after-row-with-ioc/.
14. Source: http://www.playthegame.org/news/news-articles/2008/cycling-

event-alleged-to-have-bought-olympic-acceptance-from-uci/.
15. Source: http://www.insidethegames.biz/index.php/articles/1037889/
former-uci-president-verbruggen-wins-defamation-case-against-journal-
ist-kimmage-in-swiss-courts.
16. Source: CIRCReport2015_Neutral.pdf, p. 8.
17. Idem.
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11
Jacques Rogge—The Quest for New
Olympic Values
Roger Vanmeerbeek and Thierry Zintz
Introduction
Jacques Rogge succeeded Juan-Antonio Samaranch on July 16, 2001
and was given the keys of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
at a time when it was on a solid financial foundation, which had not
been the case when Mr. Samaranch took over in 1980. He was expected
to be a “white knight” President who would only have to focus on the
values and ethics of sport. This happened indeed few years after the Salt
Lake City scandal in the which various members of the IOC Session were
accused of having received important gifts in exchange for their votes in
favour of Salt Lake City. He was confronted with the professionalization
R. Vanmeerbeek
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
T. Zintz (*)
Faculté des Sciences de la Motricité, Louvain Research
Institute in Management and Organizations (LouRIM),
Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
e-mail: Thierry.zintz@uclouvain.be
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_11
274 R. Vanmeerbeek and T. Zintz
of athletes, the global economic crisis, climate challenges, the power of

the media and many other challenges including doping, sport betting,
rigged matches, the gigantism of the Games and more.
Well-informed observers will see Jacques Rogge’s career as a series of suc-
cessive stages during which he advocated increasingly professional action
on the part of the people responsible for sport around the world. He per-
sonally implemented these principles. The various steps of his Olympic
career reflected the meticulousness of the medical surgeon he was, the
sense of diplomacy and the lobbying skills he developed during the many
years he was in charge of sport governing bodies, and his multilingualism
(speaking fluently Dutch, French, German, Spanish and even Russian).
However, it would be an offence to him to assume that his only goal
had been to hold this position. He himself1 has emphasised the fact that
he had precious mentors, such as his father, respected professors dur-
ing his college and university years, President Mollet from the Belgian
Olympic Committee, who was also one of the founders and the sec-
retary general of the Conseil International du Sport Militaire (CISM)
from 1954 to 1986, Sady Claeys, who owned important positions in
the Belgian and international sport (before to fail in his conquest of
the presidency of the International Sailing Federation in 2004) and
supported Jacques Rogge in his sporting career, and Juan-Antonio
Samaranch, along the way who offered him a series of positions with
increasing levels of responsibility.
The manager, President of the IOC, and a key figure in the Olympic
Movement, put these qualities to work for a period of twelve years (2001–
2013), the culmination of an entire career dedicated to sport manage-
ment, as he argued to work for the athletes, “putting them at the heart
of concerns”. It is interesting to note that, in 1984, as head of the Belgian
delegation at the Los Angeles Games, he decided that, contrary to all pre-
vious Games, the delegation head and other officials would march with
the last groups, behind the athletes, at the opening ceremony.2
1Interview
of President Rogge by the authors of this chapter on 12 June 2013.
2SN,
“Les dirigeants derrière”, Olympic News (Magazine of the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal
Committee), n° 8, July 1984.
During his two terms, President Jacques Rogge3 led the IOC, the
world’s highest level sport organisation, which he left in September
2013.4 Throughout this management, he was praised for his fight for
ethics in sport and for youth education, a fight which is perfectly sum-
marised by his motto “crossing the finish line first is not the only thing
that counts in sport”.5 Taking a look back at the accomplishments of
the Belgian President of the IOC, we wouldn’t be wrong to think that
the most important one was his creation of the first Youth Olympic
Games (YOG) which was held in Singapore in 2010.6 Now, young ath-
letes from around the world are invited to compete every four years, like
their elders, in a setting entirely suited to sport and respect for the val-
ues of the Olympic ideal.7
We classify his initiatives in three categories: those which primar-
ily concern the management of the IOC as an organisation, those that
impact the autonomy of the sport movement, and the challenges that
affect the sustainability of the Olympic Movement. We are aware that
these categories are artificial, but they will provide readers with an
understanding of the role played by Jacques Rogge in the recent evolu-
tion of what Chappelet calls “the Olympic system” (Chappelet 2008b).
A Member of the Belgian Leisure Class

Jacques Rogge was born in Ghent (Belgium) into a so called “bourgeoi-
sie” family during the Second World War (2 May 1942). He was raised
in a very cultural environment from the start, speaking both Dutch and
French. His paternal grandfather Jules, a self-made man, was a son of a
3Jacques Rogge, the sole candidate, was re-elected President of the IOC at its 121st session in
Copenhagen.
4The election of a successor to Count Jacques Rogge took place in Buenos Aires on 7 September
2013, at the 125th session of the IOC.

5Lunzenfichter A. and Vandeweghe H., Jacques Rogge. “Pour la beauté du sport”, Editions
Prolongations, p. 8.
6Vande Weyer P., “Jacques Rogge, futur ex-président du BOIC, un grand incompris à l’esprit trop
honnête”, Le Soir newspaper, 23 July 1992.

7Rogge J., “Avant-propos” & “Des Jeux bien à eux”, Revue Olympique, (75) May–June 2010.
farmer who moved from the suburbs of Bruges to Ghent, leaving the
farm to create his own business as an electrician. His father Charles
owned a diploma of engineer and developed the grandfather’s business
to a small company.
Jacques Rogge was also introduced to sport at a young age. He owes
his love of sport to his paternal grandfather, Jules, who was an amateur
rider during cycling’s glory days, the time of Odile Defraye, the first
Belgian to win the Tour de France in 1912.
His father Charles introduced the family to leisure sailing at the
Royal Belgian Sailing Club (RBSC in Heusden–Ghent). This famous
club was established in 1863 and is still regarded as a very select club,
where the Ghent “bourgeoisie” meets. Jacques Rogge dedicated him-
self to this sporting leisure and later on high level competition sport
from an early age (5 years old) and remained faithful to it for over
thirty years.8 In 1959, trained and supported by the RBSC, he won the
Yachting World International Cadet Trophy with his brother Philippe.
At the time, the competition was rightfully considered the unofficial
world championship, status officially granted to it in 1967.9 An exem-
plary athlete, he was awarded the Belgian national fair play trophy in
1965 for coming to the assistance of an unfortunate competitor who
became entangled in the rigging of their boat after it capsized during a
regatta. His actions, which ensured that he could not win the race, were
inspired by his sense of duty toward a person in danger and he also, no
doubt, answered his calling as a doctor, which he remains at heart.
Jacques Rogge was introduced to field hockey by his father and later
discovered golf at the St. Martens Latem Golf Club, a highly reputed
club in Belgium. He didn’t persevere in those two sports as golf was “too
time consuming”.
8The book “Jacques Rogge. Pour la beauté du sport” was consulted. This work was written by
sport journalists Alain Lunzenfichter and Hans Vandeweghe who specialised in the Olympics. It
was written as an autobiography in the first person singular and the present tense. It is worth to
note that this book is an authorized autobiography. By the time no real scientific work was dedi-
cated to Jacques Rogge and his career.
9The “cadet” class is recognised by the International Sailing Federation (ISAF). The boat, a din-
ghy, was designed in 1947 and is crewed by two people under 17.
Alongside his involvement in sport, Jacques Rogge received a high-

level education and professional training. Like many young men from
the Ghent (French speaking) catholic bourgeoisie, he studied the clas-
sics at the famous Collège des Jésuites Sainte-Barbe in Ghent (1954–
1960). This college, like other Jésuites education institutions, was
recognized for the very high level of requirements towards its students.
He then studied medicine, surgery and obstetrics at the University of
Ghent (1960–1967).10
This was followed by specialisation in orthopaedic surgery (1967–
1972) and a Master in sports medicine (1972). For the young doctor,
this was the start of a career in orthopaedic surgery which included
teaching sports medicine at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and
the University of Ghent. Meanwhile, he completed fifteen months of
compulsory military service (1972–1973) as a reserve officer in the
Belgian army medical corps.11 It is worth to note that accessing higher
education in the sixties was not as easy as today. At the end of the six-
ties, only 15% of the Belgian population aged 15 and more graduated
from higher education while 30% did it in 2016.
Throughout his studies, the future President of the IOC dedicated
a significant amount of his leisure time to sport, practising 3 times a
day (running 10 km in the morning, sailing in the afternoon and hav-
ing some power training in the evening)! In 1965, he won his first
title as Belgian senior Finn12 champion. He would go on to win the
gold medal sixteen more times through 1980, on a number of differ-
ent types of sailboats. He won several international Finn-class races
(an Olympic sport). He qualified for the Olympics three times and
competed in Mexico (Acapulco) (1968), Munich (Kiel) (1972) and
Montreal (Kingston) (1976).13 His first participation in the Olympic
Games was the most memorable event of his sports career: for an athlete
10The University of Ghent or Rijksuniversiteit Gent (U Gent) is a state university.

11Data from the military records of Jacques (Jean-Marie) Rogge.
12The Finn is a competition monotype designed in Sweden in 1949. It was first approved for the
Helsinki (Finland) Olympics in 1952.

13The Internet sites of the BOIC, www.olympic.be, and of the IOC, www.olympic.org, were
consulted.
used to competing alone, entering the Olympic stadium before a crowd

of 80,000 spectators for the opening ceremony was unforgettable. He
went on to serve as President for the International Finn Association
from 1979–1981 and was also a member of the ISAF Medical
Commission from 1990–2000. We should also note that he remained
loyal to the club where he got his start: the Royal Belgian Sailing Club
(RBSC in Heusden-Ghent).
In the meantime, Jacques Rogge became passionate about rugby. His
enthusiasm and love for this team contact sport par excellence enabled
him to leave the isolation of individual sailing behind. Rugby was—and
is still—a typical university sport. Belgium is a country of football and
cycling and the number of rugby clubs has always remained limited. For
a long time the level of competition was weak despite the fact that it is
increasing over recent years.
He played at the national level and won the Belgian champion-
ship with the University of Brussels (ASUB) team. As a result, he was
selected for the Belgian national rugby team ten times. This playing
career naturally qualified him to become, with his brother, one of the
founding members of the Ghent Rugby Club (1969).
The RBSC, the ASUB Rugby team and the Ghent Rugby Club as
they represented elite sports allowed Jacques Rogge to enter circles of
power in society and sport.
Jacques Rogge met his future wife, Anne Bovyn, at the faculty of
medicine of the University of Ghent where she specialised in radiol-
ogy. Her constant support for her husband was consistent, intense and
complete for both his athletic accomplishments and as a sport man-
ager. When Jacques Rogge became the President of the IOC, they both
moved to Lausanne and she stopped practising medicine.
Conquering Belgian Sport Administration
One unusual event is worthy of notice. In July 1968, just before the
Montreal Olympic Games, Jacques Rogge and the other Belgian sail-
ing championship competitors refused to race because they felt that
the rules of the competition had not been fully complied with by the
Belgian sailing federation. They were suspended, and their participa-

tion in the Games was jeopardised. Raoul Mollet, the President of the
Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee (BOIC), intervened and
a solution was found with the international federation, which included
a friendly reprimand critical of the undiplomatic attitude of the young
athletes and a paternalistic request to show what can be considered as a
sense of responsibility.14
Following the Munich Games (1972), President Mollet invited
Jacques Rogge to join the board of directors of the Olympic Committee
as an athlete representative. He also accepted the position of secretary
of the Association of Belgian Olympic Athletes headed at the time by
Gaston Roelants, Olympic champion in the 3000 m steeplechase at the
1964 Tokyo Games. One should consider that the initiative of President
Mollet was a paternalistic strategy to control Jacques Rogge and the
young generation of athletes in a period where they were discussing the
installed authority. Nevertheless the confidence between those two men
was immense and Jacques Rogge always mentioned Mollet as his great-
est mentor.
This was the start of Dr. Jacques Rogge’s sport management career.15
He was in turn a member of the board of directors of the BOIC16
(1973), vice-President (1976), then President of this body (1989–1992).
In the meantime, he was also head of the Belgian Olympic delegation
five times (Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984, Seoul 1988, Innsbruck
1976 and Calgary 1988). Note that, starting in 1980, Jacques Rogge
denounced the outdated and outmoded nature of the distinction
between amateur and professional athletes at the Olympics which
the Olympic Committee maintained in place. He recommended the
14Roger Vanmeerbeek interview with Sadi Claeys (29 March 1946), a childhood friend and
fellow sailor of Jacques Rogge’s for many years. Sadi Claeys was President of the Royal Belgian
Yachting Federation (FRBY) and vice-President of the World Sailing Federation (ISAF). He was
the leader of the Belgian sailing delegation in Kingston, for the Montreal Olympic Games in
1976, which Jacques Rogge took part in.
15Jacques Rogge’s Olympic career is described in detail in “Enflammé par l’Olympisme: cent ans
de Comité Olympique et Interfédéral Belge 1906–2006”, Roland Renson et al. (2006).

16It is worth to note that as a Belgian member of the IOC Session, Jacques Rogge kept his posi-
tion of member of the board of directors of the BOIC until 2013.

professionalization of athlete management and their total commitment.

It is worth to note that the Session of IOC, pushed by President
Samaranch, accepted the participation of professional athletes after the
1988 Games, leaving the final decision to International sport Federations.
Everybody should remember the participation of the USA basketball
“dream team” in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
In 1989, he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel Raoul Mollet (1912–2002)
who had led the BOIC for twenty-four years, in a period where the
board of BOIC was largely controlled by representatives of elite sports
supporting amateurism. Sir Mollet’s accomplishments included the
implementation of new structures suited to the changing ideas and prac-
tices of elite sport. He increased the number of projects and responsibil-
ities the Committee handled.17 President Rogge described the direction
of his term when he took over as head of the BOIC on 18 March 1989.
His priorities, based on a search for fine-tuned management could be
summarised as a “focus on the essential”.18 By doing so, Jacques Rogge
conducted a kind of revolution in this institution from paternalism to
management, from amateurism to professionalization of athletes, coaches
and administrative staff.
An International Career Boosted by the Fall

of the Berlin Wall
In October 1989, he was elected President of the European Olympic

Committees (EOC) (1989–2001) and appointed vice-President of the
Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) (1990–2001).
He provided support for emerging talent and, from 17 to 21 July 1991,
organised the first European Youth Olympic Days (also called the
European Youth Olympic Festival—EYOF) which brought together
athletes from thirty-two countries. The reader should consider the
17On 6 June 1985, Jacques Rogge drew the attention of President Raoul Mollet to the fact that it
was impossible for the BOIC staff to handle all of the many projects under way.
18Speech by Dr. Jacques Rogge to the BOIC General Assembly on 18 March 1989.
momentum as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 opened the way to a
new Europe were youngsters from Eastern and Western Europe could
freely meet. Organizing the first ever EYOF in Brussels appears to be a
well thought strategy, positioning Belgium and gaining influence in the
new Europe of sport.
When the opportunity arose for an international career in sport
management, Dr. Rogge passed on the presidency of the BOIC to
Adrien Vanden Eede, his secretary general, without losing influence as
he remained on the board (1992). He became a member of the IOC19
in 1991 and a member of the executive board in 1998.20 He was in
turn a member of several IOC commissions, vice-President of the IOC
Medical Commission and President of the Evaluation Commission
for the 2000 Games (Sydney) and the 2004 Games (Athens). Between
1968, when the IOC Medical Commission was installed, and the crea-
tion of WADA (1999), the Medical Commission played a critical role
in the fight against doping. The Ben Johnson affair (1988, Seoul), the
numerous doping affairs in cycling and the Tour de France “Festina”
scandal (1998) were moments where the capacity of the Commission
and its members to act properly has been highly questioned. Prince
Alexandre de Mérode who chaired the Commission (1967–2002) at
the time of the Ben Johnson affair (1988) argued that there was no real
commitment from IOC Presidents in the 1970s and early 1980s for a
real assault on doping.
President Samaranch, who promoted and observed Jacques Rogge in
his various Olympic functions and Raoul Mollet who was by that time
an influential Olympian supported his candidature to the presidency
of IOC. It is also argued that King Albert II, backed by the Belgian
Government, supported the candidature of Rogge and that the Belgian
diplomacy was involved.
19In 1991, Jacques Rogge was elected as a IOC member in Birmingham, during the IOC’s 97th
session.
20In 1998, Jacques Rogge was elected to the board of directors of the IOC during the IOC
session in Nagano. A seat opened following the withdrawal of Prince Alexandre de Merode
(Belgium).
At the time of the election, the main rival of Jacques Rogge was
the Canadian Richard (Dick) Pound. Pound was also a Samaranch
man. They had a good rapport with one other and Pound was often
appointed in key positions within the IOC by Samaranch. President
Samaranch finally supported Jacques Rogge and Pound finished third
in the election, as he was even beaten by Un Young Kim, from South
Korea, who was one of the IOC members involved in the Salt Lake City
scandal.
This Salt Lake City scandal (1999), where the bid committee and
several IOC members went over the edge of what was proper and eth-
ical conduct seems to have been critical to Jacques Rogge’s election, as
he was expected to be the “white knight” President who would focus
on the values and ethics of sport, after some manoeuvres from IOC
headquarter to reduce the impact of the scandal on sponsors and other
stakeholders.
Late allegations of backdoor dealings between China and the IOC
were made as suggested by former Chinese Minister of Sport Yuan
Weimin in an interview (2009): “In order for Beijing Olympic Bid to
succeed, we actively worked on China’s friends, hoping they would give
their votes to Rogge”.21
The crowning achievement of this national and international career
was Jacques Rogge’s election as the eighth President of the IOC on 16
July 2001.22 He was the second Belgian to head the global sport world
after Count Henri de Baillet-Latour (1876–1942), who succeeded
Baron Pierre de Coubertin as IOC President from 1925 to 1942.
As President of the EOC and of the IOC, Dr. Rogge visited most of
the two hundred National Olympic Committees (NOC) recognised by
the IOC.
21Former Chinese Minister of Sport Yuan Weimin, Interview to the Himalayan Times
(November 01, 2009)—https://thehimalayantimes.com/sports/former-china-sports-official-accus-
es-ioc-member/—page visited 21/08/2017.
22Dr. Jacques Rogge was elected President of the IOC on 16 July 2001, 21 years day-for-day after
the election of Marquis Antonio Samaranch, at the 112th session of the IOC in Moscow. The
election was secured on the second round of voting.
Technocratic Style and Horizontal Governance
In his inaugural speech of 16 July 2001 in Moscow, Jacques Rogge

stated that “I will respect Juan-Antonio Samaranch’s heritage. We must
find ways to adapt to our new society. I’m determined to fight against
doping, corruption and violence”. Some consider that this speech
was that of a leader who aims at respecting the fundamental values of
the Olympics but who is also aware of the need to take into account
the complex realities of sport in the context of the twenty-first cen-
tury, while others support the idea that he wanted to pay tribute to
Samaranch—who was one of his mentors—and to give warranties to
the Samaranch men within the IOC.
“When (…) I became President of the IOC, I followed the same
guidelines: focus on the main mission of the organisation, which is
already difficult in itself. I immediately eliminated useless activities,
which in management classes are called ‘the nice to have’. (…) In fact,
only two issues needed to be addressed: what is our mission and why
are we an effective and well-respected organisation? If you’ve found the
answers to these questions, it’s your duty to prioritise certain things and
eliminate everything else”.23 The initiatives taken by Jacques Rogge and
his team involved people first.
Highly goal-oriented, Jacques Rogge combined vision with a sense of
strategy: he didn’t hesitate to set the directions and means of reaching
them. Notably, this led him to reorganise the great House of Vidy.
Jacques Rogge’s predecessors acted as autocrats. He initiated a tech-
nocratic style based on modern management methods. “(Juan-Antonio
Samaranch) favoured private conclaves, generally operated bilaterally,
and discussed with directors one-on-one. On the other hand, Rogge
works horizontally, bringing everyone to the table. There were too many
partitions before (…). Everyone saw their area as a private territory”.24
Prolongations, p. 51.
24Vande Weyer P., “En six mois, Jacques Rogge a trouvé ses marques à Lausanne. Le nouveau
maître de l’Olympe”, Le Soir, 2 February 2002, p. 19.

Jean-Loup Chappelet, a well-informed observer of the IOC wrote

in 2008, that “the arrival of Jacques Rogge as President, was without a
doubt a major turning point in the management of the IOC, with the
introduction of stronger structures and procedures and, particularly, a
change in management style, which became more technocratic, much
more open to issues of governance and risk management and less entre-
preneurial and paternalistic than that of the previous President. A con-
solidation phase succeeded a period of major expansion”.25
Dr. Rogge has always worked with the same personal assistant,
from the BOIC to the IOC and including the EOC. He recruited
Christophe De Kepper, a discreet man, in 2001, as his principal pri-
vate secretary. Trained as a legal expert, the latter was previously director
of the liaison office for EOC for the European Union. In April 2011,
when the Swiss national Urs Lacotte left the position, Mr. Rogge ask
the former to become director-general of the IOC. His role is to lead
an administration consisting—in 2013, when Rogge left the Presidency
of IOC—of ten departments and 500 employees. In our opinion,
this was an important change in Jacques Rogge’s management style.
As President, he also acted as director-general for a long time: he set
strategy and closely monitored implementation. With Christophe De
Kepper, he effectively entrusted follow-up to the director-general. Some
believe that this provided him with a way to ensure his legacy beyond
his departure.
The link between the internal governance of the IOC and the govern-
ance of the world sport movement must be underscored given the cen-
tral role played by the IOC on the global sports scene: internal reforms,
or the lack of reforms, impact and even inspire reforms in stakeholder
systems. This was particularly true when they implemented the IOC
Ethics Commission and a first code of ethics with special consid-
eration for the members of the IOC Session in 1999 in order to
break with the practices which led to the Salt Lake City scandal where
the candidacy committee had bought the votes of some members.
25Chappelet J.-L., “La gouvernance du Comité International Olympique”, in Bayle E. and

Chantelat P., Gouvernance des organisations sportives, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2008.
The most recent version of the IOC Code of Ethics (2016)26 encom-
passes rules related to all Olympic parties, to the candidature process
for the Olympic Games and the YOG, to the good governance of the
Olympic Movement and to the prevention of manipulation of competi-
tions. It influences the day to day and the long term strategic and opera-
tional management of the IOC.
Governance as a Tool to Reinforce the

Autonomy of the Sport and Olympic Movement
In January 2001, at a colloquium on sport organisation governance
organised in Brussels by the EOC and the Fédération Internationale de
l’Automobile, Jacques Rogge gave a speech several months before his
election to the presidency of the IOC. He stated that “given that sport
is based on ethics and fair play in competition; sport governance must
meet the highest possible standards in terms of transparency, democ-
racy and imputability”. We would add predictability and professional-
ism. This speech was a clear statement on the way he wanted to evolve
from one era (the Samaranch period) to another if elected as a President
of IOC.
As noted by Chappelet,27 this represents a significant evolution in the
conduct of the Olympic institution and in its relations with stakehold-
ers. It provides a broad systemic approach to the field of action of the
IOC and its President. Modern governance, consisting of autonomy
and mutual respect between the players of global sport is, therefore, a
requirement.
The issue of the autonomy of the sport movement is of primary
importance for Jacques Rogge. He put all of his energy into protect-
ing it, in the belief that the sport movement does not live outside of
26IOC Code of Ethics—version 2016—https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_
PDFfiles/Ethics/2016_ioc_code_of_ethics-book-en.pdf.
Chantelat P., Gouvernance des organisations sportives, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2008.

the world but that public authority cannot impose all of its views. He
was an ardent negotiator with the European Union. He ensured that the
latter acknowledged this autonomy (implemented in Article 165 of the
Treaty of Lisbon (adopted on December 13, 2007)) and implemented
its rules of free movement and competition and of management of pub-
lic aid proportionally to sport. The reader must remember that by the
time of the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Court of
Justice had already taken several decisions such as the Bosman arrest
(December 1995) and others where this autonomy was largely ques-
tioned. Some analysts consider that article 165 of the Treaty represents
one—if not “the”—major achievement of Rogge’s mandate. Being the
President of the EOC (1989–2001) and then of the IOC (2001–2013)
allowed him to develop a strong network with head of governments and
states and to ensure with his teams a strong lobby for the autonomy of
sport.
He continued work to draw closer to the United Nations, commit-
ting the IOC to initiatives such as the ideal of the Olympic Truce “to
safeguard the interests of participating athletes, sport in general, and
non-violent conflict resolution across the globe”.28 Therefore, as in the
case of several earlier Games, a resolution of the 66th Session of the
General Assembly of the United Nations called for the Olympic Truce
for the 2012 London Games on October 11, 2011.29
As the relations with states and the autonomy of sport towards pub-
lic authorities are key issues for the Olympic Movement, relations with
National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and International Federations
(IFs) are a corner stone of the functioning of the IOC and the coher-
ence of the Olympic Movement.
Both the ANOC, as a representative of NOCs, and Global
Association of International Sport Federations (GAISF), as Ifs umbrella
body, act as a countervailing power. Loyal collaboration must not harm
their specific interests.
28http://www.olympic.org/fr/content/le-cio/commissions/international-relations/treve-olym-
pique/, page visited 16/05/2017.

29http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Olympic_Truce/OT_Resolution_FR_2011.pdf, page vis-
ited 16/05/2017.
Therefore, relations with the NOCs, which the Olympic Charter

defines as IOC representatives in their countries, are impacted by the
role taken on by the ANOC and the related continental associations.
They act as lobby groups to collectively defend the interests of the
NOCs (globally or by continent) and their representatives don’t hesi-
tate to express their divergences towards IOC decisions when estimating
these are contrary to their interests.
The same holds true for the relations between the IFs and the IOC.
The Global Association of International Sport Federations (GAISF)—
at that time SportAccord, affirms that it “maintains a close collabora-
tion with the IOC and fully recognises the IOC and the Olympic
Movement’s authority; it is and will remain a loyal partner in the
achievements of the Olympic Movement”.30 This statement on the
front page of their website in 2013 sounds quite ironic as one could
remember the conflict between IOC and GAISF (at that time still
SportAccord) when the IOC Executive Board voted to suspend recog-
nition of SportAccord, despite the resignation of SportAccord President
Marius Vizer, who launched a surprise attack on the IOC in April 2015,
with a speech at the opening of the SportAccord Convention in Sochi,
critical of the Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms and threw the organiza-
tion into chaos.
During the Copenhagen Olympic Congress of 2009, the IOC pub-
lished a document entitled “The Olympic Movement in Society”31
which summarised its decisions. It also approved the “Basic
Universal Principles of Good Governance of the Olympic and Sport
Movement”.32 It states, as a huge signal to the many IFs that didn’t
(don’t) respect these standards, that “the legitimacy and autonomy of
the Olympic Movement depends on upholding the highest standards
30http://www.sportaccord.com/en/what-we-do/dfsu/?idContent=16323, page visited 03/08/2013.

31SN, “Le mouvement olympique dans la société”, summary document of the decisions of the
Olympic Congress of Copenhagen, 5 October 2009, pp. 14 and 15—Document available at
http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Congress_2009/Recommandations%20-%20fre.pdf, page
visited 16/05/2017.
32SN, “Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance of the Olympic Movement”, International
Olympic Committee, 2008.

of ethical behaviour and good governance. All the members of the

Olympic Movement should adopt, as their minimum standard,
the Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance of the Olympic
Movement, as proposed by the IOC. All members of the Olympic
Movement must always demonstrate integrity, accountability and trans-
parency, as well as the highest level of management skills and ensure,
that under all circumstances, their legal status is fully compatible with
their activities and responsibilities and in full conformity with the laws
of the country (applicable laws)”. In addition, “all members of the
Olympic Movement should keep proper accounts respecting recognised
accounting standards; ensure that they are reviewed or audited inde-
pendently, adopt rules, standards and practices whereby those who do
not respect the principles of good governance could lose their funding or
be punished, adopt and implement a code of ethics founded on the prin-
ciples and rules of the IOC code of ethics and always strive to protect
and promote the interests of the athletes they represent”.
Facing New Challenges
Chappelet33 identifies five levels: economic responsibility, legal responsi-

bility, ethical responsibility, environmental responsibility and discretion-
ary or philanthropic responsibility. In doing so, Chappelet elaborates on
Caroll’s Pyramid of Social Responsibility (1991).
In terms of transparency and ethical responsibility, he believes
that “the progress made by the IOC over the past years has been sig-
nificant. (…) Starting in 1999, the IOC authorised journalists to attend
its Session’s debates (via a television link). For the past two Olympics,
the IOC has also published a report on its activities with detailed finan-
cial information. The Olympic Solidarity Department, which allocates
funds to the NOCs does also. (…) However, board of director meet-
ings remain confidential and the minutes of Olympic meetings only
33ChappeletJ.-L., “Corporate Social Responsibility: A New Frontier for the International

Olympic Committee”, SD, SL.
become available following an embargo of several years”.34 Contrary to

Chappelet’s statement critics will mention that the IOC financial infor-
mation is clear and certified but not as detailed as expected and that
there is no clarity on the traceability of the use of funds by Olympic
Solidarity.
Meanwhile one must admit that the organization of the Beijing
Summer Olympics in 2008 and Sotchi Winter Olympics in 2014 were
opportunities for Human Rights NGOs to criticise the action of IOC
and the way President Rogge and the IOC answered those critics.
The censorship affair of internet during the Beijing Olympics affected
the good reputation of IOC as the institution was accused to have a
secret deal with the Chinese authorities on access restrictions, without
the knowledge of either the press or most members of the IOC. Rogge
later denied that any such deal had taken place, but failed to insist that
China adhere to its prior assurances that the Internet would not be
censored.
With respect to financial and economic accountability, the con-
solidation and publication of balance sheets and income statements
promotes the actions of the IOC with members of the Olympic
Movement. The Olympic Solidarity Department plays an essential role
in this respect and the publication of its four-yearly report35 intends
at ensuring the transparency of resource allocation. However the reve-
nue which certain IFs and NOC receive via this solidarity mechanism
accounts for well over 50% of their resources, which makes them sub-
servient to the IOC and gives the institution the tools to control and
keep the coherence of the “olympic system”.
Jacques Rogge consistently recalled how important legal responsibil-
ity was when he took over as President of the IOC. While he had to
manage the fallout from the Salt Lake City scandal in-house via ethics

Chantelat P., “Gouvernance des organisations sportives”, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2008.
35SN, Terrain d’action. Four-year plan 2009–2012, Olympic Solidarity Department—
International Olympic Committee, http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_

PDFfiles/Olympic_Solidarity/Plan_Quadriennal_2009_2012.pdf, page visited 16/05/2017.
action, he also assumed its legal consequences and the necessity to

secure the future of Olympic Games, after the terrorist attacks in New
York on 11 September 2001.
The IOC decided to assume its environmental responsibility. The
Olympic Charter was amended in 1996 and the following paragraph
was added to Rule 2 (role of the IOC): “the IOC sees to it that the
Olympic Games are held in conditions which demonstrate a respon-
sible concern for environmental issues and encourages the Olympic
Movement to demonstrate a responsible concern for environmen-
tal issues (…)”. In the meantime the displacement of people living in
Beijing’s Hutongs, the huge pollution in the city of Beijing and the
destruction of protected nature areas to allow the construction of the
sport and accommodation facilities in the mountains near Sotchi are
other negative points that were not effectively addressed by the IOC.
Discovering the Limits of IOC Influence

and Power
Many issues of what action should be taken in light of a complex real-
ity challenge the sustainability of the Olympic Movement and, more
broadly, of the sport movement in general. As different political, eco-
nomic, legal and jurisdictional stakeholders are constantly changing the
environment of the sport movement, the management of major sport
organisations has required strong, professional leadership.
Being included in the Olympic Games is invaluable for a sport: the
renewal of the Olympic programme requires that each sport justify its
reason for being or risk being removed and replaced. President Rogge
did not back the plan to transfer certain indoor summer sports such as
basketball or fencing to the Winter Games.36 The Winter Games are
made of “snow and ice” and the arrival of other sports would require
the construction of additional infrastructure which would make
36Chappelet JL, The International Olympic Committee and the Olympic System: The
Governance of World Sport, Routledge, 2008, p. 97.
it virtually impossible for small- and medium-sized cities host the

Games. Meanwhile the IOC assessed the performance of all 26 sports
at London 2012. Wrestling, to the contrary of many other federations,
refused to make adaptations. The IOC dropped wrestling from the
2020 Olympic programme in February 2013, but IOC members con-
ducted a secret electronic ballot on the issue during the 125th session
in Buenos Aires (7–10 September 2013) and the sport was reinstalled.
Wrestling’s triumph in the vote followed a number of sweeping reforms
made following its exclusion, including overhauling its rules, adminis-
tration, gender equality and operations.
Doping is a daily challenge for the Olympic Movement: “As
President of the IOC, as a former athlete and as a passionate fan of
sport, I call on everyone to be totally dedicated to the fight against dop-
ing. (…) If we are not able to improve the situation, I fear that parents
will begin to tell their children that competition sport is dangerous for
their health and dishonourable. If this were to occur, it would be very
difficult to recruit future champions”.37 Given that cheating is part of
human nature, it would be naïve to believe that this fight will one day
lead to the complete elimination of doping.
Richard Pound, who lost from Rogge to become the President of
IOC, chaired the World Anti-Doping Agency from 1999 when it was
created until 2007. During this period he challenged several times the
engagement of Rogge and of the IOC to really fight doping. In January
2004, the French newspaper Le Monde quoted Pound as saying that
“the public knows that the riders in the Tour de France and the oth-
ers are doping”. In August 2005, L’Equipe reflected to samples with
detected erythropoietin (EPO) linked to Lance Armstrong and Pound,
as a chair of WADA, told to media that it was up to Armstrong and
others to explain how EPO got into their system. Armstrong reacted
on June 9, 2006 in a long letter to Jacques Rogge demanding action
would be taken against Pound, accusing him of “reprehensible and
indefensible” behaviour. The IOC Ethics Commission recommended
37Rogge J., AMA Symposium for the media. “Notre devoir: présenter un front uni contre le
dopage”, Introductory speech by the IOC President, 24 January 2007. http://www.olympic.org/
Documents/Reports/EN/fr_report_1121.pdf, page visited 20/05/2013.
in February 2007 that Pound should exercise greater prudence in his

public pronouncements. Pound answered that he was accountable to
WADA and not to the IOC.
On May 14, 2013, a work group founded under the aegis of the
IOC, at the request of President Rogge, stated that “betting on sport is
not negative per se; legal betting provides a way for the general public
to show its support for sport and athletes, just as the services offered by
national and private lotteries are a primary funding resource for sport in
many countries. The problem arises when betting leads to the manipu-
lation of competition”. The working group “called for the creation of an
Olympic Movement monitoring system which would be provided for
all of the IFs during the major events in order to record and share all
information about suspicious betting activities”.38 Jacques Rogge closed
the symposium by underscoring that “unregulated and illegal betting
undermines the foundations of sport and the efforts we have made to
fight this threat require the commitment of a number of important
partners, including governments”.39 As this initiative was taken shortly
before the election of his successor, Rogge couldn’t develop actions and
it became a duty for Bach.
The Youth Olympics: A Personal Challenge
A personal challenge which President Rogge has taken on is, without a

doubt, the Youth Olympics, which were inaugurated in Singapore in
2010, and are a continuation of the European Youth Olympic Days.
“The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are a high-level sport event open to
adolescents from around the world. The YOG are different from other
sport events for young people in that they also include a cultural and
educational programme (CEP) which focuses on five topics: Olympism,
38SN, “The fight against illegal and irregular Sports betting”, unpublished document, http://
www.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Ethics/Betting-factsheet-May-2013.pdf,
page visited 20/05/2013.
39 http://www.olympic.org/news/lutte-contre-les-paris-irreguliers-et-illegaux-pour-un-sys-
teme-de-surveillance-universel/199073, page visited 20/05/2013.

social responsibility, skills development, expression and well-being and

healthy lifestyles”.40
Some academics see it as a small-scale version of the Olympic Games.
Wong (2011) notes that YOG face the same human rights (minori-
ties, gender, persons with disabilities, etc.) and gigantism issues as the
Olympic Games. She also believes that the growing inability (of the
Olympic Games) to draw young people to televised events has led the
IOC to propose new Games to increase its television audience.
Wong (2011) and Hanstad et al. (2013) see “an ideological response
by the IOC to encourage young people to play a more active part in
sport and counter the obesity epidemic in young people”. Others point
out that there aren’t many candidate host cities. As for the Olympic
Games, the cost of holding the event is very high. The IOC has insisted
that the YOG use existing facilities. However, it should be noted that
Singapore (first Summer YOG in 2010) and Nanjing (second Summer
YOG in 2014) set the bar very high, whereas Innsbruck, which held the
first Winter YOG in 2012, stuck more closely to the specifications. As
Buenos Aires will host the Summer YOG in 2018, its organising com-
mittee needs to ensure the sustainability of the event.
The real economic model of YOG is quite different from the one of
the Olympic Games. Accommodation for participants of YOG, as well
as other activities (travel costs for NOCs), are borne by the IOC while
OCOGs have to offer free accommodation in the Olympic Village and
subsidize the transportation costs of each NOC team. The income from
ticket sales is quite low; as a consequence the YOG have limited means
to finance the event through private sources, public funding is therefore
essential for hosting the YOG.41
Parry (2012) noted that “Young athletes (or even child athletes) have
always participated in the Olympic Games”. He sees the YOG as “a
new step toward the systematic distribution of elite sport into the child
population. This brings with it serious ethical and value questions so its
effects must be carefully monitored”. There is, in fact, a risk that certain
40http://www.olympic.org/news/c-est-quoi-les-joj/195805, page visited 20/05/2013.

41Hanstad D.-V., Parent M., Houlihan B., The Youth Olympic Games, Routledge, 2017, p. 69.
people will push young people to over train and potentially into doping.
This would prematurely destroy potential talent and go against the ethi-
cal principles upheld by the IOC in this respect.
We believe that these approaches neglect the fundamental idea of an
educational added value of the YOG. The YOG are at the heart of what
President Rogge believed to be the major challenge for the Olympic
Movement—that is, the obvious lack of physical activity by young peo-
ple and the resulting social ills. We believe that it is therefore in a social
role but also with the Coubertinian idea of moralizing young people
that the IOC, under the leadership of Jacques Rogge, planned to make
a contribution to the study and implementation of the actions to be
taken.
Nowadays the IOC is analysing the YOG model as they are not really
achieving the initial goals of attracting youth, having a real educational
impact and offering a platform of new forms of existing sports or new
sports.
Conclusion
“I believe that if it is said that I contributed to perpetuating the dream
for the next generation, that I was successful. The Olympic Games have
survived war, boycotts and doping since Pierre de Coubertin restarted
them!”42 This quote may appear as a form of auto-celebration but it has
to be replaced in its context. While leaving office it illustrates the ideal
President Rogge set for himself over the twelve years of his presidency.
He left the IOC “in very good health both from the financial and
ethical standpoint. (…) He was able to maintain peace and equilibrium
between the various components of the Olympic Movement, that is,
IOC members, the IFs, the NOC, and the organisation committees of
the Games, which is a very difficult task”.43
Prolongations, pp. 146–147.
43Vande Weyer P., “Les candidats successeurs de Jacques Rogge dans les blocs de départ”, Le Soir
online (www.lesoir.be), 8 May 2013, page visited 09/05/2013.

Critics were made as for relations with IFs and NOCs, about the
gigantism of the Games and their negative influence on environment,
about offenses to human rights. Of course no one can reject totally
them and Rogge couldn’t solve all problems.
Wladimir Andreff (2012) stated that new steps could be taken to
reduce costs and manage the gigantism of the Olympic Games, notably
with respect to what he calls the “winner’s curse”. He notes that “the
promises made by the (host candidate committees) when they submit
their candidacy in terms of economic impact and/or social benefits are
not held or are not at the levels predicted”. He states that “the selection
of the host city by a central, bureaucratic decision-maker based on a
non-market based approach makes it impossible to prevent bidding and
the winner’s curse”. In his opinion “a simple solution would consist in
selecting a single location once and for all to host the Summer Olympic
Games and another for the Winter Games. However, it is unlikely that
the IOC will agree to this because it would considerably reduce the
budget of the Games and, on the other hand, put an end to a profitable
global business which the many people who profit from would quickly
defend”.
In an interview just before his departure, Jacques Rogge stated that
he believed his successors should not be volunteers, like himself and his
predecessors, but should receive a salary: “We are looking for independ-
ent-minded people. Look at sport organisations: they are increasingly
managed by professional Presidents”.44
Dr. Rogge’s signature management is therefore clearly apparent at the
end of his twelve-year presidency. To those who criticise his managerial
approach, the President45 answered that the IOC, which is at the heart
of a complex system requires the strategic vision provided by its com-
missions and the solid management provided by the Olympic admin-
istration. By doing so the strategic role of the session—regarded as the
general assembly in a not for profit organization—is sensibly dimin-
ished, giving the power to the executive commission, the commissions
44SN, “Jacques Rogge wil dat opvolger betaald wordt”, De Morgen, 24 April 2013, p. 24.
45Interview of President Rogge by the authors of this chapter, 12 June 2013.
and the staff who together conduct the strategy and execute the deci-
sions. The recent developments around the attribution of the 2024
Games to Paris and 2028 Games to Los Angeles is a good example of
this managerial approach as the role of the session, on September 9,
2017 is a simple approbation on a decision (and contracts) that have
been agreed between the executive power and the two cities.
Biography by Key Dates

Born on May 2, 1942 in Ghent (Belgium).
1954–1960: Secondary school at Collège Sainte-Barbe in Ghent.
1960–1967: Medicine, surgery and obstetrics studies at the University
of Ghent.
1965–1980: Won sixteen Belgian sailing championships.
1966: Belgian national fair play trophy.
1967–1972: Specialisation in orthopaedic surgery at the University of
Ghent.
1968–1976: Participation in the Mexico (1968), Munich (1972) and
Montreal (1976) Olympic Games in sailing (Finn class).
1972–1973: Military service as a reserve officer in the Belgian Army
medical corps.
1973: Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee director (BOIC).
1976–1988: Head of the Belgian team delegation at the Innsbruck
(1976), Moscow (1980), Los Angeles (1984), Seoul (1988) and Calgary
(1988) Games.
1977: Vice-President of the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee
(BOIC).
1989 (June)–1992 (June): President of the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal
Committee (BOIC).
1989 (October)–2001: President of the European Olympic Committees
(EOC).
1990 (September)–2001: Vice-President of the Association of National
Olympic Committees (ANOC).
1990 (September)–1999: Member of the Olympic Movement Commission
of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
1990 (September)–2001: Member of the Olympic Solidarity

Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
1991(June): Elected member of the International Olympic Committee
(IOC).
1991 (July): First European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF).
1992 (July)–2001: Member of the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) Programme Commission.
1992 (July): Granted the hereditary title of Knight by King Baudouin
of Belgium.
1998 (February): Member of the Executive Commission of the
International Olympic Committee (IOC).
1999: Member of the board of the World Anti-Doping Agency (AMA).
2001 (16th July): Elected President of the International Olympic
Committee (IOC).
2002: Granted the title of Count by King Albert II of Belgium.
2010: First Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.
2013 (7 September): Election of Jacques Rogge’s successor as ninth
President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Sources
Olympic Charter, effective 8 July 2011, International Olympic Committee,
2011.
Claeys S., Interview of 7 March by Vanmeerbeek R., Brussels, BOIC, 2013.
Former Chinese Minister of Sport Yuan Weimin, Interview to the Himalayan
Times (November 01, 2009)—https://thehimalayantimes.com/sports/for-
mer-china-sports-official-accuses-ioc-member/—page visited 21/08/2017.
Rogge J., Letter to President Mollet R., 6 June 1985, Ghent, p. 3.
Rogge J., Speech by Dr. J. Rogge to the BOIC General Assembly, 18 March
1989, Brussels, p. 8.
Rogge J., Avant-propos de Jacques Rogge; Des Jeux bien à eux, Revue olympique
(75), April–May–June 2010; Lausanne, château de Vidy, pp. 7, 28 & 29.
Rogge J., Symposium de l’AMA pour les médias. Notre devoir: présenter un
front uni contre le dopage, Introductory speech by the President of the IOC,
24 January 2007.
http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Reports/EN/fr_report_1121.pdf, page
visited 20/05/2013.
Olympic sites, www.olympic.be of the BOIC and www.olympic.org of the
IOC.
SN, IOC Code of Ethics, 2016—Documents accessible at https://stillmed.
olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Ethics/2016_ioc_code_
of_ethics-book-en.pdf.
SN, Olympic Charter, effective 02 August 2015, International Olympic
Committee, 2015.
SN, Les dirigeants derrière, Olympic News (Magazine of the Belgian Olympic
and Interfederal Committee), n° 8, July 1984.
SN, Le mouvement olympique dans la société, Summary Document of the Decisions
of the Olympic Congress of Copenhagen, 5 October 2009, pp. 14 and 15—
Document accessible at http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Congress_2009/
Recommandations%20-%20fre.pdf, page visited 16/05/2017.
SN, Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance of the Olympic and Sport
Movement, International Olympic Committee, 2008.
SN, Terrain d’action. Plan quadriennal 2009–2012, Olympic Solidarity
Department—International Olympic Committee, http://www.olym-
pic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Olympic_Solidarity/Plan_
Quadriennal_2009_2012.pdf, page visited 16/05/2017.
SN, Olympic Movement Agenda 21. Sport for sustainable development, Sport
and Environment Commission of the International Olympic Committee.
Document available at http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Reports/FR/
fr_report_300.pdf, page visited 16/05/2017.
SN, Report of the 9th Conference on sport and the environment, Doha, 2011.
Document available at http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Conferences_
Forums_and_Events/Sport_and_Environment/Rapport_DOHA_FR.pdf,
page visited 16/05/2017.
SN, The fight against illegal and irregular Sports betting, unpublished docu-
ment, http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfiles/Ethics/
Betting-factsheet-May-2013.pdf, page visited 16/05/2017.
SN, Jacques Rogge wil dat opvolger betaald wordt, De Morgen, 24 April 2013,
p. 24.
Vande Weyer P., Jacques Rogge, futur ex-président du BOIC, un grand incompris
à l’esprit trop honnête, Le Soir, 23 July 1992, pp. 3–5.
Vande Weyer P., En six mois, Jacques Rogge a trouvé ses marques à Lausanne. Le
nouveau maître de l’Olympe, Le Soir, 2 February 2002, p. 19.
Vande Weyer P., Christophe De Kepper, l’autre Belge du CIO, Le Soir, 14 July
2012, p. 24.
Vande Weyer P., Les candidats successeurs de Jacques Rogge dans les blocs de
depart, Le Soir online (www.lesoir.be), 8 May 2013, page visited 9 May
2013.
Bibliography
Andreff, W. 2012. Pourquoi le coût des jeux olympiques est-il toujours
sous-estimé? La ‘malédiction du vainqueur de l’enchère’ (winner’s curse).
Papeles de Europa 25: 3–26.
Arcioni, S., and P. Vandewalle. 2010. Creation of an Independent Body for
the Control of the Governance of Sporting Organisations Worldwide.
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Republic.
Camy, J., and L. Robinson (Publishers). 2007. Gérer les organisations sportives
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the Moral Management of Organizational Stakeholders. Business Horizons
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12
Sepp Blatter: Wielding Power
Through FIFA
Sandro Arcioni, Emmanuel Bayle and Hervé Rayner
As is shown by the below exchange between two journalists speaking

on Swiss public radio, suspicions of corruption within the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) were rife even before the
“FIFAgate” scandal broke at the end of May 2015.
Christian Favre, journalist & radio news presenter: “To conclude, does
Sepp Blatter, as we are often told, does he run his FIFA honestly or not?”
Joël Robert, journalist & head of the sports desk: “Well, you know, he runs
it honestly because there have been legal proceedings, but Blatter and FIFA
have never been caught out. There are still proceedings under way. I tell you
S. Arcioni (*)
Mupex Sàrl, Lausanne, Switzerland
E. Bayle
H. Rayner
University of Lausanne | UNIL, Institute of Sports Science,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_12
302 S. Arcioni et al.
that Blatter will be re-elected very comfortably. He will keep going. He has
been at FIFA for 30 years, president since ‘98, but, clearly, if a corruption
or some other sort of scandal breaks, well, in that case, Blatter will fall from
his throne. But, at the moment, he is solidly seated on that throne.” (Radio
Suisse Romande, Forum, 28 August 2014).
In fact, Sepp Blatter’s term as FIFA president had been dogged by
allegations of corruption, most of which Blatter had skilfully man-
aged to contain or smother. As a result, FIFA during the “Blatter era”
had been seen as a pioneering sport federation whose management
principles and methods provided a “strategic model” for all Olympic
organisations.
The following analyses draw heavily on research carried out for a
sport science doctoral thesis entitled “The modalities of governance in
international non-profit organisations: the case of international sporting
federations” (Arcioni 2007), which examined three sport federations,
including FIFA. This thesis used observations, internal and external
FIFA documents (activity reports, financial reports, studies/surveys of
football and FIFA), and interviews with senior managers, including
Sepp Blatter (conducted between 2002 and 2006) to provide a quali-
tative analysis of FIFA’s management methods. Additional and more
recent data were obtained from an interview with Blatter, carried out
on October 16, 2013 at FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich; meetings with
Nicolas Maingot, FIFA’s Deputy Director of Communication and
Public Affairs; press articles about Blatter’s career and presidency; inter-
nal FIFA documents (activity reports, financial reports, etc.) provided
by FIFA; and an scholarly review of FIFAgate and Blatter’s fall (Bayle
and Rayner 2016).
The present review of Blatter’s career covers the period from 1975,
when he first joined FIFA, to the eruption of the FIFAgate scandal in
2015. Our analysis is divided into three main sections covering Blatter’s
rise through the ranks of football administration, the management
principles underlying what can be called the “Blatter system”, and the
events that led to FIFAgate and the collapse of this system. We con-
clude by examining the legacy Blatter has left for FIFA and for sport in
general.
Sepp Blatter’s Career

Joseph S. Blatter was born on March 10, 1936 in Visp, a small town
in the Valais canton of Switzerland. He completed his primary and
secondary education at Catholic schools in Sion and St-Maurice
before going on to study economics and business administration at the
University of Lausanne. He was passionate about football from a very
young age and played competitively from 1948 until 1971, ending his
playing career in Switzerland’s amateur football league. The hotel trade
was another of his youthful interests, so he spent many of his holidays
working in resorts such as Saas-Fee, Zermatt and Locarno, where he
became fluent in French, English, Italian and Spanish, as well as his
native German.
Although he had hoped to follow a career in journalism—he had
joined the Association of Swiss Sports Journalists in 1956—when he
graduated from university he accepted a position as head of public rela-
tions for the Valais tourist board. His first opportunity to work in sport
came in 1964, when he was appointed general secretary of the Swiss Ice
Hockey Federation, but by the early 1970s he had decided he wanted
to go back to public relations. As a result, he moved to the private sec-
tor, joining the Swiss watch manufacturer Longines S.A. as Director of
Sports Timing and Public Relations. It was this role that gave him his
first experience of the workings of international sport, as Longines was
the official timekeeper for the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games.
Despite his busy professional life, Blatter continued to make time
for football, first doing voluntary work organising referees for a local
football club and then, from 1970 to 1975, serving as an executive
with Swiss first division club Neuchâtel Xamax FC. In the summer
of 1975 FIFA’s president, João Havelange, asked Blatter to become
the federation’s new development director and the two men quickly
became lifelong allies. Blatter, who had already seen the potential for
creating new competitions and for using football as an educational tool,
began setting a course that would lead to the creation of World Cups
for Women (Senior, U-20 and U-17) and to the development of futsal,
all of which have become very important parts of FIFA’s activities.
Blatter gradually rose through the FIFA hierarchy, becoming secre-

tary general in 1981 and chief executive officer (CEO) in 1990. Finally,
in June 1998, he was elected president, a position he would hold until
December 2015. Blatter’s decision to stand for election as FIFA presi-
dent, taken at the end of March 1998, was partly prompted by the
encouragement he had received from national associations throughout
the world, especially those outside Europe. He owed this support to a
number of factors, including his charisma, his relations with national
association executives and his thorough knowledge of all the issues fac-
ing FIFA. In addition, one of his election pledges was to redistribute
FIFA’s revenues more equitably, with each member-association being
promised US$1 million per quadrennial cycle. Redistributing FIFA’s
revenues in this way was intended to help national federations in devel-
oping countries, most notably in the southern hemisphere, implement
their own and FIFA’s development programmes, but it was also a way
for Blatter to consolidate his power by gaining the support of poorer
footballing nations. Blatter’s popularity with the non-European member-
associations also ensured him the backing of FIFA’s outgoing president,
João Havelange. Consequently, at FIFA’s 51st Ordinary Congress in
Paris, Blatter was elected to the most powerful position in international
football, beating his rival Lennart Johansson by 111 votes to 80. Blatter’s
rise was unique in the world of sport federations, as never before had a
major international federation elected a president from the ranks of its
salaried staff. Previously, all sport federation presidents had been chosen
from among the federation’s board and on the basis of highly political
criteria. A year later, on 20 June 1999, at the International Olympic
Committee’s (IOC) 109th Session in Seoul, Sepp Blatter, who was seen
as one of the most talented and experienced leaders in international
sport,1 was co-opted as the IOC’s 104th member. That same year Blatter
was named as one of the IOC’s representatives on the Foundation Board
of the newly formed World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Blatter had a wide-ranging vision of how football should develop and
how FIFA could contribute to this development. Hence, he launched
1Source: Walter Gagg, FIFA’s Director of Stadiums and Security, interviewed in 2005.
numerous projects that would consolidate and increase FIFA’s influ-

ence and allow football to evolve in response to changes in both sport
and society. An important part of his strategy was to increase women’s
involvement in all areas of football, from the pitch (players, manag-
ers, referees) to the boardroom (clubs, leagues, national associations).
He also wanted to cultivate closer relations with FIFA’s economic and
political partners, and to enhance football’s socio-cultural impact within
local communities. He realised the importance of effectively commu-
nicating FIFA’s message through all possible channels, including televi-
sion, Internet and the new mobile media. In this respect, one of Blatter’s
first priorities after his election was to negotiate more advantageous tele-
vision and marketing contracts for FIFA World Cups.
He also took a number of concrete measures to increase the audience
for football. For example, he created several new FIFA competitions,
including the Club World Cup (new format), Women’s U-20 and U-17
World Cups, and the Beach Soccer World Cup. Another major pro-
ject was to build a new headquarters for FIFA in Zurich, which would
enable the federation to concentrate all its expanding operations in one
building. The first stone for the building, on the newly renamed FIFA-
Strasse (formerly Adolf-Jöhr-Weg), was laid on 14 May 2004 as part
of the celebrations for FIFA’s 100th anniversary. Designed to project
a strong image of FIFA as one of the world’s richest and most power-
ful sport federations, the new “Home of FIFA” was delivered two years
later, on April 28, 2006.2
Thanks to the experience acquired across the different sectors of
global football, FIFA’s president appeared to have the foresight and
know-how needed to overcome all the challenges facing football and
modern sport, so it is perhaps unsurprising that he had his presiden-
tial mandate renewed three times, beating his opponents by very wide
margins in 2002 and 2011 and being re-elected unopposed in 2007.
During his long service as a FIFA executive he helped oversee the
2Official inauguration: 29 May 2007, on the eve of the 57 FIFA congress. Facts and figures:
total cost—CHF240 million, size of the main building—length: 134 metres, width: 41 metres,
height: 12 metres. For more details, go to http://fr.fifa.com/aboutfifa/federation/insidefifa/news/
newsid=528759.html#bienvenue+nouveau+home+fifa.
staging of nine World Cups (Spain 1982, Mexico 1986, Italy 1990,
USA 1994, France 1998, South Korea/Japan 2002,3 Germany 2006,
South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014) and made numerous contributions
to modifying the laws of the game, improving refereeing and developing
football in general.
For Sepp Blatter, football is a school of life, the perfect team sport,
as it combines “education, personality and a fighting spirit in mutual
respect and discipline”.4 Blatter believed in football as a way of pro-
moting mutual understanding between peoples in a spirit of fair play.
“Football for all and all for football” sums up his credo. He felt that
“Football is a stage and a football show can attract the media like no
other sport. It can inspire artists and create numerous jobs. However,
football is first a synonym for passion and emotion. It can both kindle
and move. It is the most popular game in the world, a popular topic of
conversation”.5 Football’s importance in the world of sport was clearly
demonstrated at the opening ceremony for the 2014 Sochi Olympics,
when Blatter stole the thunder of both IOC President Thomas Bach
and Russian President Vladimir Putin simply by announcing that he
would accept another term as FIFA president if asked to do so.
The “Blatter System”

A succession of measures introduced during Blatter’s time at FIFA, first
under João Havelange and then during his own presidency, pro-
foundly changed the way FIFA was governed. These measures, many of
which were taken in response to pressure from the media and FIFA’s
stakeholders following scandals prior to FIFAgate, produced a sys-
tem of governance that was more akin to the management structures
adopted by multinationals than to the sport governance model laid out
in the “IOC 2000” report. Hence, the way FIFA’s governance evolved
3South Korea and Japan entered a joint bid to stage the event after initially entering individual
bids. By the time of the vote, there were no other candidates to host the event.
4Source: Sepp Blatter, interviewed on 16 October 2013 in Zurich.
5Source: http://fr.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/president/aboutpresident.html.
is best understood in the light of theories of corporate governance. This

evolution produced what we call the “Blatter system”, which included
a number of innovative management principles and methods for the
international sport sector.
Framework for Studying FIFA’s Governance During

the Blatter Era
The following analysis of how FIFA’s governance evolved during the

Blatter era is based on the governance framework described by Perez
(2003), which brought a new dimension to the analysis of organisa-
tional governance. Perez’s breakthrough was to consider governance at
the systemic level (i.e., how an organisation’s governance responds to its
external environment) as well as the organisational level (i.e., day-to-day
management and internal procedures and safeguards). Table 12.1 shows
the five levels of corporate governance described by Perez and the differ-
ent dimensions of each level proposed by Arcioni.
Applied to FIFA, the first level of governance can be used to assess
how well the federation is managed with respect to its financial strength
and the efficacy of its management, etc. The four dimensions of the sec-
ond level provide insight into the composition and strength of power
within the federation, whereas the third level examines the internal
controls FIFA has put in place to prevent abuses of this power. Level
four covers FIFA’s relations with its stakeholders, both within and out-
side the Olympic/sports system, while the metagovernance level touches
upon the issue of sustainable growth (societal dimension) and FIFA’s
position within the wider social environment.
From his earliest days as FIFA’s development director, Blatter’s objec-
tive was to ensure FIFA continued to grow into one of the world’s
largest and most powerful sport federations. The following paragraphs
present the measures FIFA has taken, often at the instigation of Blatter,
with respect to each level in Perez’s governance model and the impact
these measures have had on FIFA’s development. The success of the
resulting governance system can be attributed largely to the innovative
management principles and methods Blatter introduced.
Table 12.1 Perez’s five levels of governance,a as revised by Arcionib

Level 1
Management: day-to-day management of the organisation’s operations
Dimensions:
• Professionalism
• Independence of funding
• Management
Level 2
Governance: “management of management” by bodies within the organisation
(statutes, board of directors, general assembly, etc.)
Dimensions:
• Identity
• Values
• Flexibility
• Configuration of internal power
Level 3
Regulation: “management of governance” by specific schemes (professional bodies,
administrative authorities—dedicated authorities, judicial authorities)
Dimensions:
• Controls
• Communication
• Imputability
Level 4
Harmonisation: of regulation systems: “governance of governance”
(ensuring the organisation is run in harmony with its immediate environment,
e.g., within the overall sport system)
Dimensions:
• Stakeholder relations
• Reputation
• Judicial
Level 5
Metagovernance: the wider framework in which organisations carry out their
actions, including the need to comply with international legislation
Dimensions:
• Metajudicial
• Social and economic
• Conservation and management of resources for development purposes
• Reinforcement of the main social groups
• Implementation means
aPerez, R. (2003). La gouvernance de l’entreprise. Paris: Ed. La Découverte
bArcioni, S. (2007). The Governance Modes of International Non-Profit
Organisations: The Case of 3 International Sporting Federations. Doctoral thesis,
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France, and a report by Arcioni describing a
governance assessment system based on 5 levels of governance and 18 dimen-
sions/indicators that correlate with the IOC’s “Universal Basic Principles of Good
Governance of the Olympic and Sporting Movement”
Managerial Policy Relative to Structuring

and Development
Level 1: Management
Level 1 in Perez’s model of governance covers the operational tools on

which FIFA’s corporate governance is based. These tools include profes-
sionalism, funding, independence, management performance and disci-
plinary procedures.
In 1975 João Havelange recruited Sepp Blatter as FIFA’s new develop-
ment director with the remit of maximising football’s economic potential
in order to obtain the revenues needed to fund the sport’s and the feder-
ation’s future growth (see chapter on Havelange). The revenue generation
policy Blatter introduced (Sugden and Tomlinson 1998), with support
from Adidas chairman Horst Dassler, involved forming alliances between
FIFA and major multinational companies such as Coca-Cola. As a result,
subsequent World Cups have been sponsored by some of the world’s larg-
est brands, which pay considerable sums of money to display their logos
within venues and benefit from the exposure provided by global TV cov-
erage of the event. Blatter’s new vision of sport as a vehicle for advertis-
ing grew out of his earlier experience in public relations for private-sector
companies (Bourg and Goudet 2012). In addition, Blatter copyrighted
FIFA’s logo at the beginning of the 1980s, thereby allowing the federation
to develop a very successful series of merchandising products.
Blatter’s experience in marketing and the hotel industry also helped
him create a close-knit network with marketing companies, multina-
tionals, the media and sport organisations. Coca-Cola’s sponsorship in
1976 (approx. US$5 million) provided the finance he needed to fund
his world development programme and create a new, bi-annual junior
world championship, the first edition of which was held in Tunisia in
1977. This competition was later divided into two separate competi-
tions for U-17s and U-20s, which attracted the electronics firm JVC as
a new sponsor in 1987.
Blatter understood the importance of media coverage, especially
television coverage, in levering new sponsorship contracts. From a television
perspective, football is a “product” with numerous assets, as it guarantees
a spectacle within a set time frame and within a fixed field of play that is
easy to cover by cameras. In addition, football appeals to sponsors because
it offers “emotion” in the run up to the match, “passion” during the
90 minutes of play and “drama” during stoppage time. It can even become
“tragedy” in the case of penalty shoot-outs. Blatter’s idea was to offer tel-
evision channels and multinational companies true partnerships based on
the emotion elicited by football,6 rather than “classic” sponsorship deals in
which the sponsor pays to place a brand name on a jersey or a hoarding,
etc. This innovative approach enabled FIFA to attract several new spon-
sors,7 including Fujifilm (1986), Philips (1986) and McDonald’s (1994).8
Football’s continental confederations and the world’s largest clubs9 soon
began following FIFA’s lead, and thereby increased their popularity dramat-
ically, year after year, both within and beyond their borders. Consequently,
by the mid-1980s, the world of football was enjoying a dramatic rise in its
revenues, as income from sponsorship, merchandising and, later, broadcast-
ing rights replaced ticket sales as the main sources of income. This influx
of wealth not only changed the management principles applied by sport
organisations10 and clubs,11 it also revolutionised the staging of compe-
titions,12 as the easiest way to increase revenues from broadcasting rights,
sponsorship and merchandising was simply to increase the number of com-
petitions being played and the number of teams involved in these compe-
titions. This approach also appealed to the media, as it gave them a larger
supply of matches to cover.
6Sudgen J. (2002), “Network football”, in Sudgen J., Tomlinson A. (dir.), Power games. A critical
sociology of sport, London, New York: Routeledge, 61–80.

7Michael L. Silk, David L. Andrews, C. L. Cole (2005). Sport and Corporate Nationalism. New
York, USA: Berg.

8Herren A. (1994), 90ème anniversaire de la FIFA. 20 ans de présidence Joao Havelange: commemo-
rative book, op. cit., p. 87.

9Partnership between Manchester United and Vodaphone in 2000. See: Hamil S. (2008),
“Manchester United: the commercial development of a global football brand”, in Chadwick S.,
Arthur D., International cases in the business of sport, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2008, pp. 114–134.
10Bayle E., Chantelat P. (2013), La gouvernance des organisations sportives, Paris: Ed. L’Harmattan.
11Pierpoint B. (2000), “Heads above water: business strategies for a new football economy”,
Soccer & Society, vol. 1, n° 1, pp. 29–38.

12Holt M. (2007), “Global success in sport: the effective marketing and branding of the UEFA
Champions League”, International Journal of Sport Marketing & Sponsorship, pp. 51–61.
In 1993 Blatter began to address the issue of what he considered to

be the “bad” contract FIFA had signed with the European Broadcasting
Union (EBU), which was worth just CHF11 million (US$11.5 million)
to FIFA in 1982, increasing to around CHF50 million (US$52 million)
in 1998.13 In 2002 he finally concluded a new contract under which a
single source broadcaster paid CHF500 million (US$521 million) for
all the TV and broadcasting rights to the (men’s) World Cup. The new
deal was made possible by the liberalisation of the rules governing tel-
evision advertising (before, most countries banned television channels
from showing advertising hoardings in stadiums) and the growth of pri-
vate television channels. Blatter’s efforts were helped by Horst Dassler,
who had set up a specialist sport event marketing company called ISL.
Like Blatter, Dassler had quickly realised that television channels would
be prepared to spend large sums of money in order to cash in on the
rapidly increasing popularity of sport, especially when it came to the
largest events, such as the FIFA World Cup and Summer Olympic
Games. However, FIFA’s close relations with ISL would lead to one of
the first scandals of Blatter’s presidency when bankruptcy proceedings
against ISL revealed evidence of widespread corruption. ISL’s demise
also led FIFA to take responsibility for negotiating its own broadcasting
rights contracts (Table 12.2).
Revenues from TV rights and sponsorship, which amounted to
almost US$4 billion between 2011–2014, were key financial tools
for developing football. Moreover, FIFA’s excellent financial health
(see Table 12.3) enabled the federation to respond to the growth in its
operations by increasing its administrative staff from 73 in 1998 to over
400 at the end of 2013. However, by 2002 Blatter was becoming con-
cerned about FIFA’s image and the need to demonstrate transparency
and “good governance”. As a result, he promoted Urs Linsi, an expert in
banking governance and transparency, from his position as FIFA finance
director to the post of secretary general.
Although football originated in England, it has established roots
around the globe and has become one of the world’s most widely played
13Eisenberg C., Mason T., Lanfranchi P., Wahl A. (2004), La FIFA, 1904–2004. Le siècle du foot-
ball, op. cit., p. 248.
Table 12.2 Growth in revenues from TV rights and sponsorship from 1974 to 2014
Time 1974–1977 1978–1981 1990–1993 1994–1997 2011–2014
perioda
TV rights/ 2200
year in US$
millions
Marketing 1.3 6 27 26 1600
in US$
millions
Number of 9926 14,693 25,408 73,042
broadcast (1990) (1998) (2006)
hours
worldwide
during a
World Cup
year
aKey dates in Blatter’s career at FIFA: 1975, appointed FIFA development direc-
tor; 1981, became secretary general; 1990, named executive director (CEO);
1998, elected FIFA president
Table 12.3 FIFA’s financial results from 1974 to 2014 (Source FIFA Management
Report 2012)
1974–1977 1978–1981 1990–1993 1994–1997 2011–2014
FIFA’s turnover in 5.6 12.2 65.7 98.5 3800
US$ millions
Financial results in −742 13 1545 −2100 200,000
US$ thousands
sports. What is more, its appeal extends across the entire social spec-
trum. Despite the ways in which football has changed over the years,
a number of characteristics have remained relatively constant, includ-
ing the game’s ability to attract large crowds and to polarise feelings
between fans of rival clubs or national teams (Table 12.4).
Similarly, the 400 staff that make up FIFA’s administration come
from 40 different nationalities and a wide range of social backgrounds
(Table 12.5).
In 2003 Blatter hired Jérôme Valcke as Marketing Director. Valcke
had started his career at French TV channel Canal + before becoming
CEO of Sport + and Sportfive. He used his experience and relationships
within the business world to sign a number of lucrative partnership
Table 12.4 Growth in global football during the Blatter era

Key dates in the Blatter era 1975 1981 1990 1998 2013
Number of national football federations 142 150 166 198 209
Number of clubs (thousands) 103 149 305 301
Number of international competitions 2 3 4 9 16
Number of registered players (millions) 11.6 27.1 31 38.3
Number of professional players (thousands) 42 53 125 110
Table 12.5 Changes in FIFA’s administration during the Blatter era

Key dates in the Blatter era 1975 1981 1990 1998 2013
Number of members on the Executive 22 22 22 24 27
Committee
Number of women on the Executive 0 0 0 0 3
Committee
Number of staff at FIFA’s headquarters 13 20 35 73 400
Number of women (salaried) at FIFA’s 4 8 14 32 157
headquarters
contracts for FIFA before being “released” from his post over the
underhand negotiating methods he used to try and sign a deal with
Visa. Despite this scandal, Blatter appointed him secretary general in
2007—a clear sign that Blatter’s main objective was to maximise FIFA’s
financial and managerial performance.
Blatter’s approach to developing women’s football was to attract
sponsors with product ranges aimed specifically at women, such
Johnson and Johnson.14 He also campaigned for increased media cov-
erage of women’s football at the Olympic Games. Women’s football is
currently experiencing a period of unprecedented growth, partly due
to the sums FIFA is spending on developing this area of the game,
either directly (e.g., in addition to funding for competitions, in 2012
US$3,195,000 was allocated to developing women’s football), or via
the Financial Assistance Programme, which allocates 15% of its budget
(US$37,500 per association, per year) to women’s football.
14Johnson & Johnson is an American pharmaceuticals company that was created in 1886. It pro-
duces pharmaceutical and medical goods, care products and cosmetics, and provides related ser-
vices to consumers and health professionals.
Level 2: Governance
Analysing the second level of governance provides insight into an organ-

isation’s identity, values, ability to adapt and develop, and power con-
figuration (sovereignty, role, composition and renewal of the Board of
Directors, composition of commissions and ad hoc committees, status
and function of the president and/or general manager). In the case of
FIFA, strategy is decided by the Executive Committee (executive body),
guided by the recommendations of 22 standing committees, and imple-
mented by the General Secretariat (administrative body). Decisions on a
number of key issues, laid down in FIFA’s statutes, have to be referred to
the FIFA Congress (legislative body) for approval.
One of the Congress’s most important functions is to elect FIFA’s presi-
dent. Vice-presidents are elected by the continental confederations. Because
the president is also president of the Executive Committee, the person occu-
pying this position has both executive and operational powers, although
he15 must abide by the Congress’s decisions. The Executive Committee,
which meets four times a year, consists of 23 people nominated by the con-
tinental confederations plus FIFA’s president. As a first move towards gender
equality, three women were appointed to the Executive Committee in 2013,
although only one of these women has voting rights. The president must
inform the Executive Committee about all important matters and deci-
sions.16 This committee (or, in some cases, the Emergency Committee17)
takes decisions relating to international issues and the ratification of recom-
mendations made by the standing committees. The Executive Committee is
also responsible for appointing the secretary general.
The General Secretariat is divided into separate divisions responsible
for areas such as development, competitions, football administration,
finance, business, personnel services and communication. Directors
for these divisions, which employ a total of around 400 staff at FIFA’s
15FIFA may have a woman president one day, but that day still appears very remote.
16Sepp Blatter, FIFA President.
17The Emergency Committee deals with all business requiring settlement between two sessions
of the Executive Committee. It is composed of FIFA’s President and representatives from each
confederation, chosen among the members of the Executive Committee, who are appointed by
the Executive Committee for four years (http://fr.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/bodies/excoan-
demergency/committee=1882020.html).
Zurich headquarters, are appointed by the President and the secretary

general. The secretary general is also responsible for finance, relation-
ships with member associations, and the staging of FIFA competitions,
including the World Cup.
Despite this seeming separation of strategic and operational powers
between the Executive Committee and secretariat, there is a degree of
overlap between these two bodies. Hence, Blatter’s system of governance
is presided by a CEO, as in the corporate world.
FIFA currently has 209 member-associations, each of which has one
vote within the Congress. Because only 54 of these member associations
are in Europe (and therefore members of UEFA18), FIFA’s president
must maintain good relations with national federations outside Europe
in order to hold onto and exercise his power.19
Level 3: Regulation
The third level of governance covers the internal controls and trans-
parency mechanisms an organisation puts in place to prevent abuses
of power, as well as measures to ensure the imputability of managers.
In response to a series of scandals that emerged during the 2000s, FIFA
introduced a number of new commissions to oversee its operations,
beginning with the financial control mechanism introduced in 2002
after ISL went bankrupt.20
18UEFA’s power, especially its financial power, is considerable. It distributes €600,000
(US$713,000) to each of its member associations every year, considerably more than the
CHF250,000 (US$260,000) distributed by FIFA. Moreover, contracts with TIM (formerly ISL)
for TV rights to UEFA matches are worth more than CHF1.4 billion (US$1.5 billion).
19National football associations in southern hemisphere countries account for more than two-
thirds of the votes at FIFA Congresses.

20ISL was created in 1983 by Horst Dassler in an attempt to monopolise the lucrative and rapidly
expanding market in television rights for major sport events. After very profitable beginnings, ISL
became increasingly greedy and started making some very risky investments, paying excessively high
prices for a number of events, including US$1.2 billion to cover nine major tennis tournaments for
ten years. It also invested in Brazilian and Chinese football and CART racing in the United States.
Finally, ISL, in conjunction with Leo Kirch, paid almost US$750 million for rights to the 2002
and 2006 Football World Cups. However, the 2002 event, held in South Korea and Japan, proved
hard to sell to American and European networks due to match scheduling issues and the high cost.
The debts incurred by these poor investments led to ISL being declared bankrupt by a Swiss court
in 2001. Part of the group was bought by one of ISL’s main competitors, the Leo Kirch group.
Another scandal arose in 2011, when Qatar was chosen to host

the 2022 World Cup. Blatter’s response was to set up an Independent
Commission for Governance and four working groups to address the
issues raised. FIFA also announced it was drawing up a road map for gov-
ernance reform, including proposals for changes to FIFA’s Statutes. The
recommendations produced by these various commissions and task forces,
which were presented to the FIFA Congress in 2013, resulted in numer-
ous reforms to FIFA’s oversight mechanisms and the introduction of meas-
ures to make the federation’s decision-making processes more transparent:
• Restructuring of the Ethics Committee into a two-chamber system

with independent investigatory and adjudicatory chambers, each
with its own president and vice-president;
• Extension of the Audit Committee’s powers to create an Audit
and Compliance Committee with an independent president and
vice-president;
• Adoption of a new Code of Ethics and a new code of Good
Behaviour;
• Appointment of three women (one by election, two by co-optation)
to FIFA’s Executive Committee;
• Selection by the Executive Committee of no more than three bids to
host the FIFA World Cup finals before a final choice is made by the
Congress, which can only award one edition of the World Cup at
each session;
• Introduction of a vetting procedure for all candidates standing
for election or re-election to the positions of president and vice-
president, and for prospective members of the Executive Committee,
Audit and Compliance Committee or Ethics Committee, including
their presidents and vice-presidents;
• Introduction of a sponsor system for candidates for FIFA’s presidency
in which each candidate must be supported by at least five member-
associations and have played an active role in his/her football associa-
tion during the two to five years before presenting his/her candidacy.
• Improved representation for football’s main stakeholders;
• Redrafting of FIFA’s Statutes in order to more precisely define FIFA’s
commitment to ethics and the fight against discrimination;
• Removal of the right of the four British football associations to elect

a FIFA vice-president. This vice-president is now nominated by
UEFA;
• International Football Association Board (IFAB) to undertake its
own reform.
In order to ensure these reforms were implemented fully and correctly,

FIFA contracted the internationally respected auditors KPMG to carry
out external audits.
Level 4: Harmonisation
Level 4 in Perez’s governance model examines an organisation’s rela-

tionships with its immediate external stakeholders. In the case of FIFA,
these stakeholders are the sport movement, including the Olympic sys-
tem, FIFA’s commercial partners and sponsors, and the general public.
The most important aspect of these relationships is to ensure a large
degree of harmony between an organisation’s practices and the expecta-
tions or requirements of its stakeholders. For example, in line with the
IOC’s rules on recognising new national Olympic committees, FIFA
will only recognise new member-associations if they are the exclusive
body representing football for an entire country, defined as an inde-
pendent state recognised by the international community. In addition,
a national association can only become a member of FIFA if it is already
a member of the relevant continental confederation. In another example
of harmonisation between the interests of FIFA and the IOC, when the
IOC dropped its amateurism requirement for athletes taking part in the
Olympics, FIFA agreed to allow professional footballers to take part in
the Olympics. However, in order to protect the specificity of the FIFA
World Cup, the IOC imposed limits on the number of professional
players over the age of 23 that each team could field.
Although FIFA has its own Ethics Committee and Code of
Ethics, adapted to the world of football, it recognises the authority
of two of the most important bodies in modern sport, the Court
of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and the WADA, which Blatter
helped create in 1999.21 Nevertheless, any footballing disputes have to

be referred to FIFA’s own arbitrational bodies (Discipline Committee,
Ethics Committee, Players’ Status Committee, Dispute Resolution
Chamber and Board of Appeal) before being taken to the CAS22 and
Blatter came to an agreement with WADA president Dick Pound
and IOC president Jacques Rogge that FIFA should have the right
to decide individual sanctions in doping cases, rather than applying
automatic minimum penalties.23
Level 5: Metagovernance
The fifth level of governance concerns the wider framework in which

organisations carry out their actions. Since Blatter arrived at FIFA, the
federation’s objective has been to grow football worldwide while using
the game as a tool for social development. In this respect, FIFA’s con-
tinued financial success has enabled it to carry out a wide range of
programmes with societal as well as sporting goals, such as its Goal
programme to develop football infrastructure, the Financial Assistance
Programme for member-associations and continental confederations,
and the Performance Programme to help professionalize the manage-
ment of member-associations.24 A total budget of around US$800 mil-
lion was allocated to these programmes for the period 2011–2014. In
addition, FIFA has run numerous training courses for sports instruc-
tors and sports educators, especially in the southern hemisphere. Beach
soccer and futsal are two relatively recent products FIFA has used to
develop football by promoting different ways of playing and enjoy-
ing the game. Other elements of FIFA’s strategy to increase interest in
21FIFA has not ratified WADA’s founding treaty; rather it reached an agreement with WADA, in
2004 in Paris, that included FIFA’s right to decide what sanctions to impose on players. Source:
Marco Villiger.
22FIFA recognised the CAS in 2003 in Doha. Source: Marco Villiger.
23Following the arrival of the new WADA President, Jean-François Lamour, Sepp Blatter became
a member of WADA.
24FIFA (2004). FIFA’s global report on the development of football, Zurich: FIFA. No 1 and FIFA
(2006). Activity report 2006 presented at the 56 FIFA Congress in Munich in 2006. Zurich: FIFA.
playing and watching football include “research and technical assis-

tance” programmes, developing female football, sponsoring research
into football medicine, and a social responsibility programme, launched
in conjunction with the United Nations and NGOs.
FIFA’s buoyant income from television rights, which covers more
than 57% of the federation’s budget,25 means that the federation’s
finances are assured for the foreseeable future and that it does not have
to rely on funding from the Olympic revenues redistributed by the
IOC. For example, FIFA earned US$2.4 billion26 from the 2010 World
Cup, alone. Consequently, FIFA is able to provide financial support for
a wide range of football development projects as part of its growth and
solidarity programme. In fact, the steady increase in FIFA’s annual turn-
over during the Blatter era has enabled the federation to redistribute
ever-larger sums to the continental confederations, member-associations
and development projects (Table 12.6).
Innovative Management Principles and Methods
Although much of FIFA’s transformation over the four decades between

1975 and 2015 can be ascribed to Blatter’s work during his terms as
development director, director general and president, much of the credit
must also go to his predecessor as president, João Havelange (president
from 1974 to 1998). In fact, one of Havelange’s first actions after he
came to power at FIFA was to appoint Blatter to help him develop and
implement his vision for the federation. Hence, Havelange, an inter-
national lawyer by training, triggered the process and Blatter, with his
background in economics, public relations and club and federation
management, implemented it.
Together, these two men seized the opportunities presented by an
evolving sporting and social environment, and turned FIFA into one of
25IOC (2004). Report on the 117 IOC Congress, Athens, Lausanne: IOC.
26Source: FIFA financial report 2010: http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/adminis-
tration/01/39/20/45/web_fifa_fr2010_eng[1].pdf.
Table 12.6 Increases in FIFA’s turnover and in the sums redistributed to FIFA’s
members during the Blatter era (Source FIFA Management Report 2012)
1974–1977 1978–1981 1990–1993 1994–1997 2011–2014
FIFA’s turnover in 5.6 12.2 65.7 98.5 3800
US$ millions
Sums redistrib- 161 326a 3200 4500 13,200
uted to the con-
federations in
US$ thousands
Sums redistrib- 93 18,000 14,000 66,800
uted to mem-
ber-associations
Sums allocated 454
to World Cup
teams in US$
millions
Sums allocated 0.6 1.2 12.4 24 1860
to projects and
FIFA compe-
titions in US$
millions
Sums allocated to 1.4 2 21 18 800
football devel-
opment in US$
millions
aContinental confederations plus member-associations
the world’s most prosperous sport organisations. This success was not,
however, due uniquely to their ability to foresee the importance sport
would come to have in modern society; it was also the result of their
innovative approach to sport organisation development. For example,
they realised the value of having a very powerful institutional image and
a strong brand for its flagship competition, the World Cup. This ena-
bled them to market football as a uniquely simple but captivating sport
that can be played anywhere in the world. In addition, they developed
football’s appeal to sponsors by highlighting the emotions and passions
aroused by the game. Just as importantly, they understood that ticketing
to watch football could be expanded far beyond selling seats in a stadium
and that television rights could be negotiated at the same rate as stadium
ticket prices multiplied by the number of potential television viewers.
Expanding the audience for football, especially the television audience,

allowed them to develop the idea of a business–sport–media partner-
ship in which the product-spectacle became the source of financial profit
for all the partners involved: FIFA, sponsors and television companies.
Finally, the system they created also encompasses both new media, such
as the Internet, and football’s grass roots stakeholders, including players,
fans and local administrators.
Blatter’s strategy for growing FIFA and world football also involved
forming partnerships with organisations such as UNICEF, in which
football was used as a tool for development and education, especially
among underprivileged sections of society and in emerging countries.
These programmes were a double success for FIFA as not only did they
increase the number of people playing football and audiences for foot-
ball matches, they created a positive image for the federation around the
world.27
As FIFA grew, it could no longer be run effectively by the amateur
management system it had relied on until the 1970s. Blatter realised
this as soon as he arrived at FIFA, so he quickly began reorganising
the federation’s management along more professional lines. As a result,
FIFA is now run in a similar way to many commercial corporations. In
addition, Blatter proved to be very skilful in managing difficult situa-
tions, especially when it came to answering allegations of misconduct
within the press. Using his own approach to crisis management, based
on knowledge, expertise, trust (in himself and in others), luck, instinct
and spontaneity,28 he was usually able to ensure any scandal fizzled out
within a few days. His ability to emerge untainted from seemingly com-
promising situations was such that he continued to be showered with
awards for his work at FIFA throughout his career. However, neither
FIFA’s professional management and commercial success, nor Blatter’s
crisis management skills would be enough to save the system he had cre-
ated when the FIFAgate scandal broke.
27Source: Sepp Blatter, interviewed on 16 October 2013 at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters.

28Source: Sepp Blatter, interviewed on 16 October 2013 at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters.
FIFAgate and the Fall of the Blatter System

Masters of Crisis Management—How FIFA and Blatter
Overcame Scandal
FIFA officials have been accused of corruption on innumerable occa-

sions, often by investigative journalists, NGOs or whistleblowers from
inside or close to FIFA. Such allegations became far more frequent
during the final years of João Havelange’s long presidency (1974 to
1998), and Sepp Blatter’s reign was dogged by repeated accusations of
wrongdoing by football’s most senior executives. Nevertheless, until
the FIFAgate scandal broke in 2015, Blatter always managed to isolate
FIFA’s accusers and quickly smother any scandal.
In recent years, FIFA has attracted the attentions of a small num-
ber of very tenacious journalists, most notably the best-selling English
author David Yallop and the Scottish journalist Andrew Jennings,
who had earlier exposed numerous instances of corruption within the
IOC. Yallop set the ball rolling in 2002 with his book How They Stole
the Game,i in which he suggested that Blatter was elected president of
FIFA (by 111 votes to 80) partly thanks to votes bought from African
representatives. These allegations were never proven and Blatter won a
legal battle to prevent the book being published in Switzerland. In 2006
Jennings, working for the BBC’s Panorama programme, investigated
allegations of bribery in relation to the attribution of the World Cup.
This was the first of a series of documentaries and books about corrup-
tion within FIFAii in which Jennings willingly took on the role of pub-
lic accuser. In 2010 journalists from The Sunday Times, a newspaper that
had been in the front line of accusations of doping in cycling, published
compromising recordings obtained by presenting themselves to FIFA
officials as lobbyists for the USA’s bid to host the World Cup. That
same year, South African journalists associated with Jennings published
a bookiii lambasting FIFA for its predatory way of operating, accusing
the federation of accumulating revenues and tax breaks while leaving all
expenditure to the host country. Another scandal arose in 2013 over the
attribution of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, with both France Football,
in January 2013, and The Sunday Times, in June 2014, publishing
allegations of corruption. The Sunday Times, for example, claimed that

FIFA’s Qatari vice-president, Mohamed Bin Hammam, had ensured
the success of Qatar’s World Cup bid by spending US$5 million to
buy votes, mostly from the presidents of 30 African federations. One
of FIFA’s most influential representatives, Jack Warner, was also impli-
cated. Warner, a Trinidadian businessman, FIFA vice-president and
president of the Confederation of North, Central American and
Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), was accused of accept-
ing US$1.6 million from Bin Hammam. In April 2015 two Sunday
Times journalists published The Ugly Game,iv a blistering account of
how Qatar allegedly bought the votes of FIFA’s Executive Committee.
FIFA has also been criticised by its own executives and mangers, espe-
cially in the run up to or following presidential elections and Executive
Committee votes to choose World Cup host countries. However, these
internal squabbles have had no real impact on FIFA, even when they are
picked up by the media. For example, in 2000 Germany was narrowly
awarded the 2006 World Cup (by 12 votes to 11) ahead of South Africa,
possibly thanks to the abstention of the Oceania Football Confederation’s
president, Charles Dempsey. One of the reasons Dempsey gave for his
subsequent resignation from the Executive Committee was the pressure
he had been put under not to vote for South Africa. In 2002 it was the
turn of FIFA secretary general, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, to resign after not-
ing in his report “abuses of power” and Blatter’s “dictatorial” manage-
ment. In May 2011 Mohamed Bin Hammam, Blatter’s challenger for the
FIFA presidency, was accused by CONCACAF’s secretary general, Chuck
Blazer, of attempting to buy votes by distributing envelopes containing
US$40,000 to the heads of Caribbean football associations, allegedly with
the complicity of Jack Warner. Following, an internal enquiry FIFA sus-
pended Warner, who then accused Blatter of making a donation of US$1
million to his confederation. The accusation was quickly swept aside and
Bin Hammam withdrew from the presidential election, making Blatter
the only candidate.
In addition to these power battles between senior officials, other
accusations have come from whistleblowers who have taken part in or
witnessed illicit transactions. For example, in December 2014 a for-
mer employee of the Qatar bid confided to France Football that she had
witnessed bribes being paid by the Qatar delegation. These allegations

were repeated in a documentary shown by German public television
channel ARD on 4 May 2015, which named three African members
of FIFA’s Executive Committee who had been offered US$1.5 million
“encouragements ” by the Qatar delegation. Nevertheless, FIFA took no
action against either Qatar or the bribes’ alleged recipients.
More seriously for FIFA, NGOs such as FATF (2009) and
Transparency International (2011) have criticised the federation for
some of its practices and its lack of transparency. Because these criti-
cisms are made by independent and supposedly impartial bodies, FIFA
has to be seen to respond.
However, despite this litany of accusations, until 2015 FIFA always
managed to contain potential scandals before they endangered the fed-
eration’s stability or its president’s position. Where possible, FIFA would
silence critics by threatening legal action against them or, in the case of
FIFA staff, by pushing them to resign (Michel Zen-Ruffinen in 2002,
marketing director Guido Tognoni in 2003). Critics from FIFA’s mem-
ber-associations could also be discredited by expelling them from FIFA
or by taking disciplinary action against them. In these latter instances,
the severity of any sanction would often depend on the political impor-
tance and power of the association in question. In other cases, FIFA
was forced to show that it was treating the accusations seriously and
taking measures to eradicate the problem. This usually involved expel-
ling or disciplining the people in question, adopting a code of ethics
or reforming the federation’s rules. However, FIFA’s crisis-management
methods ensured that investigations into allegations always remained
confidential, with only the resulting decisions being divulged. This was
also the case for external audits, such as those carried out by KPMG,
which failed to reveal any major irregularities in FIFA’s accounts for
2007–2010.
Reforms introduced by FIFA in response to its critics’ allegations
include creating an Ethics Committee and Code of Ethics (2004,
revised in 2006, 2009 and 2012) and setting up an independent gov-
ernance committee (2011), which was to steer the “FIFA boat back
into clear, transparent waters”, as Blatter had promised to do dur-
ing his presidential election campaign. FIFA adopted many of the
recommendations made by the committee’s chairman,v Mark Pieth, a

Swiss university professor and expert in governance, including dividing
the Ethics Committee into investigatory and adjudicatory chambers,
strengthening the Audit and Compliance Committee, introducing a
code of conduct, appointing three women to the Executive Committee
(one voting member and two observers) and attributing one World Cup
at a time. These reforms helped improve FIFA’s image but they did not
address the issues of age limits and terms of office for the federation’s
president, conflicts of interest among FIFA’s members and executives,
or the federation’s clannish and nepotistic culture (one of Blatter’s neph-
ews heads Infront, the company responsible for managing FIFA’s TV
rights). In fact, there is no incentive for the 34 people who run FIFA
(24 members of the Executive Committee and 10 directors) to change
a system that provides them with very lucrative “indemnities” (a total
of US$36.3 million in in 2014vi). Nor was there any pressure for
change from FIFA’s confederations and member-associations, given that
the federation’s revenues are continuing to grow rapidly (FIFA earned
US$5.7 billion between 2011 and 2014, mostly from World Cup tele-
vision rights, which have increased 20-fold since 1998, and sponsorship
contracts). This income allowed FIFA to redistribute over US$1 billion
to its member-associations, ostensibly to finance development projects,
although some of these funds appear to end up in the pockets of indi-
viduals who, in return, provide “packets of votes” for the president.
FIFA also benefitted from the benevolence of outside authorities,
including political, judicial and sporting institutions, as is shown by the
way the bankruptcy of ISL was handled by the Swiss courts. Although
an investigation by Swiss magistrates into ISL’s operations following
the company’s bankruptcy showed that ISL had paid out CHF160
million in bribes between 1989 and 2001, the case file was not made
public until 2012.vii Furthermore, according to independent sport’s
ethics watchdog PlaytheGame, Joao Havelange and his son-in-law,
Ricardo Teixeira, who was both president of the Brazilian Football
Confederation (CBF) and a member of FIFA’s Executive Committee,
had received CHF41 million (US$432 million), but Swiss magistrates
refused to prosecute. Following the publication of these allegations,
Teixeira left FIFA for “medical reasons” and a year later, in July 2013,
Havelange stepped down as honorary president of FIFA. Nevertheless,

FIFA’s new Ethics Committee cleared Blatter of any wrongdoing:
“President Blatter’s conduct could not be classified in any way as misconduct
with regard to any ethics rules… …(even if it) may have been clumsy ”.
This collusion between FIFA and the Swiss authorities is the result
of a combination of legal and financial considerations that have helped
create a vast network of inter-institutional relations. Legally, Swiss pros-
ecutors are not obliged to prosecute cases of corruption in the private
sector unless one of the parties files a complaint. Moreover, private cor-
ruption only became illegal in Switzerland in 2004, when pressure from
the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force and the GRECO forced the
Swiss government to declare private corruption a misdemeanour (it is
still not a felony) under the Unfair Competition Act. Until then, bribes
paid abroad by Swiss companies had been tax deductible! Even then,
the Swiss government assured international sport organisations that
they would not be subject to the Unfair Competition Act, as they are
not subject to competition. Because of this immunity, and many other
powerful incentives (banking secrecy, tolerance of tax evasion, little reg-
ulation, low corporation tax—4.25%) and advantages (political stabil-
ity, protection of privacy), 67 international sport organisations have set
up their headquarters in Switzerland. These organisations contribute
more than CHF1 billion (US$1.05 billion) to the Swiss economy every
year. Although the legal pressure on sport federations in Switzerland has
increased slightly, most members of parliament are happy to maintain
the status quo.
FIFAgate: How FIFA Finally Succumbed to Scandal
After surviving so many major crises over several decades, FIFA and
its president had begun to appear immune to scandal. So, why did
things change in 2015? The answer to this question lies in the nature
and source of the allegations being made against FIFA. Unlike previ-
ous scandals, which had been triggered by isolated accusations from sin-
gle sources, in 2015 FIFA suddenly faced a barrage of accusations from
numerous independent and often powerful sources.
The scandal broke on 27 May 2015, the eve of FIFA’s 65th Congress,
when the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) published a
161-page indictment accusing 14 defendants (9 FIFA officials, including
2 vice presidents, and 5 sports company executives) with 47 counts of
racketeering, fraud, money laundering, bribes and kickbacks amounting
to US$150 million. These charges were the result of a long investigation,
launched under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
Act, into bribes relating to FIFA’s presidential election in 2011, broad-
casting rights, marketing contracts for competitions such as the Copa
America, and sponsorship agreements. According to the indictment, cor-
ruption within FIFA had been “endemic” for “a period of approximately
25 years”. Ten other defendants, including Chuck Blazer and two of Jack
Warner’s sons, had already pleaded guilty between July 2013 and May
2015. Faced with incontrovertible evidence that he had been involved in
racketeering, money laundering, fraud and tax evasion (he had accumu-
lated US$11 million in undeclared earnings over a period of 19 years),
Blazer had agreed to cooperate with the DoJ’s investigation.
In conjunction with the publication (on the Internet) of this indict-
ment, Swiss police, acting on an American warrant, arrested seven offi-
cials in a luxury hotel in Zurich (New York Times journalists, tipped off
by Brooklyn’s district attorney, were at the scene). FIFA’s head office
was searched under a warrant issued by Switzerland’s attorney general,
who was investigating the attribution of the 2018 and 2022 World
Cups, while the US authorities searched CONCACAF’s headquarters in
Miami. At the same time, the head of the DoJ, Loretta Lynch (who had
supervised the investigation as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn), held
a news conference in New York alongside the heads of the FBI, James
Comey, and of the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division, Richard
Weber, who spoke of a “World Cup of fraud” spanning “at least two
generations of soccer officials”. Lynch stated: “the indictment alleges
corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and
here in the United States” (Financial Times, 28 May). The cooperation
between the Swiss and American authorities surprised many commen-
tators (“Switzerland is playing an unexpected double role”, 24 Heures,
28 May), as there was no legal basis for it. In fact, this action was part of
the wider cooperation between the USA and Switzerland that had arisen
out of a series of banking scandals involving two Swiss banks, Swiss

UBS and Crédit Swiss, which had been prosecuted under America’s
Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.
The DoJ’s operation, which was unprecedented in terms of the
resources employed and its multi-level coordination, led to an imme-
diate response from FIFA. Between 27 May and 2 June, FIFA’s Ethics
Committee imposed temporary suspensions on 14 FIFA officials,
although FIFA’s director of communications, Walter de Gregorio,
repeatedly stated that Blatter was not implicated. In fact, many observ-
ers, including some of Blatter’s greatest critics, believed he would be
re-elected president despite the scandal. Effectively, at the end of a
Congress marked by unprecedented media coverage and demonstrators
brandishing signs reading “Game over for Blatter”, the president was
re-elected (by 133 votes against 73 votes for Prince Ali, who conceded
after the first round), giving the impression that the “unbudgeable”
president would extricate himself once again. Switzerland’s newspapers
agreed: “Despite the scandals, Sepp Blatter wins again” (Le Temps, 30
May), “The secrets of the unsinkable captain” (24 Heures, 30 May). More
presciently, the English Football Association’s chairman said he would be
“very surprised” if Blatter were to last more than two years.
In fact, too many important stakeholders were abandoning the
“unsinkable captain’s” ship for Blatter to survive for long. Most Swiss
newspapers had already turned against him by 28 May: “Mr Blatter, go”
was the title of the editorial in 24 Heures; “Blatter has lost his credi-
bility” was the headline in Le Matin, while Le Temps announced “The
end of impunity” and L’Hebdo wrote of “Sepp Blatter’s seven deadly
sins”. In the UK, members of parliament called for a boycott of the
2022 World Cup and, as a gesture of protest, England’s FIFA repre-
sentative David Gill refused to serve on the Executive Committee. At
the same time, FIFA’s corporate sponsors (more than a third of its rev-
enues) began to worry about the scandal’s impact on their reputations
and were threatening to enact clauses allowing them to renegotiate
their contracts. Long-term critics of the FIFA system were even harsher,
with Guido Tognoni writing: “for the last 40 years, since Havelange was
enthroned, FIFA has had a culture of corruption. Blatter didn’t start it,
but he has always tolerated corruption. It was a way of staying in power”
(L’Hebdo, 28 May 2015). Tognoni estimated Blatter’s annual “salary” to

be over US$15 million. Newspapers outside Switzerland were just as
condemnatory with The New York Times noting “the widespread impres-
sion of FIFA as a corrupt rogue state ” (3 June) and several European
newspapers, including The Guardian and Sunday Times in England,
Mediapart in France, Il Fatto Quotidiano in Italy and Der Spiegel in
Germany, launching new investigations into FIFA’s operations. FIFA
was even likened to a mafia organisation.
Nevertheless, some important figures continued to support Blatter,
including Switzerland’s Minister of Defence and Sports, Ueli Maurer,
who chose to sit beside Blatter at the opening of the FIFA Congress,
and Peter Gilliéron, the president of the Swiss Football Association and
a member of UEFA’s Executive Committee, who carefully watched his
words. Many of FIFA’s staff continued to believe in Blatter, too, and on
3 June he was applauded when he arrived at FIFA headquarters. The
same day, Switzerland’s Council of States (the upper chamber of par-
liament) refused, by 23 votes to 22, to follow the Federal Council’s
recommendation to automatically prosecute all cases of private corrup-
tion. And some football executives felt it was still acceptable to pub-
licly acknowledge instances of give and take. For example, the French
Football Federation’s president, who had supported Blatter’s election
because France had just been awarded the 2019 Women’s World Cup,
claimed: “our relations with FIFA are extremely good (…) I like to
return a favour when someone has given us something” (Reuters, 28
May 2015).
Events took another dramatic turn four days after Blatter’s re-election
as FIFA president, when he announced: “I have decided to lay down my
mandate at an extraordinary elective congress”. This decision was taken
after an article in The New York Times accused Jérôme Valcke, FIFA’s
secretary general and Blatter’s right-hand man, of making a payment of
US$10 million to CONCACAF in 2008 as a “commission” in exchange
for votes to award the 2010 World Cup to South Africa. Blatter’s fall
was now complete. As many political leaders around the world, espe-
cially in Europe, also began denouncing Blatter, Switzerland’s politicians
began to worry about the effect on the country’s image (“Switzerland
fears for its image”, Le Matin, 4 June). In contrast, Russia’s president,
Vladimir Putin gave Blatter his official support against “yet another fla-
grant attempt [by the United States] to extend its jurisdiction to other
states” (The New York Times, 29 May). As usual, these varying govern-
ment positions reflected each country’s geopolitical interests, as sport
had become an important vector of soft power.viii
FIFA’s increasing vulnerability encouraged other, previously reluctant
critics to speak out and the crisis rapidly achieved a dimension never
before seen at FIFA or in the world of sport: “It is a shock, the sur-
prise we no longer expected to happen, we had got so used to seeing
Sepp Blatter weather every storm”; “The extent of the abuses exposed
in recent days is such that other continents, other federations could be
affected” (Le Temps, 3 June). The term FIFAgate, first used as a Twitter
hashtag on 27 May and quickly picked up by the media, neatly encap-
sulates this transformative event. The extent of the turnaround in FIFA’s
fortunes gave confidence to other bodies and regulators who had once
hesitated to investigate corruption in sport. For example, after years of
prevarication, Brazilian senators set up a parliamentary commission of
enquiry into the CBF, and a prosecutor, who had considered Teixeira
“too big a fish for me”, decided to prosecute him for money laundering
and fraud. According to Brazilian police, his bank accounts had been
swollen by “unusual” payments totalling US$160 million between 2009
and 2012, when Teixeira was president of the 2014 World Cup organis-
ing committee.
Blatter’s decision to stand down while the scandal was still on-going
led to great uncertainty as to who would succeed him as FIFA presi-
dent. UEFA’s president, Michel Platini, was the initial favourite, partly
due to the fact that he was one of the first senior football executives
to abandon Blatter. Blatter’s revenge was to draw a parallel between
Platini’s decision to support Qatar’s bid for the World Cup and his sup-
posedly close links to Qatar’s royal family (French president Nicolas
Sarkozy had invited Platini to a dinner that was also attended by Qatar’s
crown prince Al-Thani and a representative of the Qatari owners of
PSG football club). However, the most damaging revelations came from
an investigation by Switzerland’s attorney general into Blatter’s deal-
ings with the Caribbean Football Union, which uncovered evidence
of a supposedly “disloyal payment” of €1.83 million (US$2.2 million)
from Blatter to Platini. France’s media immediately withdrew their sup-

port for Platini, who was becoming increasingly isolated in the foot-
ball world. Switzerland’s criminal investigation into Blatter’s affairs also
led FIFA’s largest American sponsors (Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Visa,
Budweiser) to demand Blatter’s immediate resignation on 2 October
2015. Six days later, on 8 October, Platini, Blatter and Valcke were
given 90-day suspensions by FIFA’s Ethics Committee, which also
announced a six-year suspension and CHF100,000 (US$105,000) fine
against another potential presidential candidate, former FIFA vice presi-
dent Chung Mong-oon. Although Platini registered for FIFA’s presiden-
tial election, his chances were further weakened when UEFA’s Executive
Committee “disavowed” him in favour of its secretary general, Gianni
Infantino. In the end, Blatter’s and Platini’s carers in football were
brought to an end on the same day, 21 December 2015, when FIFA’s
Ethics Committee imposed eight-year suspensions and heavy fines on
both men for “conflict of interests” and “disloyal management”.
As a result, the way was clear for Infantino to be elected FIFA’s new
president at the extraordinary congress held on 26 February 2016. This
congress also approved several reforms to FIFA’s governance, includ-
ing separating political and managerial powers, reducing the number
of committees from 26 to 9, limiting the president’s term of office to
12 years, requiring individuals to disclose their remuneration, increas-
ing the role of women within FIFA and imposing a requirement to
respect human rights. Some reforms, such as the requirement to pro-
vide independent annual audits and create independent adjudicatory
bodies to ensure the separation of powers, also apply to FIFA’s member-
associations and confederations. Most of these measures were proposed
by a reform committee that had been set up in August 2015 along simi-
lar lines to the committee set up by the IOC 15 years earlier, and it was
widely felt that the solutions introduced by the IOC could provide a
model for overcoming the FIFAgate crisis.
Despite these reforms, the crisis at FIFA continued. In May 2016,
FIFA’s Congress approved Infantino’s proposal to give the Executive
Committee the power to sack the heads of the Ethics and Audit and
Compliance Committees. This decision immediately led to the resigna-
tion of the Audit and Compliance Committee’s chairman, Domenico
Scala, who had earlier stated that Russia and Qatar would possibly
no longer be eligible to host the FIFA World Cup in 2018 and 2022
if proof of bribery was found. Furthermore, FIFA’s new executives,
appointed to replace the 11 members who are facing prosecution, have
been unable to contain a never-ending series of scandals, including
suspicious payments to Blatter and two other top officials amounting
to US$80 million, controversy over the new president’s salary and the
appointment of the new secretary general, and accusations by Blatter
that the draws for major competitions were rigged.
Conclusion
Sepp Blatter’s four decades as a senior executive and then president
of FIFA left an enduring legacy for football, as the way in which he
implemented and expanded the vision he shared with his predeces-
sor, Joao Havelange, revolutionised FIFA’s management and finances.
Nevertheless, his inability or unwillingness to introduce the reforms
needed to stamp out the culture of corruption that permeated FIFA’s
dealings, especially those involving its continental confederations.
Despite his successes, the corrupt practices and clannish power sys-
tem that permeated the highest levels of FIFA’s management eventually
led to the collapse of the system he had instigated. In fact, the impact of
FIFAgate was so great it shook the whole world of international sport.
The reforms introduced by FIFA in the wake of FIFAgate incorpo-
rate the main principles of good governance, but FIFA needs to main-
tain this improvement into the future. Similarly, FIFAgate motivated
the Olympic sport federations, via their umbrella organisation, the
Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), to
take joint action to improve their governance. As a result, all Olympic
federations must now follow five principles–transparency, integrity,
democracy, sport development and solidarity, and control mecha-
nisms–and measure their success in doing so. Time will tell whether this
process will result in real change and have a positive impact on the gov-
ernance of international, continental and national sport federations.
When Blatter first arrived at FIFA, the federation had an almost

entirely amateur management system. Today, FIFA is run as a profes-
sional corporation with all the financial mechanisms this implies. A
similar approach to management was subsequently adopted by the
continental confederations, which are now run on the same lines as
FIFA or, more accurately, as UEFA, which is financially and structur-
ally almost FIFA’s equal. Even though the other confederations still have
huge potential for growth, they have not yet achieved the same degree
of autonomy from FIFA as UEFA has.
Blatter’s financial legacy is even more spectacular than his managerial
legacy. During the four-year period covering his debut at FIFA (1974–
1977), the federation earned a total of US$5.6 million. By 2011–2014,
this sum had increased to over US$3.8 billion, mostly due to revenues
from television rights. This massive increase allowed FIFA to plan for
the future by putting some of its earnings into a reserve fund that con-
tained almost US$1.5 billion by the end of 2012. As FIFA continues to
develop new areas of football, such as women’s football, new markets,
especially China and Russia, and new merchandising products, it is
difficult to see these revenues falling. In addition, the federation is cur-
rently examining the potential of new media, especially mobile media,
for maintaining and expanding football’s audience.
Notes
i. Yallop, How They Stole the Game.
ii. Jennings, Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket
Scandals; Jennings, Omertà: Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Organised Crime Family.
iii. Schulz Herzenberg, Player and Referee: Conflicting Interests and the
2010 FIFA World Cup.
iv. Blake and Calvert, The Ugly Game. The Qatari Plot to Buy the World
Cup.
v. Pieth, Reforming FIFA.
vi. Jennings, The Dirty Game: Uncovering the Scandal at FIFA.
vii. Op.cit.
viii. Gygax, Olympisme et Guerre froide culturelle, le prix de la victoire
américaine.
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13
Lamine Diack: The Pride of a Continent
Claude Boli
Lamine Diack is the first black African to be the president of an

important international sport institution. The kid from Rebeuss
(Dakar, Senegal) is a product of the French system education in the
colonies. He was a particularly gifted athlete in the late fifties as a foot-
baller, then a high jumper with French and Senegalese team (after the
independence of this country in August 1960). Later on, he achieved
a remarkable political career (Minister of sport, Mayor of Dakar) and
also an incredible rise within sport international institutions (President
of African Athletic Confederation, member of the International
Olympic Committee). Proudness of a continent which never gets before
a prominent figure in the head of a respectable sport institution, the
nomination of Lamine Diack in the governing body of world athletics
appears to be an historical moment. High responsibility in the world
sporting field remains a place where black Africans are very rare. With
Diack, Africa obtains at last its first president. Member of the IAAF
C. Boli (*)
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
e-mail: claude.boli@museedusport.fr
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_13
338 C. Boli
(International Association of Athletics Federations) council since 1973,

he becomes in August 1, 2001, the fifth president of an institution
which celebrates its 89 years. 2015 rang the end of Diack’s reign.
This article deals with the road of a prominent actor of contemporary
sport and his influence within one of powerful sporting governing body.
How French education plays a big part of Lamine Diack remarkable
profile? In which ways politic boots his success story? Has the Diack
years profoundly changed IAFF organization and image? What can we
learn about the vertiginous fall of Lamine Diack?
Examination of various newspapers and magazines since the 1950s to
now, from Europe (mainly French and English) and African (Senegalese
newspapers, Jeune-Afrique…) enables to follow the route of Lamine
Diack with a global perspective and an historical approach.
Student and Athlete from French Empire

Since the seventeenth century, France has had a singular relationship
with Senegal. In the 1880–1890s, military conquests, the choice of
Dakar as the capital of French West Africa (AOF), and the status of
four cities (Saint-Louis, Dakar, Gorée, Rufisque) strengthen the links
between the two countries. Education is the most remarkable mirror
of the cultural influence of the French empire. The Van Vollenhoven1
High School is one of the most renowned schools in Africa. That is
where everything begins for Lamine Diack, born in 1933.
Indeed, Lamine Diack is one of the products of the French
education. Having lost his father at the age of 10 and growing up
in modest condition, he has immerged himself in studies to nourish
great ambitions. He spent his childhood in Rebeuss (district of Dakar
Plateau), a popular and extremely cosmopolitan district. In second-
ary school, he is among the best students. He excels in all subjects
1Born in 1877, son of a Dutch settler from Algeria, naturalized French in 1899, he was governor-
general of the AOF in June 1917. He was killed in action in 1918. Jean Martin: Lexique de la
colonisation française, Dalloz, Paris, 1988, p. 382; Jean Capelle: L’éducation en Afrique noire à la
veille des indépendances, Karthala, Paris, 1990, p. 22.
(French, history, mathematics) and in sports practices, especially

football. He impresses his teachers with his intelligence and his desire
to learn. His brilliant marks allow him to integrate the prestigious
high school Van Vollenhoven. The presence in this school with the
facade style «Art Deco» draws a future in the Senegalese establish-
ment. Following the model of the very select “lycées parisiens”, the
place brings together the best students of Senegal. “Van Vo” as the for-
mer residents call it is more than a high school, it is an institution of
excellence and also a legacy of colonial France. From the 1920s to the
1950s, it’s the place where Senegal’s future leaders (political, economic
and intellectual2) had been trained since independence in 1960. Diack
succeeded with high school education and easily obtained his “bac-
calauréat”. Then, he opted for law and economics at the University
of Dakar (long attached to the universities of Paris and Bordeaux).
Like many francophone students,3 the attraction of France and Paris
in particular drives him to leave Senegal in 1956. In the 1950s, he
continued his studies at the National School of Taxes (Paris) where he
obtained the diploma.
In the 1950s, athletes from sub-Saharan Africa made their mark on
football fields4 and athletic tracks. France Football magazine regularly
presents talented players from the Ivory Coast (Jean Tokpa), Cameroon
(Eugène N’Jo Léa) and Mali (Barrou)5 in the championship. Some like
2The philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne (born in 1955), “normalien” and currently French
Professor at Columbia University (USA) is one of the former pupils of Van Vollenhoven high
school.
3From the 1950s onwards, thanks to cooperation agreements between France and its former
colonies, the best Senegalese, Ivorian, Malian and Beninese students continued their univer-
sity studies in the cities of Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and Montpellier. Michel Sot (dir.): Etudiants
africains en France (1951–2001). Cinquante ans de relations France-Afrique. Quel avenir? Paris,
Karthalat, 2002, p. 29–48.
4The first footballer from African origin who joined the French team is Raoul Diagne. In
February 1931, at a friendly game between France and Czechoslovakia, he became the first Black
to wear the blue jersey struck by the rooster. This son of Senegalese notable was born in 1910 in
Saint-Laurent du Maroni (Guyana) where his father Blaise Diagne (who became the first black
African in the French National Assembly) was a colonial administrator.
5Claude Boli—Yvan Gastaut et Fabrice Grognet: Allez la France! Football et immigration, Paris,
Gallimard, 2010.
340 C. Boli
Tokpa get a selection in French team before finally joining the colors of
their country of origin newly independent.6 In athletics, people from
Senegal are very prominent7 and among them, Lamine Diack stands
out. In parallel to his studies, Diack is passionate about various sports,
including football that he has practiced assiduously in Senegal. He dis-
covers volleyball and athletics at the Foyer France-Senegal, a sports asso-
ciation founded in the 1930s by African Francophiles in Dakar. Finally,
he headed for the long jump where he achieved impressive results that
attracted media attention. As he approached the 1960 Olympic Games
in Rome, he was spotted as one of the athletes who could join the
French selection, as did another sportsman of Senegalese origin, sprinter
Abdou Seye. The press pays a special attention to the “jewels” of the
French Empire.
Some of these athletes are sons of the esteemed “Senegalese
sharpshooters” who participated to the Great War and the Second
World War with the French Army. However, media coverage is often
tinged with a paternalistic tone and a perception strongly marked by the
relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Since the exploits
of Papa Gallo Thiam8 in the high jump, athletes of Senegalese origin are
much appreciated and contribute to reinforce the image of a powerful
French empire. Lamine Diack is seen as a new Papa Gallo. In some way,
he becomes one of model athlet in the new inspired athletism spirit
(promotion of athletism at university) designed by sport minister and
national hero Maurice Herzog.
Although more interested by a career as footballer, Diack turned to
athletics where he achieved excellent results. He is distinguished in all
6The best known case is story of ten Algerian players from the French championship. In April
1958, at the time of the Algerian War and two months before the World Cup, they decided to
leave their club illegally to create the national Algerian football team.
7Habib Thiam, Malik M’Baye, Pierre William and Lo Ousmane also contributed to the good
reputation of athletes from Senegal in France. News. International Amateur Athletic Federation,
Issue 47, February 2001, p. 13.
8Papa Gallo Thiam remains one the great figures of French sport history in the late 1940s. In
1949, he became the first French athlete to cross the mythical bar of 2 meters in high jump.
A year later, he became the first African to win the honorable title of Champion of the French
champions awarded by the powerful and popular daily newspaper L’Équipe.
competitions (university, national and international level). His undeni-

able charisma and frankness please journalists. With little experience
of the high level, he astonishes with his good results and incessant pro-
gress. He quickly ranks as one of the most promising French athletes of
the late 1950s. Some observers promise him a prodigious journey in the
circle of the best of the world. At the French championships at Charléty
stadium in Paris in 1958, Raymond Marcillac, the athletics expert of
the newspaper Le Monde, reported the performance of the “Dakar black
Diack Lamine who crossed 7 m 63 in Long jump, giving the impression
of being able to reach 8 meters”.9 He is crowned champion of France.
A year later, he confirms. In April 1959, at the AOF championships, in
Bangui (Centrafrique), he crossed 7 m 35. A month later, at the French
university championships, Lamine Diack won the jumping competition
with a fantastic leap at 7 m 72. He beat the French record from 1935
(7 m 70). Unfortunately the record is not homologated, the wind blow-
ing at more than 7 meters-second.10
However, he won a title and confirmed his position as French num-
ber 1 and his place among the best Europeans. At the same time, he
became the second Senegalese athlete since Malik M’Baye (winner in
1953) to win the national title in the long jump. The whole press sees
him as a favorite in places of honor at the next Olympic game. He is
accused of a dilettante approach. A journalist from L’Équipe, believes
that his passion for football may have hampered an exceptional talent
that would certainly have allowed him to reach or surpass the bar of
8 meters.11 At the time, the press often emphasized on the image of an
athlete endowed with innate dispositions but lacking of rigor and not
exploit all his natural qualities. The argument often targets athletes from
the colonies. Despite a certain notoriety all the athletes from the Empire
do not escape from colonialist representations and perceptions.
On the eve of the selection of the athletes who will represent France
at the Olympic Games in Rome, Lamine Diack injures his knee.
9Le Monde, 29 June 1958.

10Le Monde, 20 May 1959.
11Les Cahiers de l’Equipe, July 1960 (Spécial JO).
342 C. Boli
The dream to compete to the best event of athletism fades away. In

1961, he prematurely ended his sporting career and returned to Senegal
where he was destined to a prestigious political career.
From Track Field to Politics and Reverse

As a result of the independence of new nations, many African stu-
dents settled in France are returning to their home countries. From
1960, the return to the country is encouraged to participate to the
founding of the new independent state. The Senegalese, Ivorian,
Malian and Nigerian governments are recruiting graduate students
from the best French institutions to hold positions of responsibility
in the administration. Lamine Diack is among the builders of a new
Senegal, freshly independent since August 1960. He makes his entry
into politics via sport.
He is appointed General Secretary of the Senegalese Athletics
Federation. In 1964, he leads his former club, the powerful and pres-
tigious Foyer-France Senegal renamed ASC Diaraf, as the football
manager. He then held the very important position of national techni-
cal director (in charge of coordinating all the national football teams)
in preparation for the final phase of the African Cup of Nations where
Senegal made its first appearance in 1969. Then, he took a decisive step
in the government. At the request of Léopold Sédar Senghor (President
of Senegal), he was appointed Commissioner-General for Sport. His
main mission was to calm down student protest after the social unrest
in May 1968 that shook Senegal. At the beginning of the 1970s, he
experienced a dazzling entry into the sphere of power. He joined the
new government team led by Abdou Diouf, a young and brilliant
35-year-old technocrat. Lamine Diack was called to boost the structural
organization of the sport. He was appointed Secretary of State for Youth
and Sports, then Secretary of State for the Prime Minister for Human
Promotion, a newly created department.12
12Le Monde, 7 April 1973.

Family plays undoubtedly a big part in his fly to notoriety. Lamine

Diack’s brothers played a decisive role in the development of Senegalese
sport. Maguette, Alioune and Mademba are considered as pioneers.
The first was a founding member of the Football Cup of French West
Africa (AOF) launched in 1947, first president of Senegal Football
Federation created in 1960. The second won the AOF Cup in the
first edition with club Foyer France-Senegal. Later, Mademba “Ass”
Diack formed and trained many footballers of 1970s–1980s who have
evolved in the French championship.13 Sporting and political net-
works helped Lamine Diack to find a room in Senegal establishment.
The sporting connection was established first in France and then around
Dakar. Regarding the political side, his relationship with Abdou Diouf,
the “right hand arm” of President Senghor lead Diack to the highest
echelons of state.
He was involved in national and local political life. In Rebeuss, he
became a figure of the presidential party (Socialist Party). He dreamt of
a national destiny, especially in the Senegalese capital. After conduct-
ing an election campaign where sports vocabulary very often accom-
panies his speeches, he succeeded in obtaining the highest step of the
municipal management and a seat at the National Assembly. In 1978,
Lamine Diack was elected mayor of Dakar and became a deputy. He
then established himself as one of the most influential statesmen in the
political arena. The city of Dakar, which has nearly 4 million inhabit-
ants and represents the political, cultural and economic heart of the
country, serves as a springboard for his political rise and notoriety. From
a local point of view, he becomes an important figure in the democratic
institutions of the country. From 1988 to 1993, Diack was the Vice-
President of the National Assembly. In the mid-1990s, for personal
reasons, he decided to move away from politics.14 In the general point
of view, the 1990s in Senegal was deeply shaken by various crises.
Senegalese political model falling down: Casamance political leaders
13Jeune Afrique, 22 February 2017.

14Lamine Diack’s house is destroyed by fire. He has explained that a political matter is the reason
of this fire.
344 C. Boli
call for the independence of their region, press are more and more vin-
dictive about the state, unemployment and poverty arise. The socialist
party lost his prestige. In 2000 after 40 years, the historic socialist party
lost presidential election, Abdoulaye Wade from Democratic Senegalese
Party became the new face of the country.
So Diack decided to change the road. His interest lies in the gov-
erning bodies of international sport. A decisive step is taking shape in
the course of Lamine Diack. The Senegalese becomes an international
figure.
In the 3rd AAAC congress, important decisions are adopted in order
to improve the participation of African athletes in continental and
world contest:
1. Creation of the Association of African Track and Field Trainors

2. Organization in August 1979, in Dakar (Sénégal), of the first African
Track and Field Championships on the basis of high minima.15
The first African Championships is perceived as “a fraternal con-

frontation between the best possible teams and in the building up
of the African Union of Track and field coach” confirmes Lamine
Diack.16 Under Diack presidency of AAAC, aspects of changes arised.
Diack called it “the decade of development for African Athletics”
(1973–1982) with foundation of the AAAC African Amateur Athletics
Confederation, two boycotts of the Olympics Games (Montreal 1976
and Moscow 1980), the setting up of a continental championship sep-
arate from the African Games athletics competitions.17 In the broad
context, the success of Lamine Diack is due to the powerful magazine,
Champion d’Afrique launched in 1974 by a French publisher, truly
the voice of African athletics. Diack wrote very often on it in order to
expose its relevant decisions. He participates as a contributor to the
New Africa.
15Champion d’Afrique, n°7, February 1978.

16Champion d’Afrique, n°10, June 1979.
17Champion d’Afrique, n°25, October 1982.
A Different President?
In August 2001, at the age of 68, Lamine Diack was elected President
of the International Athletics Federation with 168 out of 169 votes.
His career as a manager took a new turn when he became the fifth
president of an institution founded 89 years ago. Since the premature
death of the Italian Primo Nebiolo (in 1999), the Senegalese occu-
pied the acting presidency as Senior Vice President.18 In 2001, Diack
became the “boss” of one of the oldest and most prestigious interna-
tional federations. In Le Monde, the presence of the new president at the
first millennium world championship is evoked as a major element “of
a palace revolution” that also affects the image and organization of the
world championships: the change of logo, men’s marathon opening the
competition opening instead of closing it.19
The moment is unique and symbolic. This is the first time that a
black African leader presides over such an imposing organization in the
sporting world. None of the powerful governing bodies of world sport
(CIO, FIFA, FIBA) have been chaired by a black African since their
founding. Since its creation in 1912, the presidency of the international
federation has been presided over by Europeans: the Swedish Sigfrid
Edström (1912–1946), the British David Burghley (1946–1976),
the Dutch Adriaan Paulen (1976–1981), the Italian Primo Nebiolo
(1981–1999). The invisibility of African leaders to the head of interna-
tional sporting bodies is also valid in the powerful international organi-
zations (UNO, IMF, WTO). The United Nations organization (UNO)
is an exception with general secretary Egyptian Boutros Boutros-Ghali
(1992–1996) and Ghanaian Kofi Annan (1997–2006).
In the press, the appointment of Diack questions. Opinions vary
according to continents. Identity characteristics (skin color, cloth-
ing style, personal path) embrace the qualities of a man of power. On
the African continent, the nomination of Lamine Diack is perceived
18IAAF News. International Amateur Athlete Federation, Issue, n°38, February 1999.
19Le Monde, 5 August 2001.
346 C. Boli
as the success of a man but also of a “talent of Africa”. Of course, the

Senegalese press is the first to highlight the success story of Rebeuss’s
child, the politician and the initiator in 1973 of the African Athletics
Confederation with its headquarters in Dakar. Numerous articles men-
tion Lamine Diack as an essential figure of Senegal in the twentieth
century. At the August 1999 World Championships in Athletics, in
Seville, African athletes shine by winning 22 medals. By winning med-
als, Morocco, Ethiopia and Kenya outperform large nations such as
France, Italy and China. Faced with this fine crop of medals and the
recent appointment of Diack as the leader of the Athletics Federation,
Jeune Afrique chose the unequivocal title: “The black power”.20 The
weekly magazine also pursues a campaign to promote a changing Africa.
Influential personalities such as Lamine Diack are the spokespeople for
an Africa firmly embedded in the globalization march, an Africa with
personalities able to play crucial roles in highly symbolic international
institutions. A year later, the same magazine shows an endearing and
exemplary portrayal of Lamine Diack, a model of the continent.21
At the centennial of the athletics federation in 2012, a tribute con-
cert is given to the one who has entered the history of world sport. The
Senegalese online newspaper Le Soleil installs Diack as “a witness of
history” and then emphasizes his place in the heart of the Senegalese
and Africans in general: “Senegal can be proud of this honor which
rewards the exceptional itinerary of ‘A man who has given everything
to the sport. Africa has so well understood it, that the African Athletics
Confederation (…) has planned, on the sidelines of the Centennial
festivities, to pay a tribute to Lamine Diack.22 “The voice of the con-
tinent”, the weekly Jeune Afrique is also enthusiastic about the excep-
tional career of a personality of the continent. The 2013 anniversary of
his 80 years was also the occasion of unanimous tributes.23
The European press is also interested in the new president. Diack
focuses particular attention in the French newspaper L’Équipe, which
20Jeune Afrique, 31 August 1999.

21Jeune Afrique, 30 August 2001.
22Le soleilonline, 23 November 2012.
23Siweul Com, 7 December 2013; Agence de presse sénégalaise, 6 December 2013.

reported on its performance in the 1950s. In this newspaper, he appears

as the link between France and Senegal. His opinion on the evolution
of French athletics is very appreciated. Other French media seek in him
a leader who can change the federation with African qualities. It is the
case of a journalist of L’Humanité who questions in 2000 whether “at
the head of the powerful IAAF, there will be African touch”? Without
eluding the question, Lamine Diack confirms that the African heritage
will be put forward: “Certainly, inevitably! The African is a very solidary
person because the well-being of his neighbor is more important than
his own well-being. In this, my mandate will have a very African
connotation”.24
In addition to identity considerations, the Western press is inter-
ested in how Lamine Diack builds its power through similar to some
other presidents of powerful organizations. His knowledge of the power
system focuses a lot more attention than his African origins. He is
described as a fine strategist. In 2003, Le Monde followed the re-election
of Diack at the 44th congress of the International Athletics Federation,
held in Paris, in the great hall of the Carrousel du Louvre. Beyond the
vote of confidence (165 votes in favor, 9 against and 4 abstentions), the
article highlights the strategies of maintaining power put in place by
Lamine Diack, like other presidents of powerful international organi-
zations. His four Vice-Presidents are the Chinese Lou Dapeng, the
Peruvian Francis Amadeo, the German Digel Helmut and the Swedish
Arne Ljungqvist. The post of honorary treasurer comes back to an
old acquaintance of the academic years of Lamine Diack in Paris, the
Frenchman Jean Poczobut (1936–2017), 67 years old, former national
technical director (1978–1985) and president of the French athlet-
ics federation (1993–1997). He has the responsabily to manage the
$40 million to $50 million of the federal budget.
Upon taking office as the president, Lamine Diack conveys the image
of an expert, a world athletics specialist.25 An “African” presidency is
never underlined. The unique occasions pointing out his origin are the
24L’Humanité, 24 June 2000.

25Le Monde, 2 August 2001.
348 C. Boli
moments when he wears a “traditional” boubou, a prestige outfit which

damask fabric (basin) imported from Germany or Austria.
Diack’s Influence into IAAF

Gradually, “the Diack team” is positioning itself to relaunch an institution
that suffers from a lack of modern image compared to organizations such
as the FIFA (International Federation of Football Association) or the IOC
(International Olympic Committee). The institution must develop and
expand its influence on a global scale as he announces in the first months
of its mandate.26 Faced with the changes in high-level sport (inflation of
TV broadcasting rights, staring of athletes, ecological considerations in
the organization of sporting events, access to women in executive roles,
importance of merchandising, increase of social networks, etc.) the pres-
ident must react. The governing body of athletics changes under the
direction of the president but also under the external pressures of a sport
movement in complete transformation.
“Guaranty the future” is the title of the official organ of the federa-
tion at the time of the presidency of the IAAF. Lamine Diack points out
two actions that perfectly outline his ambitions. Two major contracts
signed, one with EBU (European Broadcasting Union), an organization
that deals with retransmission rights and the other with ISL, an agency
in charge of finding economic partners illustrate the motivations of the
president.27 While continuing the work of promoting the discipline
launched during the reign of Primo Nebiolo (creation of the world
championships in 1983, Golden league in 1998), Lamine Diack wants
to stand out. His ambition is to carry out innovative, unpublished pro-
jects. Under his guidance, the IAAF changes in depth to enter the era of
globalized sport. According to him, the development of athletics must
rely on a wide audience and on its ability to become a commercially
lucrative product. Diack wants to be a cutting-edge president. He wants
26IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Issue n°47, February 2001.
to embody a new spirit of athletics. Therefore, the goals of globalization

and capitalization of athletics are the signs that differentiate it from
other presidents.28 In the publication celebrating the 90th anniversary,
he uses the word globalization as the key to his future ambitions. In
2001, during an interview given to a journalist of Le Monde, after his
appointment as the head of the federation, Lamine Diack said: “I want
to enhance the attractiveness of our sport so that it can compete with
football and tennis”.29 The tone is given, the spectacular dimension
becomes one of the major concerns. The transformations are reflected
in the rules of competition, the image of the institution via the official
organ and in the commercial inclinations.
At the 43rd Congress of the FIAA (2001), changes to the starting
rules of the races (in particular the speed events) are announced. To
reduce the number of false starts, only one anticipatory error will
be allowed for all athletes. Here is the President’s argument to justify
this historic change: “Let us fear change… It is in this spirit—faithful
to our traditional principles, but also ready to face the demand for
athletics as an entertaining show”.30 The issue has been studied by the
Competition Commission for several months. To ensure a plurality of
points of view, athletes, officials or coaches were invited to deliver their
opinions on a page called the IAAF Athletics Forum.31 But the pressure
of television channels wishing to reduce the vagaries of the competition
(delayed programming) and which pay very high fees for retransmission
is not negligible in this decision. The opinion of Istvan Gyulai, IAAF
general secretary is very evocative: “Understandably, our TV partners
are not happy if timetables are not respected, if at peak time, several
false starts cause delays, if competitions are too long etc.”.32 In 2010,
the rule hardened. The athlete is disqualified from the race on the first
false start. After a moment of acceptance, a polemic takes place in the
28IAAF News. International Association of Athletics Federations, Issue n°51, November 2001.
29LeMonde, 2 August 2001.
30IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Issue n°39, March 2000.
31IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Issue No. 40, April 2000.
32IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Issue n°49, June 2001.
350 C. Boli
world 2011. During the 100 m final, the star of the sprint Usain Bolt,
longly awaited by the spectators of the entire world, is put out of race
after a false start. Lamine Diack maintains his decision that he believes
necessary for the credibility of the institution.33
The image of the institution is reflected in a radical change in the
means of communication. IAAF News, the official body, is the best
example to observe the evolution of the image. The federation is
embarking on a politics of a young, trendy and seductive image. In
the first months of its installation, the president proudly announces a
new direction in the field of image of the federation: “I am delighted
to have the opportunity to write the first report, and I do hope there
will be many reports for the IAAF News. We hope you find this new
look informative, useful and up-to-date. IAAF and its activities are also
included in this report. The IAAF News is a vital means of communica-
tion but will become a forum for discussion as well”.34 The publication
has undergone a profound change both in form (more illustrated pres-
entation, easier reading, cover title in color…) than in the background
(federations news, portrait of historical leaders, portraits of IAAF
members, an economic partner, tribute to sports figures, obituary, anti-
doping actions, etc.).
The evolution of the image gets through a symbolic act: the end of
the amateur word. The International Amateur Athletic is now called
International Association of Athletics Federations. This is a way to
break with the past. The amateur ethos that prevailed in the birth of
the federation and of sport in general is now dismissed to give way to
a new conception of sport. A new movement emerges. The word ama-
teur becomes outdated, it is synonymous with incompetence, lack of
rigor. Lamine Diack states: “We must accept that the removal of the
word “amateur” was not intended to reflect only the changing status
of top athletes, but also those of us who work in the sport. We must
give the example of professionalism when we make political, com-
mercial and technical decisions”.35 This historical choice follows the
33Francetv.sport,29 August 2011.

35IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Edmonton special, Issue n°50, August 2001.
example of the African Confederation which, since its creation in 1973

(under the presidency of Lamine Diack), decided to delete the word
amateur.36 The process of revising the image of the federation contin-
ues in the visual identity. On November 26, 2000, at the Monte Carlo
Grand Hotel, the new logo showing an athlete raising arms in victory is
presented to the press. The accompanying sentence speaks loudly about
IAFF’s ambitions: getting athletics into global market. The decision to
change was made by both the federation and the ISL marketing agency,
which is responsible for the communication of the institution.37
As soon as the president is firstly elected, economic considerations
occupy a major place. One can even say that the will to become a
lucrative institution, taking example on football, is a feature point
of Lamine Diack management team. On April 2001, the General
Secretary announced that the contracts signed with the American
television channels ABC and ESPN constituted important moments
in the economic exploitation of the federation.38 The American mar-
ket is one of the priorities of conquest of the federation. China and
emerging countries (Russia, Brazil, India, South Korea) are targeted
in the policy of expansion of the passion of athletics. IAAF has the
particularity of bringing together more countries than the members
of the UNO and the federations affiliated to FIFA (212 federations in
2006). In the mid-2000s, the desire to reach a wider audience grew.
Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are targeted through agree-
ments signed with Canal France International (CFI) and Caribbean
Media Corporation (CMC).39 The partnership with world-renowned
companies appears to be a way of gaining respectability. The federation
ensures its place among the big ones with economic partners: Adidas,
Seiko, TDK, Epson, Coca Cola, Dentsu… The prestigious marketing
company IMG is responsible for marketing and distributing Athlétix,
the federation’s televised magazine.
36IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Issue n°48, April 2001.
37IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Issue n°46, Nov/Dec 2000.
38IAAF News. International Amateur Athletic Federation, Issue n°48, April 2001.
39IAAF News. International Association of Athletics Federations, Issue n°83, December 2006.
352 C. Boli
Throughout his mandates the president deviated very little from

economic inclinations. He often says with a certain pride: “Since 1999,
I have not ceased as a President, to give more professional structures to
athletics, to have a more commercial approach and especially to ensure
the financial future of the IAAF. Over the past seven years, with the
support of my colleagues on the IAAF Council, I have paid the utmost
attention to the issue of marketing and television rights”.40
End of a Man or a System?

On November 2, 2015, the world of sport is in a state of shock.
Athletics is seriously shaken.
In an interview with a journalist of Le Monde, Lamine Diack, admits
“the unthinkable”. He confirmed his involvement in a corruption case
with the Russian state. The bomb is dropped. Confidences are debated
in the world press. In France, the news shocks the many admirers of this
former member of the France athletics team. In England, a large part
of the media is not surprised. In Senegal, the announcement divides.
Some shout at scandals. France is suspected of orchestrating this “story”
through the judge in charge of the case. Others are scandalized by the
direct impact of this scandal in the 2012 presidential and legislative
elections in Senegal.
How has one of the most popular presidents of the sporting world
found himself in practices that tarnish the image of sport and athletics
in particular? For several years, the press, notably the British, has been
investigating the ambiguities of the Athletics Federation on controver-
sial issues: doping, the President’s son’s involvement in the financial
activities of the federation, the hosting of the world championships…
Very strong suspicions of illegal practices were pointed out. President
Lamine Diack seemed to be no stranger to embezzlement.
The thread of allegations about the person of Diack dates back a
few years before. The British investigative press unleashes the growth
40IAAF News. International Association of Athletics Federations, Issue n°83, December 2006.
of small errors to big activities of personal and collective bribery.

A documentary featured on the BBC’s Panorama41 show reveals that
ISL has distributed $100 million in bribes to sports leaders, includ-
ing Lamine Diack, Issa Hayatou the President of African Football
Confederation and Joao Havelange the former president of the
International Football Federation. The IOC (International Olympic
Committee) has reacted. In 2011, after a nearly one year investiga-
tion by the IOC Ethics Commission, Lamine Diack is warned. He is
guilty of having received money from the marketing company ISL (who
disappeared in a bankruptcy in 2001) a company for which his son
(Papa Massata Diack) worked deeply involved in the scandal. Lamine
Diack admits having collected in cash three sums of 52,880 Swiss
francs (about 43,000 euros today) paid by a friend, the director of ISL,
to finance the reconstruction of his house burned in a fire at the time
he was Vice-President of the IAAF and not yet an IOC (International
Olympic Committee) member.42
In 2015, the federation (through its presidency) is subject to a strong
suspicion of laxity regarding doping. A campaign conducted primarily
by the English press investigates the dark areas of high-level athletics.
The president is accused of covering the athletes of powerful nations
(USA, Russia) for money. Faced with a wave of accusations, Diack
responds with force. He points out in the columns of The Guardian that
athletics are experiencing a time of crisis43 with doping scandals how-
ever the vast majority of athletes do not use substances prohibited to
perform. A few days before the start of the 2015 World Championships
in Athletics, an investigation by the English daily newspaper The Times
and the German TV channel ARD/WDR created a shock. It concerns
the doping system on a global scale. An official document provided
by the IAAF gives an appaling conclusion. On 12,359 blood tests car-
ried out on more than 5000 athletes for 11 years, 800 athletes and 146
medals in the endurance events (800 to the marathon) at the Olympic
41BBC Sport, 8 December 2010.

42The Guardian, 8 December 2011; Le Monde, 9 December 2011.
43Several “legends” have tarnished athletic’s face by taking drugs: Marion Jones, Tyson Gay, Justin
Gatlin. The Guardian, 20 August 2015.

354 C. Boli
Games and the World Championships between 2001 and 2012 have
“abnormal” blood profiles. Of the 146 medalists with suspicious pro-
files, there are Kenyans but mostly Russians (80 out of 146).44 The
figures of the survey have been reported in all European press bodies.
Experts are called to give their opinion. Few specialists seem surprised,
especially the figures of suspicion of doping on the side of the Russians:
The McLaren report for the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed the
existence of an institutionalized doping system set up by the Russian
State.45
Finally, it is in the world that Lamine Diack reveals a scandal that
affects both his person and the structural organization of the athlet-
ics federation. The collusion between sport and politics completes this
dizzying fall of one of the most important personalities of the sports
movement. Let us look at the confession of Lamine Diack in order to
grasp the intertwining of this affair: “It was necessary at this period to
win the “battle of Dakar”, that is, to overthrow the power in place in
my country, Senegal. This included financing the movement of young
people to campaign, raising awareness of citizenship. (…) So I needed
financing to rent vehicles, meeting rooms, to make leaflets in all the vil-
lages and all the districts of the city. Mr. Balaknichev (president of the
Russian Athletics Federation) was part of the Putin team and at that
time there were these problems of suspending Russian athletes within
a few months of the world championships in Russia. We agreed, Russia
funded. Balaknichev organized it all. Papa Massata Diack took care of
the financing with Balaknichev”.46
Further, he said: “the suspension of the Russians suspected of doping
after the 2013 world championships had to be postponed… If there
had not been television rights, marketing rights, and if the athletes had
been suspended, it would have been a catastrophy.” Thus, the world
discovers the combinations of the former president of the federation.
The end of the Lamine Diack term is not very glorious. On August 19,
2015 Sebastian Coe was elected president of the athletics federation,
44The Sunday Times, 2 August 2015.

45Mclaren Report, AMA, 18 July 2016.
46Le Monde, 18 December 2015.
Diack decides not to run again. On November 1, 2015, Diack was

indicted by French judge Van Ruymbeke for passive bribery and aggra-
vated money laundering, suspended by the International Olympic
Committee and forced to quit.
The image of sport is tainted with corruption, personal ambition,
conflict of interest, political pressure. A few months after the revelation
of the illicit actions carried out by Lamine Diack, other facts are
revealed in the survey. Papa Massata Diack, the son of the former presi-
dent proves to be a key figure in the bribery and choking operations
of Russian anti-doping controls. Without having the function of direc-
tor of the marketing department, he fully assumed this role informally.
Frenchman Gabriel Dollé, former head of the anti-doping cell of the
athletics federation, admits that he has received illicit amounts and
slowed down (but not blocked) the anti-doping procedures for Russian
athletes. British coach Nick Davies, director of communication in the
Diack era, and French Pierre-Yves Garnier, co-chair of the anti-doping
department, are also involved. The end of Lamine Diack highlights the
arrest of a team of dishonest people endowed with significant powers.
Conclusion
From December 1999 to August 2015, Lamine Diack occupies the pres-
tigious position of President of the International Athletics Federation.
He became the first leader from black Africa acceding to the highest
function of an international sport organization. He represents the pride
of a continent in search of international icons. With an expert track in
the field of sports, Lamine Diack tries to mark his presidency under
the signs of professionalism and globalization. The entry into the age
of globalization is his credo. He manages to transform the institution
with the help of ISL. The image and economic inclinations boosted
an organization that suffered from an outmoded image. The media,
especially television, contribute to the evolution of disciplines. The
achievements of a generation of outstanding athletes allow athletics to
find a broad audience with the initiated and uninitiated. The Diack era
reminds the prodigious Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, or the American
356 C. Boli
multi-medalist Allyson Felix. Under the presidency of Lamine Diack,

the realities of a changing society penetrate modes and representations
of practice. The athletics of the 2000s are marked by global development
policies, the emergence of derivatives, the development of visibility
support (internet, social networks) or environmental considerations.
The federation is moving towards a model of governance, but new
shadows are emerging. Two cases are symptomatic of failures. The inter-
national federation is incapable of ensuring the credibility of the means
put in place to stem the doping problem. The sensitive subject of the
redemption of athletes guilty of recidivism remains in suspense. The
fight against the transfer of nationalities proved ineffective. Faced with
the sirens of rich countries, several athletes from regions marked by a
critical situation (war, economic crisis, personal political threat) change
their nationality. For the year 2011, 49 athletes have changed their
nationality! to the benefice of the wealth countries (USA, Great Britain,
France, Bahrain, Qatar…). History will retain an organization marked
by the practices of corruption, and other illicit facts. The years of Diack
remain marked by the failure of an old organization which wanted to
transform itself into a multinational sport show with noble virtues.
Sebastian Coe, the former glory of the British athletic, has the hard task
to infuse a new impetus to a federation in full doubt.
Biography of Lamine Diack

1933: Born in Dakar (Senegal).
1939–1960: Primary school Faidherbe, College Van Vollenhover
(Dakar); Law and Economics University (Dakar).
1950–1952: Dakar champion and winner of the Paris-Dakar Football
juniors Cup.
1954–1960: International in football, athletics and volley-ball.
1957–1960: French West African Long jump champion and record holder.
1958: French Long jump champion (7.63 m).
1959: French university Long jump champion (7.72 m).
1961–1964: General Secretary of Senegal Athletics Federation.
1964–1968: Football manager of Foyer France Sénégal.
1961–1969: Inspector of Taxes and State-Owned Proprerty.

1969–1970: Commissioner General of Sport.
1970–1973: Secretary of State for Youth and Sport.
1973–1974: Secretary of State for Human Promotion.
1973–1987: Member of the Executive Committee of the Supreme
Council for Sport in Africa.
1973–2003: President of the African Athletics Confederation.
1974–1978: National Conservator of Land Ownership of Senegal.
1976–1978: President of Senegal Athletic federation.
1978–1980: Mayor of Dakar.
1978–1993: Deputy of the National Assembly of Senegal.
1979–1999: IAAF Vice President.
1985–2002: President of the Senegal National Olympic Committee.
1988–1993: First Vice-President of the National Assembly of Senegal.
1995–2001: Chairman of the Administration Board of the National
Water Company of Senegal.
1999–2015: IAFF President.
2015: The French office for financial prosecutions charges Lamine Diack
with corruption on money laundering, conspiracy and suspicion of
accepting bribes of up to more than 1 million euros to cover up doping
cases. Diack’s legal advisor Habib Cissé and former IAAF anti-doping
director Gabriel Dollé are also charged with corruption.
Bibliography
Bose, Mihir. 2012. The Spirit of the Game. How Sport Made the Modern World.
London: Constable.
Decraene, Philippe. 1985. Le Sénégal (Que sais-je?). Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France.
Dozon, Jean-Pierre. 2003. Frères et Sujets. La France et l’Afrique en perspective.
Paris: Flammarion.
Gillon, Pascal, Frédéric Grosjean, and Loïc Ravenel. 2010. Atlas du sport mon-
dial. Business et spectacle: l’idéal sportif en jeu. Paris: Autrement.
Hercules. Meeting International d’Athlétisme. Programme officiel, Monaco 21
juillet 2017.
358 C. Boli
IAFF. 2012. IAAF 1912–2012: 100 Years of Athletics Excellence. Monaco: IAFF.
Lovesey, Peter. 1979. The Official Centenary History of the AAA. London:
Guinness Superlatives.
M’Bokolo, Elikia. 1985. L’Afrique au XXe siècle. Le continent convoité. Paris:
Seuil.
Meyer, Gaston. 1975. Le Grand Livre de l’Athlétisme Français. Paris:
Calman-Lévy.
Questions internationales, L’Afrique en mouvement, n°33. Septembre–Octobre
2008.
SportBusiness International, issue n°130, December 2007.
Part IV
The Fall of the IFs and IOC
or a New Sporting Governance?
No one yet knows what this new system will look like. The growth of
Formula 1 motor racing under the stewardship of Bernie Ecclestone
provides one possible model for the continued globalisation of the
sports business. Despite an often-turbulent relationship with the
International Automobile Federation (FIA), Ecclestone turned Formula
1 into a huge, global business. A very different model is provided by
the strategy National Basketball Association commissioner David
Stern has developed for one of North America’s most powerful profes-
sional leagues. Over the last 30 years, the NBA and the International
Basketball Federation have managed to come to a working compromise
in the leadership of basketball. Yet another situation is exemplified by
world cricket and the key role played by Jagmohan Dalmiya in globalis-
ing a game that once epitomised British sport but whose epicentre has
now migrated to South Asia. Several scenarios are possible, as the soc-
cer world is showing in way it is dealing with the FIFAgate scandal,
the downfall of Blatter and Platini (ex UEFA president), the questions
raised by the award of the 2022 World Cup finals to Qatar and the
growing influence of the oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf on global
sports governance.
360 The Fall of the IFs and IOC or a New Sporting Governance?
A very plausible scenario for the next decade is that the Olympic
Movement and its governing body, the IOC, will be allowed to main-
tain their “responsible autonomy”, as promised by Thomas Bach, and
avoid interference from the public authorities and potential exter-
nal regulators. Awarding the 2024 and 2028 editions of the Olympic
Games to Paris and Los Angeles, respectively, was a masterstroke by
the IOC’s current president, as it helps guarantee support from both a
European power that still carries weight on the international scene, and
the United States, one of the largest stakeholder’s in the Olympic busi-
ness. In fact, 6 of the IOC’s 13 “Top sponsors” are American and NBC
has paid a total of more than $12 billion for the rights to broadcast
every edition of the Olympic Games from Sochi 2014 to Tokyo 2020.
What is more, following the attribution of the 2022 Winter Olympics
to China and FIFA’s award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia
and Qatar (First country in the Middle East to host the event), for the
first time in the history of international sport, the IOC and FIFA have
laid the foundations for at least a decade of geopolitical and economic
stability. All the world’s major political and economic powers, including
four of the five members of the UN Security Council, have been served
for the next ten years. Thanks to this geopolitical shield protecting the
Olympic Movement’s political and financial autonomy, the IOC’s cur-
rent president, Germany’s Thomas Bach, has never been more powerful.
However, another possible scenario is that the sport movement fails
to stamp out corruption and therefore loses both public confidence and
its autonomy. International sport has so far shown a marked inability
to put its house in order, despite attempts to introduce new operating
principles and methods, such as the IOC’s “Basic Universal Principles of
Good Governance” and the new evaluation framework put forward by
the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations. Hence,
in order to clamp down on misconduct, the public authorities may be
tempted to more closely regulate international sport by, for example,
creating an independent agency to regulate the governance of interna-
tional sport, ensuring the ethics and governance commissions set up by
international sport organizations include independent experts with true
investigatory and disciplinary powers, or monitoring the way elections
are conducted. Sport organisations could also be forced to separate their
The Fall of the IFs and IOC or a new Sporting Governance? 361
strategic and diplomatic management from the redistribution of sport

development funds to poorer countries, and to introduce independent
procedures for monitoring how contracts (TV rights, marketing, etc.)
and major sports events are attributed. Currently, such decisions are
within the hands of a very small number of people.
Whichever route is followed, reforms to the governance of the
IOC and IFs are essential if the European model of sport is to sur-
vive. Otherwise, it is likely to be superseded by the American system
of leagues and franchises, especially when it comes to organising and
broadcasting major sports events.
14
Bernie Ecclestone: Formula One’s
Entrepreneurial Ringmaster
Stephen A. Stuart
Introduction
At 86 years of age, Bernie Ecclestone was, until very recently, the epit-
ome of sport business success. Coming from an extremely humble
background he created, largely due to his own efforts, a truly global
and exceptionally valuable sporting enterprise that attracts tens of mil-
lions of fans worldwide, hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorships
from multiple major international brands, and significant investment
and collaboration from governments wishing to promote their coun-
tries and/or political regimes. Through these efforts, he became excep-
tionally wealthy and powerful. Until his recent removal as CEO of
Formula One’s commercial rights holder, Formula One Group (FOG),
his position afforded him access to many of the world’s most influential
business and political leaders.
S. A. Stuart (*)
Saint Paul University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
e-mail: sstuart@ustpaul.ca
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_14
364 S. A. Stuart
The majority of material written about him, outside of the main-

stream motorsport press and media, is hagiographic: the most ‘signif-
icant’ works being written with Ecclestone’s initial consent, and the
authors granted full subject access; in particular, see Bower (2011),
Henry (2003), Lovell (2004, 2009), and Watkins (2010, p. 13). Other
authors, who have worked closely with Ecclestone, such as Parr (2012)
and Mosley (2015) are somewhat more critical, but remain largely par-
tisan, and avoid his more obvious failings.
By contrast, this chapter will critically position him as a complex
and flawed individual whose energy and vision, coupled with his natu-
ral autocratic character, whilst enabling him to succeed in a sport where
collaborative leadership usually fails and gives way to strong individu-
als with a singular vision,1 was at the same time compromised by his
apparent lack of regard for the rule of law, and impunity towards ethical
considerations.2
The chapter begins with a brief summary of Ecclestone’s con-
siderable achievements in transforming Formula One Grand Prix
motor racing (F1) from the elitist pastime of a small number of rich,
thrill-seeking aristocrats into the highly professional yet glamourous
and powerful media spectacle it is today. Ecclestone’s strategic vision
for the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile’s (FIA) F1 World
Championship led the series to become one of the few sports that can
claim to have a truly global audience, with the highest recorded TV
viewership of any annual sporting competition: in 2016, F1 attracted
c.400 million viewers from 150 countries who watched races via
115 broadcast partners.3 At its peak in 2016 some 80 million people
watched the live broadcast of races,4 up from about 60 million in 2013.5
1A point recently made by Frederic Vasseur, the greatly experienced ex-Principal of French car
manufacturer Renault’s F1 team when he stepped down after only one year in post: “if you want
to perform in F1, you need to have one leader… and one single way”. Richards, G. (2017a).
The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2017/jan/12/lewis-hamilton-pad-
dy-lowe-mercedes-leadership. Accessed 12 January 2017.
2Stahl (2014).
3Spurgeon (2016).
4Sylt (2016).
5Saward (2013a, issue 132, p. 4).
14 Bernie Ecclestone: Formula One’s Entrepreneurial Ringmaster 365
Ecclestone’s unique grasp of the complex yet extremely profitable

relationship between guaranteed race entries, somewhat consistent com-
petition formats, regulations, and event calendars, commercial broad-
casting schedules, brand advertising and marketing, and various forms
of corporate investment and sponsorship, grew the sport’s annual rev-
enues to a level conservatively estimated to be in excess of $4 billion
in 2012.6 However, these revenues are currently somewhat in decline7
as the sport struggles to embrace emerging digital technologies.8,9 For
Ecclestone, the possibilities of the Internet, the worldwide web, and
social media were a consistent blind spot.10
However, as a mark of these achievements, in late 2016 F1 was eval-
uated as having a commercial value of $8 billion by US-based Liberty
Media,11 which purchased a controlling interest in FOG, the company
that effectively controls F1, from CVC Capital Partners, a private equity
and investment firm which owned the sport for the previous ten years.
Liberty Media took over the helm and appointed Chase Carey, an expe-
rienced senior executive with many years’ experience of both sport and
media, as Chairman. Ecclestone’s services as CEO were initially retained
on a 3-year contract, thereby maintaining his executive control of most
aspects of the sport. However, by mid-January 2017 he was effec-
tively removed from any executive role in the sport and given the title
‘Chairman Emeritus’.12
The annual costs for a successful team competing at this, the high-
est level of international motor racing, have risen from c. $450,000
in 1971,13 the year Ecclestone became a team owner and Grand Prix
(GP) entrant, to well over $300 million in 201514; a real inflation rate
6Syltand Reid (2012).

7Saward (2015a).
8Allen (2014).
9Anon (2014).
10Mosley (2015, p. 173).
11Liberty Media Corporation (2016).
12Richards (2017a).
13Motorsport (1982).
14Saward (2013b).
366 S. A. Stuart
of over 350%. As Ecclestone shifted the F1 calendar from its historical

euro-centric locus to create a more global offering fit for a true World
Championship,15 circuit owners and race promoters have been sub-
ject to a similar increase in the costs of participation. Current annual
hosting fees are in the region of $35 million for the first contract year,
rising by 10% in each subsequent year of the contract16; this on top
of the cost of constructing ($400 million for the USA’s Circuit of the
Americas17) or upgrading (>$50 million for the UK’s Silverstone
circuit18) facilities to the very high standard Ecclestone required. The
only direct income accruing to promoters comes from ticket sales;
everything else went to Ecclestone’s organization in one way or another.
That there was an adequate supply of teams capable of raising these
levels of capital each and every year, and that there were many cities
around the world queuing to join the prestigious list of GP hosting
venues, is ample testament to the overwhelming success of Ecclestone’s
original and long-term strategic vision. Eighty-six-year-old Ecclestone
realized this vision through his boundless energy, innate entrepreneur-
ship, love of deal-making, obsessive attention to detail, and autocratic
and charismatic leadership.
Given Ecclestone’s near sixty-year involvement with the highest ech-
elon of international motor sport, there are many important career
events to choose from to illustrate the unique manner in which he sin-
gle-mindedly drove his vision into reality, and successfully maintained
an enviable pattern of consistent growth. This chapter embraces several
such events from Ecclestone’s long association with motor sport, and
uses each to illustrate a particular aspect of the complex leader whose
career straddled almost every facet of the sport. Various of Ecclestone’s
management practices will be explored to enable an understanding of
how this diminutive man took on the sport’s aristocratic grandees in a
decade-long battle for control of the sport, effectively won control of its
commercial properties, and secured a unique level of influence over its
15Saward (2010).
16Saward (2012).
17Circuit of the Americas (2012).
18Allen (2013).
governance. In the process, he created one of the world’s richest sports;

coincidently, Ecclestone accumulated vast personal wealth.
Ecclestone’s interactions with the sport’s main protagonists, both
adversaries and allies, at various points throughout the sport’s develop-
ment will be analyzed to provide insight into the man who until very
recently held authoritative positions of legitimate power in organ-
izations controlling both the commercial rights and governance of
Formula One. As previously noted, Ecclestone was the CEO of FOG
and a voting member of the FIA’s World Motorsport Council. He was
a longstanding member of the FIA Senate until stepping down in 2014
due to burgeoning legal problems in Germany, and VP of the FIA’s
Promotional Affairs until 2001 when he gained long-term control of the
sport’s Commercial Rights.
The Early Years, Driver Management,

and Team Ownership
Ecclestone was born in 1930 into particularly modest surroundings
in rural England, the only son of a fisherman. His family moved to a
London suburb when he was eight years old. Allegedly, he soon demon-
strated an understanding of commerce by buying day-old cakes then
selling them in the schoolyard for a profit. Ecclestone left school aged
16, to work in the local gas utility company. This job funded his early
passion for motorcycles and motorcycling. In his spare time, he began
dealing in used motorcycles and spare parts. Dealing provided him with
a more lucrative career path and he soon quit his job and formed a used
motorcycle dealership with an established business partner. Ecclestone
quickly proved himself the more competent dealer and moved on to
form his own motorcycle dealership, and soon progressed to deal in
used cars, a more profitable and reliable source of income, due to the
declining UK market for motorcycles.19,20
19Lovell (2009, p. 23).

20Watkins (2010, p. 60).
368 S. A. Stuart
At the same time, he began buying and selling property, amass-

ing a considerable portfolio of commercial and residential buildings;
Ecclestone maintains his portfolio to the present day. The 2004 sale of
a London house for a then world-record price of over $100 million is
a clear indication that his success is not confined to F1.21 During the
early stages of his entrepreneurial career, Ecclestone displayed an active
interest in motorsport; initially via motorcycle racing, but latterly, start-
ing in 1949, in formula racing cars.22 He achieved some success, but
had a number of accidents that convinced him that his talents lay more
in other areas of the sport, such as administration and management.23
An early hallmark of both his commercial and racing activities was
the immaculate level of detail that went into the preparation and pres-
entation of Ecclestone’s dealership and race entries. At that time, cars
and drivers were presented haphazardly at race meetings. Ecclestone
ensured that he, his car, and their transporter were always pristine at
the start of each race.24 This almost fanatical level of attention to detail
stayed with Ecclestone throughout his career: he imposed it on all
aspects of modern F1, from the millimetre-perfect alignment of team
transporters and motorhomes in the paddock, to the cleanliness and
order in the pit lane facilities at participating circuits.25 Every aspect
of Ecclestone’s professional life displayed a similar level of control and
attention to detail; this characteristic allowed him to negotiate strongly
as he commanded an extraordinary knowledge of the key factors in each
negotiation process.
Ecclestone’s initial foray into F1 came about in 1957 when he began
managing the career of his friend, Stuart Lewis-Evans, a British rac-
ing driver of promise. To facilitate Lewis-Evans’ career progression,
Ecclestone purchased two competitive cars, and entered them in a
few races, albeit with little success. The following year, he negotiated
21Rayner (2009).
22Formula racing refers to any of several forms of open-wheel racing; the term is derived from the
nomenclature adopted by the FIA post-WWII.
23ESPN (n.d.).
24Motorsport (1972a).
Lewis-Evans’ transfer to the more competitive Vanwall Team. The

year began well and Lewis-Evans achieved two pole positions and
scored points in several races, which allowed Vanwall to win the inau-
gural World Constructor’s Championship (WCC). Tragically, his life
ended following a mechanical failure during the season-ending GP in
Morocco. The bittersweet experience of his friend’s death in the midst
of celebrating a World Championship deeply affected Ecclestone, who
immediately withdrew from the sport.26,27
It was another decade before he emerged from the business world
and re-entered F1, again in a driver-manager role. Ecclestone managed
the commercial affairs of a small portfolio of drivers, including those of
highly-regarded Austrian driver, Jochen Rindt, who had previously won
the prestigious 24-hour of Le Mans sports car race. The pair formed a
particularly strong bond on and off the track, and together managed a
racing team to compete in the second-tier formula racing series, F2. In
the first complete year of their partnership, 1970, Rindt was close to
winning the F1 World Driver’s Championship (WDC) when he was
violently killed in his works Lotus 72 during practice for the Italian GP
at Monza. The Austrian subsequently became the sport’s only posthu-
mous World Champion. After Rindt’s death Ecclestone undertook the
operational management of the F2 team they co-owned.28
These two instances of proximate bereavement appear to have influ-
enced Ecclestone’s subsequent modus operandi in two distinct ways.
Firstly, Ecclestone demonstrated a level of compassion that was never
evident in either his early motor trade dealings, or as he developed his
property portfolio: then he had been quite ruthless. Secondly, and in
a characteristic that is sometimes linked to compassion,29 Ecclestone
developed a strong sense of loyalty, not only to those closest to him, but
also to their immediate dependents.
26Watkins (2010, p. 60).

27Lovell(2009).
28Tremayne (2010).
29Seppala (2015).
370 S. A. Stuart
Although Ecclestone never allowed himself to get too attached to

drivers since Rindt, he maintained a small coterie of close advisors,
associates, and friends who surrounded him, and in whom he placed
significant levels of trust. Ecclestone did not support a large entourage
of hangers-on. As he conducted the majority of his numerous business
negotiations himself, he relied on these few associates to keep him fully
briefed so that he maintained his consummate knowledge of everything
in his purview. Ecclestone was renowned as an exceptional negoti-
ator, employing many tactics to gain the upper hand, which is where
his expertise in gamesmanship allowed him to excel. By introducing
superfluous factors into negotiations, he deflected his opposition from
his true focus. Often, it was only after a deal was concluded that peo-
ple realized Ecclestone achieved exactly what he set out to achieve: the
concessions he allowed to be negotiated away were never of real impor-
tance, yet he managed to make his opponents believe otherwise.
There are many examples of the loyalty that Ecclestone exhibited
to those closest to him. He provided a career path for Jochen Rindt’s
daughter, firstly as a producer for his visionary and entrepreneurial F1
digital TV venture,30 and latterly as the pilot for the FIA’s private Lear
jet. Ecclestone also showed considerable loyalty to two other people he
encountered in the next phase of his career, Charlie Whiting and Herbie
Blash, respectively Team Manager and Chief Mechanic of the Brabham
F1 Team. Until the end of 2016, when Blash retired, they were both
employed by the FIA in senior positions of authority in F1; Whiting
remains as F1’s Race Director. Even if his relationship with someone
was occasionally turbulent, Ecclestone remained loyal, sometimes to
his public detriment. When Flavio Briatore, then Team Principal of the
Renault F1 Team, was given a lifetime ban from the sport by the FIA
World Council for coercing a driver to deliberately crash during the
2008 Singapore GP to provide a winning advantage for his teammate,
Ecclestone spoke out on his behalf, calling the sanction “too harsh”.31
30Saward (2001).
31Autosport (2009).
Eventually Briatore successfully challenged the ban, and thanked

Ecclestone for his support throughout.
In 1971, the year after Rindt’s death, Ecclestone, capitalizing on his
recent experience of team ownership, purchased a majority stake in
the quadruple World Championship winning Brabham F1 team for
c. $250,000. The manner in which he established himself at the helm
of the company was indicative of his nascent autocratic and ruthless
leadership style, and in complete contrast to the compassion and loy-
alty he exhibited towards his trusted associates. In effect, he deliberately
misled his highly respected new partner as to his operational intentions
in order to achieve the purchase. Once installed, Ecclestone reorgan-
ized the whole company without any discussion with his partner, effec-
tively undermining his position and credibility to the extent that he felt
obliged to leave the business and sell his remaining share to Ecclestone
at a very low price.32,33 Ecclestone subsequently removed most of the
senior people and installed new working practices incorporating his
almost-obsessive approach to cleanliness and order.34 Ecclestone’s
ownership lasted for 17 years until 1988, when he sold the team for
close to $9 million, a very strong return on his initial investment. His
ruthlessness in pursuing a deal can be seen in many other situations:
for example, in 2008, he threatened to remove hosting rights for the
British GP from its traditional home at Silverstone. Ecclestone went
as far as to sign a contract with an alternative venue and promoter in
the knowledge that this would pressure Silverstone to agree his terms.35
However, he also knew the other promoter lacked the funds to fulfill his
contractual obligations. Ecclestone won on two levels here: he coerced
Silverstone to provide the level of funding and service he required, and
collected fees from the hapless alternate promoter.
As a team owner and entrant, Ecclestone had access to the FIA’s
governing administrators. He was also able to see how the competitive
32Stahl(2014).
33Lovell(2009, p. 32).
34Motorsport (1972b).
35Bryant (2008).
372 S. A. Stuart
nature of the sport encouraged other team owners to focus on the well-
being of their own team, rather than consider the overall future of F1.36
At some point during this period, Ecclestone clearly began to realize the
immense opportunity this afforded him, and set about positioning him-
self at the heart of the sport in a number of different ways. Whilst he
is on record as saying he is more of a tactician than a strategist,37 these
moves clearly indicate that he is highly strategic and long-term in his
thinking. Some of the earliest instances of Ecclestone’s growing influ-
ence were achieved by assuming the jobs others didn’t want: he arranged
to be the sole tyre supplier in F1, and established his own company to
organize F1’s complex seasonal travel logistics.38 These agreements pro-
vided Ecclestone with additional authority and power within the sport,
and a strong personal revenue stream, but he was still an outsider in
terms of the sport’s governance.
A striking example of his ruthlessness to achieve his personal ambi-
tion within the sport would occur during his tenure as a team owner.
Brazilian Nelson Piquet won two WDCs for Brabham, in 1981
and 1983, but the team failed to capture any coveted Constructor’s
Championships. The team’s modus operandi reflected that of Ecclestone
the man: their presentation was immaculate, the team’s engineering and
technology were highly innovative, and they often exploited loopholes
in the sporting and technical regulations to gain competitive advantage.
For example, the team developed a controversial ‘fan car’ in 1978. The
car featured several radical design elements, most notably a large fan at
the rear of the car, ostensibly to aid cooling, but, in reality, to create
a partial vacuum under the car to provide ground-effect aerodynamic
down-force and adhesion. The car had one race outing at the Swedish
GP, where, in the capable hands of double WDC Niki Lauda, it won
convincingly and looked set to dominate the remainder of the season,
37Millar (2013).
38Lovell (2009, pp. 58, 108).
potentially winning a third title for both Lauda and the team. Post-race,
however, the car’s legality was challenged by other team managers.39
Concurrently, Ecclestone was trying to secure legitimate power and
authority by establishing himself in the sport’s administrative hierarchy
through his increasing involvement with Formula One Constructor’s
Association (FOCA), an independent organization intended to balance
the power of the FIA within the sport. Several team owners threatened
to withdraw their support for Ecclestone unless he withdrew the fan car
before the end of the season. Surprisingly, given his competitive nature,
not only did Ecclestone agree, he actually withdrew the car from further
racing immediately, much to the chagrin of Gordon Murray, the team’s
chief designer, and the rest of the team, for whom winning champion-
ships was their prime motivation.40,41 Obviously, Ecclestone’s personal
agenda was of more importance than that of his team.
Building a New Strategic and Entrepreneurial

Vision for F1
Indicative of Ecclestone’s strategic and entrepreneurial vision for F1, he
was instrumental in the 1974 reformation of FOCA, whose mandate
was to organize the financial arrangements for F1 races on behalf of the
teams.42 Prior to this, race organizers paid appearance monies and prize
monies to winning drivers and teams on an ad hoc basis, with little
consistency. Post-1974, organizers were required to consign a total sum
to FOCA, who distributed it among its members in accordance with
a complex formula Ecclestone established, based on participation and
race results. The intention was that all competitors receive some finan-
cial compensation for racing as the costs of competing were escalating
39Orosz (2010).
40Watkins (2010, p. 204).
41Mark and Tracey (2012).
374 S. A. Stuart
and, in those pre-commercial sponsorship days, lesser teams could not

afford to complete a full season of races, particularly the more geograph-
ically remote ones. This change prompted more teams to compete on a
more regular basis.43
This was the first move to establish a strong base for the teams to
work collectively alongside the FIA who set the rules governing F1,
and granted it World Championship status.44 For Ecclestone, who was
the originator of these changes, this was both a tactical and a strate-
gic move. As previously noted, Ecclestone recognized the opportunity
afforded by undertaking administrative tasks others didn’t want to do,
as not only did this give him access to F1’s key players, but by being
empowered to negotiate on their behalf, it gave him a legitimate pow-
erbase on the inside of the sport for the first time. Whilst these actions
gave teams a collective power they did not previously possess, one can
posit Ecclestone clearly understood the FIA did not have either the
vision or resources to optimize F1’s mass appeal, or exploit it com-
mercially, and so FOCA was the vehicle he chose to wrest power and
authority from the FIA.
In late 1978, Ecclestone was appointed President of FOCA, which
further legitimized his authority within the sport. In another demon-
stration of his autocratic style and shrewd nature, he unilaterally
appointed a leading neurosurgeon, Professor Sid Watkins, as F1’s first
medical doctor.45,46 Watkins’ role was to attend every race and specify
trackside medical facilities. In a sport that was beginning to garner more
commercial sponsorship, and which Ecclestone was about to package
for greater broadcast exposure, fiery and violent fatal accidents were not
attractive for mainstream audiences. With Ecclestone’s continued sup-
port, Watkins maintained the position for 27 years, during which time
the sport’s safety improved beyond all measure, with once commonplace
fatalities becoming increasingly rare: no F1 driver has been killed at a
43Henry (2000, p. 200).

44FIA(2013a).
45Watkins (1996, p. 14).
GP since 1994, though in 2015, French driver Jules Bianchi succumbed

to injuries sustained at the 2014 Japanese GP.47
Concurrently, the FIA appointed a new president, Jean-Marie
Balestre, who was aware that FOCA was positioning itself as the author-
ity within F1, and determined to “check FOCA’s unimpeded push
towards overall F1 dominance”.48 Ecclestone’s remit at FOCA included
responsibility for disbursing the income generated by the sport’s spo-
radic TV coverage; as president, he thought that the organization was
in a strong position to claim a bigger share of the money than previ-
ously as its members provided the spectacle being broadcast. This
belief, coupled with FOCA’s burgeoning pre-eminence in F1, led to a
dispute between FOCA and FISA (Fédération Internationale du Sport
Automobile), the sporting arm of the FIA.
The dispute rapidly escalated into a battle to decide where F1’s
authority and power resided. It was clearly a power struggle between
Balestre and Ecclestone.49 Ultimately, after a series of increasingly acri-
monious skirmishes, which began to damage the sport’s image, reputa-
tion, and financial credibility, Ecclestone ceded regulatory power to the
FIA’s sub-organization, FISA, in exchange for gaining control of the
sport’s commercial rights, including the rights to broadcast media.50
This was a strategic setback for Ecclestone and one that would take him
several years and compromises to overcome. However, in the midst of
all this activity, Ecclestone befriended Max Mosley, a legally-trained
executive of the March F1 team, who would become Ecclestone’s key
ally in the future realization of his full vision for the sport: together they
would create a power base that would control both the commercial and
governance of F1.51
As Ecclestone’s influence in F1 expanded, he maintained his port-
folio of privately-held F1-related companies. However, the distinction
47Millward (2015).
48Henry (2003, p. 98).
50Atlas F1 (1999).
51Henry (2000, p. 167).

376 S. A. Stuart
between FOCA and these entities was difficult to discern, even though
it was clearly detailed in the lengthy agreements he drew up between
contracting parties. The settlement between Ecclestone and Balestre
acknowledged two key stakeholders in F1: FOCA and the FIA.
However, Ecclestone now needed to position himself as an independent
entrepreneur, not bound by the strictures of FOCA’s mandate. To do
this, he proposed a legal accord between FISA and FOCA to accom-
plish a variety of outcomes. Signatory teams were required to field com-
petitive cars and drivers in all events organized by FOCA, sanctioned by
FISA, and granted World Championship status by the FIA. The logic
underpinning this move was to guarantee a full competition calendar
for TV broadcasters to build into their schedules. In exchange, all the
teams would receive increased monies from FOCA due to the income
from broadcasting. The FIA would receive a relatively small percentage
of this income in return for stabilizing the competition regulations for
the duration of the agreement. This accord became widely known as the
confidential Concorde Agreement; its signatories bound to secrecy. The
first version of the Agreement covered the years 1981–1987.52
One key addition to the sport’s administration at this time was
Ecclestone’s creation of Formula One Promotions and Administration
(FOPA), a company he wholly owned and to which, in his role as pres-
ident of FOCA, he leased F1’s TV rights.53 By this action, Ecclestone
could legitimately take a percentage of the total income from broad-
casting in exchange for the work he was doing. As all parties to the
Concorde Agreement experienced additional income streams as a result,
nobody questioned the strategic implications of Ecclestone’s move. In
overall terms, FOPA took the largest share of the TV income, the teams
received 47%, and the rest, some 2%, went to the FIA.
Immediately after the first Concorde Agreement was signed,
Ecclestone negotiated a deal with the European Broadcasting Union
(EBU), the world’s foremost alliance of public service broadcasters
52The Economist (2000a).

53The Economist (1997).
(PSB) that ran until 1990. Under the terms of this deal, member organ-
izations agreed to broadcast each race in the World Championship
season in its entirety. This was strategically important for Ecclestone as
he could now guarantee that each race had a full field of competitive
entrants, and that each race, with a maximum duration of 2 hours, was
guaranteed exposure in a given number of countries, with a quantifiable
number of viewers. By these two moves, Ecclestone created a sporting
vehicle that made sound commercial sense to a large number of cor-
porations looking to promote their goods and services to a significant
international audience, particularly via PSB’s whose policies were highly
restrictive towards direct advertising.54
Ecclestone thus created a market with very high potential returns.
Rapidly thereafter the TV audience for F1 grew to exceed that of
spectators who physically attended races. It is another example where
Ecclestone’s obsession with order and precision benefitted the sport’s
progression: by originating such a package, he could ensure F1’s uni-
form and consistent presentation to the world. Concurrently, Ecclestone
gained control of the rights to trackside advertising at nearly all F1
events. He channelled revenues away from FISA and FOCA into
FOPA’s coffers, thus avoiding the need to share it with the sport’s other
participants. In effect, this series of moves, culminating in the signing
of the Concorde Agreement, established Ecclestone as F1’s third major
stakeholder, alongside FISA/FIA and FOCA.55
The Concorde Agreement proved to be a highly successful mecha-
nism to control the sport. In 1987, it was renewed for a further five
years, and again from 1992 to 1996. Each time the core components
remained similar, with detail changes to accommodate improvements
in technology, changes to the regulations, and new market conditions.
A fourth iteration was signed in 1995, which was in effect until 2002.
Subsequent iterations have remained in place and, in late September
2013, all parties agreed a further iteration of the basic Agreement which
55The Economist (2000b).
378 S. A. Stuart
remains in effect until the end of 2020.56 Whilst there have been several
challenges to the Concorde Agreement over the years,57 either from
teams seeking more income from, or control over, the sport, or from
the FIA who wished to negotiate the implementation of new regula-
tions regarding energy efficiency, it has proven to be an effective device,
albeit one that has advantaged Ecclestone significantly beyond any other
party. In 2015 a new challenge to Ecclestone’s authority was launched
by the announcement of an investigation, at the behest of two teams,
by the European Union Competition Commission into the sport’s gov-
ernance and the distribution of its revenues amongst stakeholders,58,59
though by early 2017 no further action had been taken.60
Between 1977 and 1982, Max Mosley, Ecclestone’s long-term friend
and ally acted as FOCA’s legal advisor, after which he left the sport until
1986 when Ecclestone worked to get Mosley involved in motorsport’s
governance. Through some political manoeuvring, and in an adminis-
trative plot to oust Balestre from the FIA, Ecclestone used his position
on the FIA’s World Motorsport Council to successfully propose Mosley
as president of FISA’s Manufacturer’s Commission. Seven years later,
Mosley had embedded himself in the FIA hierarchy sufficiently well
to launch an effective campaign against Balestre. In 1993 Mosley was
elected President of the FIA.61
At that point, Ecclestone’s long-term vision was almost complete.
He directly or indirectly controlled most of F1’s operational aspects:
TV rights, trackside advertising, venue merchandizing, corporate hos-
pitality, championship logistics, prize fund distribution, tyre sup-
plies, the competition calendar, and the selection of new race hosts,
and now his close ally and former partner headed the international
sport organization that granted F1 its World Championship status,
set the rules, and provided the overall framework for its governance.
56Saward (2013c).
57Henry (2003, p. 75).
58Saward (2015b).
59Anon (2015a).
60Saward (2016).
61FIA (2013b).
During this period Ecclestone’s authority grew; not only was he

appointed VP FIA Promotional Affairs, he was also elected a member of
the FIA Senate, a post he held until 2014.
In 1995, during negotiations for the fourth Concorde Agreement,
and in a move not anticipated by any of the teams, the FIA Senate,
which included Ecclestone, voted to award the lease for all F1’s com-
mercial rights to Formula One Administration (FOA) for a period of
14 years. In exchange, the FIA and teams would receive a fixed annual
payment. Ecclestone was the president and owner of FOA, so this gave
him sole and direct control over all of F1’s assets, including its TV
rights. In a single move, this removed much of FOCA’s power, and
had a negative influence on their ability to negotiate from a position
of strength in the future, and the Association gradually fell apart leav-
ing each team to negotiate directly with Ecclestone. Three teams chal-
lenged the FIA’s decision, but eventually had to admit defeat, as they
did not have the resources to take Ecclestone on.62 When the fourth
Concorde Agreement was signed, these three teams were significantly
disadvantaged until the fifth Agreement was negotiated in 1998. Due to
the power he wielded, Ecclestone was able to divide and rule the sport
as he pleased. In true autocratic style, he became renowned for pitch-
ing team against team in acrimonious talks regarding the money each
should receive from broadcast and other revenues for competing in the
World Championship,63 an argument that still rages on,64 and will con-
sume much of Liberty Media’s attention in the immediate future.
Over the next few years, F1 transitioned from being just a wealthy
sport to become a global sport entertainment property commanding bil-
lions of dollars in revenues, with a truly worldwide media reach, and a
global TV audience in the hundreds of millions. Despite objections from
the sport’s traditionalists and political activists, Ecclestone worked tire-
lessly to promote F1 into lucrative new and emerging markets in Asia
(e.g., Azerbaijan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, and India)
62Henry (2000, p. 307).

63Parr (2012, p. 76).
64Allen (2016).
380 S. A. Stuart
and the Middle East (Bahrain and Abu Dhabi) where governments paid
handsomely to host a GP to boost to their country’s image. He also
extended his personal experience, as he became both a circuit owner
(Paul Ricard in France), and a race promoter (Turkey). Ecclestone tried
to float F1 on the financial markets to raise a significant amount of cash
for himself, his family trust, and a few other much smaller sharehold-
ers. The initial floatation was abandoned due to several factors, including
serious dissent among a number of teams who believed they deserved a
greater decision making role in the sport and also an increased share of
the revenues it generated; a situation that continues today. As an alter-
native, and to capitalize on the work he had undertaken over the previ-
ous three decades, Ecclestone and his advisors put together a bond issue
against F1’s future earnings. The issue was a success from his perspec-
tive as he and his family trust netted c. $1.4 billion.65 However, it was
not a commercial success for the banks behind the deal as they ended up
assuming considerable debt. Whilst this had several far-reaching ramifi-
cations for Ecclestone, the banks, and F1, he managed to retain execu-
tive control of F1 throughout this period whilst holding a small minority
shareholding through an issue of preferential voting shares.
In an unprecedented move in 2000, five years into the 14-year
commercial rights lease, the FIA Senate granted Formula One World
Championship Limited (FOWC),66 the company Ecclestone estab-
lished in 2001 to succeed FOA, a 100-year lease on F1’s commercial
rights in exchange for $360 million, payable in instalments over a num-
ber of years.67,68 Given that Ecclestone’s company enjoyed annual reve-
nues in excess of $500 million from the sale of F1’s TV rights alone, this
new deal was extraordinary and illustrates the hold that Ecclestone had
over the sport and its stakeholders, and his strength in negotiations. His
company, or its appointees, stood to gain a potential return of $50 bil-
lion from broadcast revenues alone, on an investment of $360 million
65The Economist (2000c).

66Formula One World Championship Limited (2016).
67The Economist (2000d).
68Mosley (2015, p. 222).

(not factoring in inflation). When one factors in the other income the
sport generates via race promotion fees, trackside advertising, corporate
hospitality, and all the other revenue streams, the return is spectacularly
egregious. This time, the FIA had sold its crown jewels for a pittance
and, so it seemed, no one was too concerned. However, one factor that
may have influenced this move was the commencement of an inquiry
by the EU Competition Commissioner into the way international mot-
orsport was organized and commercially exploited.69 In particular, the
commissioner was concerned with the way the FIA appeared to restrict
competition and accept Ecclestone’s apparent conflict of interest by
being a member of the Senate that voted to give his companies access
to lucrative contracts. When the 100-year deal was announced, the
Competition Commission renewed its efforts, but, after two years, the
Commission, now headed by Mario Monti, a future Prime Minister of
Italy, decided that there was no case to answer,70 and issued an apology
to the FIA about the manner in which aspects of their investigation had
been handled.71
Discussion and Conclusion

Over the past six decades, 86-year old Ecclestone devoted his consid-
erable entrepreneurial skills and boundless energy to single-handedly
establish F1 as a global sporting property with an established market
value in 2016 of $8bn.72 For someone who left school at 16 with no
qualifications, this is a profound and extraordinary achievement, espe-
cially considering that until early 2017 Ecclestone remained in day-to-
day executive control of all the sport’s operational aspects. However,
since Max Mosley stepped aside as FIA president in favour of Jean Todt,
the organization started to recover control over some areas of the sport,
69The Economist (2000e).

70BBC (2001).
71GrandPrix.com.
72Liberty Media Corporation (2016).

382 S. A. Stuart
looking to extract more annual revenue for itself. Additionally, now

firmly in control, Liberty Media will surely enact further change on the
administration and organization of the sport once it has had some time
to understand what it has purchased.
When Ecclestone first encountered F1 it was managed amateurishly
by wealthy aristocrats, largely for their own pleasure; there was lit-
tle consideration for its various audiences beyond trackside spectators.
Alone, Ecclestone constructed a vision that embraced several technol-
ogies to enrich the ‘show’, and brought together different elements that
he leveraged against each other to add value to the sport at almost every
interaction. Through his autocratic leadership,73 he packaged the sport
into a unified commodity that has been bought and sold several times,
whilst, through each transaction until the most recent he has prof-
ited and remained as its chief executive. This packaging also attracted
an ongoing succession of global corporate sponsors, a large worldwide
TV broadcast audience, the government and statesmen of many nation
states, and a plethora of glamorous celebrities: each adds a different
dimension to the sport’s considerable cachet and entertainment value.
In so doing, Ecclestone exhibited both an autocratic style and a ruth-
lessness to get things done. In a 2015 interview with the daughter of for-
mer Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze for RT, a state-sponsored
Russian international television network, Ecclestone was asked whether
he had the courage to get things done where others did not.74 His reply,
that he did, echoed his previously stated admiration for strong, auto-
cratic leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and, more controversially,
Adolf Hitler who “made decisions on the run and got the job done”.75
Ecclestone then stated that one of the few world leaders he admired was
Russian president Vladimir Putin. Subsequently, Ecclestone tellingly
agreed that he considered himself and Putin to be in the “same club”
with similar leadership characteristics: “really strong, very powerful,
very charismatic, and in control of a seeming democracy”. It is therefore
73Motorsport(1983).
74Russia Today(2015).
75The Guardian (2009).
unsurprising that Ecclestone has, on several occasions, stated his admira-

tion for the Presidency of autocratic Donald Trump.76
Ecclestone’s comments on this ‘seeming democracy’ reveal a strong
belief that having an authoritarian and autocratic leader is the best way
to get things done: “I don’t think there’s any place for democracy …
anywhere … F1 appears to be a democracy … [but] … I think if you
can get people to fall in line with what you’re trying to do … then it
seems like democracy”.77
During the same interview, Ecclestone talked about Sepp Blatter, then
under-attack for his “criminal mismanagement and misappropriation”,78
defending the FIFA president, saying that if people have been corrupted
to make football happen “it’s good… it’s a tax football had to pay”. This
attitude, combining autocratic tendencies with a disregard for due legal
process or accepted ethical business practice, perhaps reflects his perspec-
tive on his own actions to promote F1 over the years.
He was also a consummate gamesman: whenever confronted by
a situation where others appeared to be gaining a strong position,
Ecclestone managed to devise a tactical distraction to deflect attention
whilst he manoeuvred himself into a stronger position. Whilst many
people have lost considerable amounts of money as they chased their
dream of putting an F1 car on the grid, or of hosting a GP, Ecclestone
always achieved greater wealth and acquired more legitimate power and
authority. In true ‘cuckoo’ fashion, the outsider became the insider, and
pushed many others aside.
Yet, as seen, Ecclestone was also capable of demonstrating great
compassion and loyalty to those he befriended. There were countless
instances of Ecclestone personally helping teams, their owners, and
drivers, survive in difficult economic circumstances by directing spon-
sorship opportunities their way, by advancing expected future earnings,
or by injecting his own funds into their cash flows; though there was
often an unspoken strategic expectation of unwavering loyalty in return.
76Autoweek (2016).
77Russia Today(2015).
78The Federal Council of Switzerland (2015).
384 S. A. Stuart
Throughout Ecclestone’s long career, he encountered much dissent

and resistance, and he was often the locus for controversy, for example,
when he donated £1 million to the British Labour party immediately
prior to their granting F1 an exemption to the country’s tobacco advertis-
ing restrictions.79,80 However, whilst he is often the cause of controversy,
he has a great talent for “getting himself out of trouble”,81 as demon-
strated many times during his career. Ecclestone’s obsession with details,
and his ability to think highly strategically and consider several tactical
moves ahead of his contemporaries allowed him to outmanoeuvre those
who thought in terms of the immediate, which included most of those in
F1. When the other parties involved in a negotiation realized Ecclestone
engineered a situation to his own, often considerable, advantage, as in the
reassigning of F1’s commercial rights from FOCA to FOPA, they com-
plained about his tactics and the outcome. Several times in recent years
different entities involved in F1 proposed by-passing Ecclestone and
establishing alternate Formula series to rival F1, but they always came to
nought, often due to the closeness of Ecclestone’s relationship with the
FIA, which is the only body empowered to confer World Championship
status on international motor racing events.
As mentioned previously, several legal challenges to Ecclestone’s
authority and decision-making were mounted, though they were largely
unsuccessful. For example, in 2014, Ecclestone stood trial in Munich
for the alleged bribery of Gerhard Gribkowsky, the person employed by
BayernLB, a one-time part owner of F1, to evaluate the bank’s share-
holding prior to its 2006 sale to CVC Capital Partners. Gribkowsky
is currently serving a nine-year sentence for accepting $45m from
Ecclestone to falsely lower this evaluation. Ecclestone denied all wrong-
doing.82,83 His defence argued Gribkowsky was blackmailing Ecclestone
over his personal tax affairs, which were subject to a subsequently
79Bower (2011, pp. 196–200).

80Stephens and Comer (2013, p. 802).
81Mosley (2015, p. 96).
82Blitz (2013).
83Tremayne (2012).
dropped criminal investigation in the UK. As proceedings drew to

a close, Ecclestone brokered a deal with the Bavarian state prosecutor
to pay $100m for all charges against him to be dropped—a possibility
under German law.84 Such was Ecclestone’s liquidity he paid the fine
immediately.
Almost concurrently, the New York Appeals Court dismissed a
related $650m lawsuit against Ecclestone brought by Bluewater
Communication for Gribkowsky’s bribery85: the company intended
to buy BayernLB’s stake in 2006, but Gribkowsky’s illegal interven-
tion prevented that. There is still an outstanding claim for $500m from
BayernLB against Ecclestone in this matter86 that he refuses to settle out
of court”.87
These complex cases reveal Ecclestone’s cavalier attitude to legal pro-
cesses in realizing his long-term ambitions for F1 and himself. He relied
heavily on detailed and convoluted contracts to lock the sport’s various
stakeholders into their relative positions, yet treated the law with impu-
nity when it came to any impediment to his autocratic progression: he
bullied or bought his way forward. His penchant for associating with
princes, presidents, and premiers aided him in cultivating an aura of
invincibility, as he clearly perceived himself to be above the ethical and
legal rules that guide others.
However, the long-running drama surrounding ownership of the
sport, and the disputed distribution of the revenues derived from its
commercial rights, threatened to bring the sport into disrepute, and
ultimately Ecclestone’s image and standing suffered. He was encouraged
to resign from the FIA Senate in 2014, and, as a result of the debacle in
Germany, temporarily stepped aside from his roles within FOG, though
he eventually resumed executive control of the organization. Whilst in
2016 he had his mandate renewed by the sport’s new owner, Liberty
Media, he was replaced as CEO in January 2017 by Chairman, Chase
84Fontevecchia (2014).
85Anon (2015b).
86Associated Press (2015).
87Sylt (2015).
386 S. A. Stuart
Carey, and made Chairman Emeritus, a positon no executive authority.

Effectively, Ecclestone was gone from F1, the sport he nurtured over so
many years.
Possibly Ecclestone’s biggest contribution to sport was the entrepre-
neurial conceptualization of F1 as a sport entertainment package that
could simultaneously service corporate sponsorship needs, and satisfy a
worldwide TV audience willing to pay for F1’s glamorous, high drama
spectacle. The only tangible flaw in the model was the inability to
embrace digital platforms sufficiently to bypass broadcasters and deliver
F1 directly to paying customers. This is a challenge most sports need to
confront over the decade ahead, and Liberty Media seem well-placed to
find a solution which will only increase the sport’s popularity and add
to the money flowing into it.
It is unlikely that the sequence of opportunities F1 afforded
Ecclestone will arise in other sports in the same form, but his exam-
ple shows the value of an organization following the inspirational stra-
tegic vision of a founder-CEO to package a property in such a way
as to make it easy for people in different constituencies to embrace.
Ecclestone was aware that F1 is a product for a global TV audience,
and he used his considerable authority to develop his vision whilst
providing abundant exposure for drivers, teams, hosts, and sponsors.
Participatory management often dilutes such vision to make it palat-
able to shareholders. Dilution can inhibit dynamic development, and
it is highly unlikely F1, under the direction of the FIA Senate, World
Motorsport Council, or an independent board of directors would have
achieved the same level of success it enjoyed under Ecclestone’s auto-
cratic leadership.
People often compare F1 to a circus; in other words, it is a travel-
ling company of players giving performances in a series of different
locations around the world. In many ways, this is an apt description
for the itinerant cohort of globetrotting athletes, engineers, managers
and others who stage a series of sport spectacles that are broadcast to a
global audience promoting the many consumer and corporate brands
associated with the sport, its teams, and its drivers. In using this anal-
ogy, Bernie Ecclestone was the sport’s autocratic, consummate and
omniscient ringmaster. He was consistently the most visible performer,

the most important person who groomed and stage-managed all the
other performers, as he directed the attention of each of the different
audiences to sections of the performance arena he wanted them to see,
as he simultaneously constructed and deconstructed other entities away
from the spotlight.
As Liberty Media took control of the sport in January 2017, F1
resolved the dilemma of Ecclestone’s succession88 by appointing Chase
Carey as CEO, with media executive Sean Bratches becoming respon-
sible for the sport’s commercial aspects, and Ross Brawn, architect of
multiple World Championships during his long career in F1, assuming
responsibility for its technical and racing aspects.89 Ecclestone devel-
oped the sport into a relatively stable coalition between the FIA, teams
and other, often short-term, stakeholders, and personally maintained a
delicate balance between them. He had not spent much time groom-
ing anyone to undertake his omniscient role, and whilst Brawn is no
stranger to the politics and Machiavellian ways of F1, it will perhaps be
difficult for Carey and Bratches to readily grasp the considerable com-
plexities of the many roles Ecclestone occupied for so long. Potentially,
this does not bode well for the sport as, historically, few of F1’s previous
stakeholders have shown any capability of seeing beyond their individ-
ual needs. F1, like most entrepreneurial businesses, needs Liberty Media
to give Carey and his team legitimate authority to lead the sport into
a new era. This untried trio of managers will need a clear and cohesive
vision for the sport, and be capable of implementing it in a way that
makes it attractive to all parties. It will perhaps be difficult for the sport
to find a successful formula for agreement post-Ecclestone, the auto-
cratic entrepreneur to whom, despite his several major flaws, the sport
owes much.
88Ciolfi and Stuart (2013).

89Richards (2017b).
388 S. A. Stuart
Biography by Key Dates
1930: Born Bernard Charles Ecclestone, St Peter South Elmham,

Suffolk, UK.
1946: Formed Compton & Ecclestone motorcycle dealership.
1949: Raced in 500 cc Formula 3 series.
1957: Managed Stuart Lewis-Evans (Formula 1 racing driver) until
his death in 1958.
1958: Purchased 2 F1 Connaught racing chassis.
1969: Manager of Jochen Rindt (Formula 1 racing driver), subse-
quently the sport’s only posthumous World Champion (1970).
1971 Buys Brabham Formula 1 team for £100,000.
1974: Co-Founder of FOCA (Formula One Constructor’s Association).
1978: President of FOCA.
1980: Power struggle with FIA International Sporting Commission
(FISA) President, -Jean-Marie Balestre.
1981: First Concorde Agreement, a contract between FISA and
FOCA establishing the terms by which teams participate, and
their share of broadcast revenues and prize monies.
1981: FIA lease F1 commercial rights to FOCA.
1981: Signed agreement with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to
televise every round of the F1 World Championship in its entirety.
1986: Elected to FIA World Motorsport Council.
1987: Created FOPA (Formula One Promotions and Administration)
to lease F1’s commercial rights from FOCA.
1987: Second Concorde Agreement.
1987: Appointed VP of FIA Promotional Affairs.
1987: Sold Brabham F1 Team for £5 million.
1990: Race promoter of the Belgian GP.
1990: EBU contract not renewed to enable F1 broadcast to be sold to
commercial broadcasters.
1992: Third Concorde Agreement.
1995: Created FOA (Formula One Administration); FIA Senate uni-
laterally grants FOA an exclusive 14-year lease to F1’s commer-
cial rights, including broadcast revenues.
1997: Fourth Concorde Agreement.

1998: Fifth Concorde Agreement.
1999: Nets $1.4 billion for himself and his family trust from a bond
issue against F1’s future earnings.
1999: Buys Paul Ricard circuit in France.
2000: FOA granted an exclusive 100-year lease on F1’s commercial rights.
2005: CVC Capital Partners acquire majority shareholding in F1
whilst retaining Ecclestone as CEO.
2007: Co-Owner Queens Park Rangers (QPR) Premier League soccer
team.
2009: Sixth Concorde Agreement.
2011: Sells his interest in QPR.
2013: Seventh Concorde Agreement.
2013: Ecclestone indicted for alleged bribery of a Bayern Landesbank
executive to undervalue their shareholding before its sale to
CVC Capital Partners in 2005.
2014: F1 $10bn, planned floatation on the Singapore Stock Exchange
scrapped.
2014: Charges relating to the alleged bribery of Gerhard Gribkowsky
dropped by the German prosecutor in exchange for $100m.
2015: Ecclestone joins forces with Max Mosley to criticize the current
format of F1.
2016: Retained as CEO after the acquisition of a controlling interest
in F1 by Liberty Media.
2017: Removed from his position as CEO and given the honorary
position of chairman emeritus.
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15
Jagmohan Dalmiya: The Prometheus
of Modern Cricket?
Souvik Naha
Introduction
To mark its 25th anniversary in 2005, the International Journal of the
History of Sport, published by Taylor & Francis, announced three
awards for excellence in sport administration. 250 internationally
acclaimed scholars of sport studies were asked to nominate the ‘fore-
most statesmen of modern sport in the last quarter century’.1 Among
the three winners were the most recognisable sport patriarchs of the late
twentieth century—the FIFA president Sepp Blatter and the former
IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. The third person, Jagmohan
Dalmiya, was relatively unknown as the elite level of the sport he
1Press release of History of Sport Achievement Awards, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/press/
FHSP_pr.pdf, accessed on 7 July 2016.
S. Naha (*)
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_15
396 S. Naha
governed—cricket—was represented by a small number of coun-

tries. Dalmiya, an official of the Board of Control for Cricket in India
(BCCI)‚ was the first non-white person to become the president of the
International Cricket Council (ICC), and also the first Asian to occupy
such an important position in global sport. While presenting him the
award at a ceremony in Kolkata, J.A. Mangan, the journal’s Executive
Editor, acknowledged Dalmiya’s ‘substantial role in ensuring the shift of
power, prestige and prominence of the sport to South Asia from where
it was before’.2 The rationale of selecting Dalmiya ahead of many other
famous sport administrators was given as follows:
An adroit politician and entrepreneur, he engineered the commercialisa-

tion of cricket in India and made the BCCI the richest cricketing body in
the world. As chairman of the ICC from 1997 to 2000 he masterminded
the globalisation of cricket. The vast revenue he generated from sponsor-
ship and broadcasting rights prompted The Wall Street Journal to describe
him as ‘The man who converted cricket into a multimillion dollar indus-
try’. He has also mounted peace initiatives through cricket, such as his
campaign to have South Africa re-admitted to international competition
in 1991.3
Dalmiya was born into a Marwari family of the baniya (trader) caste,
in the Sikar district in Rajasthan on 30 May 1940. His family moved
to Kolkata soon after his birth. While studying in Scottish Church
College, he played for Jorabagan and Rajasthan club as a wicketkeeper-
batsman in Kolkata’s cricket league. His father’s untimely death put
an end to his playing ambitions as he had to run the family’s building
construction firm, M.L. Dalmiya and Co. He stayed in contact with
the Rajasthan club’s officials while prospering in business, preparing
to return to cricket as an administrator. Starting at this small club as a
member of its working committee in 1977, he soon moved up the hier-
archy of cricket administration and became the treasurer of the Cricket
2‘Dalmiya receives IJHS award’, http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/story/213643.html,

accessed on 7 July 2016.
3Jonathan Manley, ‘The International Journal of the History of Sport Announces its History of
Sport Achievement Award Winners’, Editors’ Bulletin 1, no. 2 (2005): p. 39.

15 Jagmohan Dalmiya: The Prometheus of Modern Cricket? 397
Association of Bengal (CAB) later in the same year. Although very

few cricketers from the state ever made the national team, cricket was
highly popular in the state and the CAB the richest sport association
in India, profiting from the sold out Test matches held in Kolkata. The
CAB secretary and BCCI official Biswanath Dutt appointed Dalmiya
the deputy treasurer of the BCCI in 1979. Thus began a career that saw
him scale the pinnacle of cricket administration, then expelled from his
national cricket association on charges of corruption, and finally acquit-
ted by court and reinstated into office months before his death. In his
40-year career as a cricket administrator, Dalmiya played a pivotal role
in uplifting the Indian cricket board’s stake in world cricket and making
the ICC financially solvent for the first time since its establishment in
1909. He married a Bengali woman from a landowning household, and
had a son and a daughter.
It is difficult to use official documents such as committee reports
and minutes of meetings held during Dalmiya’s tenure, or oral tes-
timony, for writing his biography. Most of the relevant reports are
classified due to their immediacy, and not made available to general
scholars. In addition, both Dalmiya’s associates and opponents are
reluctant to discuss his policies, many of which are still in place, and
to criticise the recently deceased. Hence, apart from a few reminis-
cences, his representation in the press remains all that communicates
the traces of his leadership. A clear idea of the nature of sources for
biographical research is an important aspect of history-writing. The
historian John Bale discusses this in his study of the kinesiologist
and physical educator Ernst Jokl, identifying several layers of truth
in the representation of the subject.4 Bale refers to the contradic-
tory information about Jokl’s athletic career and the divided opinion
about the latter’s academic merit as constitutive of the ambigu-
ity that defines the materials used to write scholarly biographies.
Uncertain information raise more doubts than answers, and hence
4John Bale, ‘The Mysterious Professor Jokl’, in Writing Lives in Sport: Biographies, Life-Histories
and Methods, edited by John Bale, Mette Krogh Christensen and Gertrud Pfister (Aarhus: Aarhus
University Press, 2004), pp. 25–40.
398 S. Naha
the historian’s task, Bale says, should be to explore ambivalence

instead of fixating on accuracy. The press built up a very contentious
account of Dalmiya as he straddled a number of intersecting, and
conflicting, social and cultural worlds. Reconstruction of his modus
operandi from press reports must recognise how journalists from
different countries responded to his ambition, ethnicity and occu-
pational background. While a comprehensive treatment is too ambi-
tious for the scope of this chapter, it refers to certain events from
Dalmiya’s life and explores their ramification in the context of sport
administration.
The Beginning
Dalmiya proved his mettle in administration soon after joining the
CAB when he partnered the secretary Biswanath Dutt in restructur-
ing the distribution of tickets among affiliated clubs and other dis-
tricts. Previously, influential clubs such as East Bengal, Mohun Bagan,
and Sporting Union received more tickets than the smaller clubs. The
new committee annulled this privilege, and began distributing an even
number of tickets to every club in the same division. They allocated
327 tickets to Kolkata’s first division clubs and 227 tickets to sec-
ond division clubs. Dalmiya justified giving equal number of tickets
to districts irrespective of their area and population, arguing that terri-
torial units in a democratic country deserved the right of equal partic-
ipation in a national event. He claimed to have taken proper steps to
reduce black marketing of tickets during the India–Pakistan Test match
in 1980, saying that no more than 7000 tickets were illegally sold and
most of the tickets went to middle class patrons. The new ticket dis-
tribution system proved to be a masterstroke as Dutt and Dalmiya
garnered mass support from the clubs, which helped them to a land-
slide win in the next CAB election. Former CAB administrators such
as Amarendranath Ghosh and Bechu Datta Ray sought to control a
handful of the larger clubs and expected the smaller clubs to capitulate
for crumbs of benefit. The new committee outmanoeuvred them by
forming a cluster of smaller clubs which conveniently outvoted the old
guard.5 Understandably, the rhetoric of democratic right and equitable

distribution shrouded a keen political acumen that became visible soon
enough on the election platform. This incident signalled a pattern in
Dalmiya’s method of operation. The same strategy later won him the
ICC’s presidential election.
Dalmiya showed excellent managerial skills from the very begin-
ning. During the 1980 Test match in Kolkata, the Pakistani crick-
eter Sadiq Mohammad brought a female guest to the ground. As the
guards refused to admit her without a ticket, he threatened to pull out
of the match. Dalmiya salvaged the situation by offering the cricketer a
guest pass from his personal quota.6 Another Pakistani cricketer, Javed
Miandad, held him in high esteem as an ever helpful friend. These
gestures, along with his policy of staying away from politics, greatly
endeared Dalmiya to the Pakistan Cricket Board, paving the path for
a number of cricket series between India and Pakistan when diplomatic
relationship between the two was strained. Admittedly in recognition
of Dalmiya’s ability and judgment of character, which was probably
bred by years of managing business, Dutt made him the BCCI’s deputy
treasurer. Dalmiya pointed out as many as 54 errors in the annual audit
for 1980–1981, leading to the discovery of inconsistent sums of unap-
proved expenditures. The BCCI president S.K. Wankhede, afraid of the
scandal hurting his prospect of reappointment in the upcoming election
in 1981, appointed the Minister of State for Information, N.K.P. Salve,
to rectify the accounts. Instead of bending to the gratuity, Salve, sup-
ported by Dalmiya and Inderjit Singh Bindra, president of the Punjab
Cricket Association, led a group of office-bearers to end Wankhede’s
tenure. Wankhede was asked to step down in return for special invi-
tation to all BCCI meetings in the future, which he accepted.7 Salve
became the president and Dalmiya, then the CAB secretary, the new
treasurer. As a Congress politician, Salve was close to the Indian prime
5Subhas Dutta, ‘Test Asonno: Kon Bhagyobanra Ticket Pelen Ba Paben’, Khelar Asar 5, no. 34
(1981), pp. 14–15.
6Amrita Bazar Patrika, 31 January 1980, p. 8.
7Makrand Waingankar, ‘Past Tense: How the Earlier Boardroom Battles Were Fought…and Lost’,
The Times of India, 22 September 2005, p. 21.

400 S. Naha
minister, Indira Gandhi, and had the government’s full support when
he mooted the idea of organising the 1987 World Cup in India.
Dalmiya drafted the bid for the 1987 tournament, to be co-organised
by India and Pakistan, in consultation with his Board colleagues and
members of the Pakistan Cricket Board, the chief executive Arif Ali
Abbasi in particular. The two countries set their political rivalry aside
and collaborated to bring home world cricket’s most prestigious event.
Seven full members of the ICC—England, Australia, West Indies,
New Zealand, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, who were entitled to play
five-day Test matches—were offered £200,000. Qualifying associate
members—countries in the second tier of international cricket that
are periodically given a chance to compete with full members in one-
day matches—were promised £175,000 as participation fee. The other
contender for hosting the tournament, England, offered £53,900 and
inflation between the 1983 World Cup and the date of payment to full
members and £30,200 to qualifying nations. In comparison with the
sum of £99,500 offered as prize money by India and Pakistan, England’s
purse was £53,000. Although its bid was significantly weaker, England
tried to subvert India’s offer with Australia’s help. It invoked rule
4 (C) of the ICC’s rulebook, which said, ‘Recommendations to mem-
ber countries are to be made by a majority of full members present
and voting and one of which in such majority should be a Foundation
member’. Since none of the two founding members of the ICC—
England and Australia—were willing to support the Asians, a majority
of votes would not have helped India and Pakistan. However, the ICC
Chairman ruled that a simple majority would be sufficient for deciding
the host, leading to a win for India and Pakistan.8 Thus began Dalmiya’s
long confrontation with England, and India’s ascendency among the
power elite of world cricket.
Dalmiya realised that to make cricket more entertaining and cred-
itable, it was necessary to reduce human errors such as umpiring
mistakes. In 1987, he proposed equipping field umpires with pocket
8Boria Majumdar, Twenty-two Yards to Freedom: Social History of Indian Cricket (New Delhi:
Penguin, 2004), pp. 408–409.

television sets for instantly watching action replay if they were not
certain about a decision.9 English cricket umpires opposed the sug-
gestion, saying that broadcast technology was not so advanced in
countries such as Pakistan to enable proper implementation of
this measure, and that the right of field umpires to pass judgments
should not be interfered with. Their statements evinced not only a
latent disregard for the quality of organisation of cricket in the sub-
continent but also scorn for the subcontinent’s effort to upstage tra-
dition in favour of superfluous modernity. The cricket establishment
soon recognised the need for technological assistance to umpires, and
instituted the position of a third umpire in 1992. If the field umpires
found it difficult to take a decision, they could refer the case to an
off-field umpire who, with access to multi-angle and slow-motion
action replay on a television screen, conveyed decisions by switching
on red or green lights. This practice revolutionised the game by reduc-
ing the number of umpiring errors. It has been gradually expanded so
that field umpires can now confer with the third umpire before signal-
ling any decision. Although Dalmiya received no recognition for his
pioneering idea, he moved forward with other projects that gradually
strengthened his position as a power broker.
Consolidation
The 1987 World Cup marked Dalmiya’s first step into the adminis-
tration of world cricket. Apart from his important contribution to the
tournament, he proved to be an excellent negotiator between politi-
cians and cricket administrators. He convinced the Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi to waive the Rs. 400,000 tax imposed on the roller and mower
imported from Australia for use during the World Cup.10 Dalmiya’s first
seat of power materialised at the BCCI elections for 1990–1991, in which
Madhavrao Scindia defeated Biswanath Dutt by 16 to 15 votes to become
9Graham Baker, ‘Stupid Idea, Says Alley’, Daily Mirror, 15 August 1987, p. 33.
10The Statesman, 2 October 1987, p. 14.
402 S. Naha
the president, and Dalmiya won by an identical margin against C. Nagraj

for the post of secretary.11 His business acumen immensely benefitted the
BCCI. A prime example is his negotiation with the Indian home appli-
ances manufacturer Videocon International after the company withdrew
its sponsorship of the ongoing Asia Cup and withheld payment of Rs.
750‚000 to the BCCI. When the BCCI threatened to sue Videocone, the
latter said that its contract was not with the Board but with the Delhi-
based Radiant Sports Management, the company in charge of promot-
ing the Asia Cup. In a bleak situation, Dalmiya issued a statement that
Videocon would continue to sponsor the tournament as if no violation
of contract had occurred.12 It transpired latter that in a meeting with
two representatives of the company, N. Gupta and Anand Panshikar, he
had convinced the sponsor to honour the agreement.13 He fought many
legal battles alongside Bindra to increase the Board’s revenue‚ most nota-
bly against Doordarshan, the state-controlled television which monop-
olised distribution of cricket matches in India without paying anything
and sometimes even demanded money to telecast cricket. He extracted
a landmark decision from the Supreme Court in 1993 to deregularise
the Doordarshan’s right of free telecast, which enabled the BCCI to sell
television rights of cricket matches at a premium. The financial wind-
fall generated by the move began BCCI’s journey to the apex of cricket
administration. Another momentous achievement was the successful
proposition for South Africa’s readmission to cricket at the ICC annual
meeting in June 1991. Geoff Dakin, president of the South African Board,
recalled that Dalmiya proposed a tour during his goodwill visit to Kolkata
and fixed a schedule after 48-hours of planning. The outcomes were a his-
toric cricket tour and South Africa’s support for Dalmiya’s future ventures,
most importantly in his bid to seize power within the ICC.
On 25 September 1992, the Board announced its intention to
submit a combined bid with Pakistan and Sri Lanka (PILCOM) to
11TOI, 23 September 1990, p. 20.

12TOI, 30 December 1990, p. 16.
13TOI, 4 January 1991, p. 22.
organise the World Cup in 1996. Dalmiya, appointed the coordina-

tor of the organising committee, drafted the bid document in consul-
tation with his subcontinental counterparts. Both the Asian coalition
and England bid £5 million but the former offered more money to
associate countries, to be used to develop cricket in those countries.
Moreover, the Asian bid allowed teams to sign two independent con-
tracts for jersey logos which would enable the latter to earn a min-
imum of £100,000, whereas the English bid stipulated the organiser’s
right to determine the jersey sponsor and the revenue thus generated.
16 of the 19 associate members voted in favour of the Asian bid due
to greater financial benefit. Dalmiya developed an ingenious plan to
arrange these votes. He had noticed that many of the associate mem-
bers lacked the resources to travel to ICC meetings. They, therefore,
relied on English representatives who were more loyal to England than
their association. To ensure that these intermediaries could not sabo-
tage the combined bid‚ Dalmiya convinced the Reserve Bank of India
to release sufficient foreign exchange to sponsor direct participation
of the associate members in the ICC meeting on 2 February 1993.
The Asian bid won on the merit of huge support, reminding one
of Dalmiya’s control over the small clubs in Kolkata.
The World Cup turned a new leaf in the book of cricket’s com-
mercialisation. The Indian television rights were sold for $14m. The
UK rights alone yielded $7.5m compared to the $1m received by the
Australia and New Zealand cricket boards for the World Cup in 1992.
The tobacco company Wills paid £8m for title sponsorship compared
to the £2m paid by Benson & Hedges in 1992.14 India and Pakistan’s
profit of £30m was huge when put in perspective with other interna-
tional tournaments held in the same year, such as the Euro Cup, which
made UEFA richer by £69m while the host England lost £1.7m.15
14Martin Williamson, ‘How the World Cup Became a Commercial Hit’, espncricinfo.com, 5 February
2015, accessed at http://www.espncricinfo.com/wctimeline/content/current/story/824079.html.
15Mihir Bose, ‘Conflicting Loyalties: Nationalism and Religion in India–Pakistan Cricket
Relations’, in The Cambridge Companion to Cricket, edited by Anthony Bateman and Jeffrey Hill
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 211.
404 S. Naha
Dalmiya’s coordination of the World Cup made him famous in the cir-
cles of sport management. The BBC named him as one of the six most
powerful people in sport. In an interview given to BBC’s Radio Five,
he spoke about the exercise of power, acquisition of wealth, accounta-
bility, and the necessity of judiciously integrating product, price, place
and promotion for cricket’s commercialisation.16 He considered globali-
sation of cricket and reduction of the number of draws, i.e. no results,
in Test matches to be essential for the sport’s survival. He also wanted
to empower smaller nations to abolish the ICC’s ‘cosy-club mentality’.
Many journalists were certain that Dalmiya was a strong candidate for
the ICC chairmanship and his win could end the Marylebone Cricket
Club’s (MCC) authority over ICC business.17
The ICC’s mandate unequivocally stated that a Chairman needed
two-thirds majority of votes from full members, which Dalmiya was
not certain of achieving. Yet, he entered the fray with the reputation
of being a ruthless manipulator and assiduous leader, someone who
had the potential to become, in the words of a Guardian journal-
ist, ‘one of the greatest power brokers in sport, a name to mention
alongside those of Havelange, Nebiolo and Samaranch’.18 In a smear
campaign, a number of British journalists portrayed him as a radical
and ambitious kingpin who ‘puts profit before prudency’, and could
destroy the tradition of cricket by replacing Test matches with One-
day matches and shifting the ICC headquarters to Kolkata.19 As it
transpired, Dalmiya managed the votes of three full (India, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka) and ten associate members. His opponent, Australia’s
Malcolm Gray received the votes of four full (Australia, England,
New Zealand, West Indies) and seven associate members, and South
Africa’s Krish Mackerdhuj received the votes of two full (South Africa
and Zimbabwe) and five associate members. The stalemate necessi-
tated another round of voting from which Mackerdhuj withdrew. This
16‘Dalmiya among Six Most Powerful Sportspersons’, TOI, 16 June 1996, p. 22.
17David Hopps, ‘Chaos Fear over ICC Chairman’, The Guardian, 9 July 1996, p. 25.
18David Hopps, ‘Asian Tiger Tweaks Lord’s by the Tail’, The Guardian, 10 July 1996, p. 24.
19Alan Lee, ‘Controversial Dalmiya’s Intent Rattles Established Order’, The Times, 16 July 1996, 10.
time both Dalmiya and Gray secured the votes of four full members,
and Dalmiya beat Gray 25-13 when associate votes were taken into
account. However, Dalmiya was not declared the Chairman since he
did not garner two-thirds majority among full members. The BCCI’s
legal advisors pointed out that the ICC’s laws did not stipulate any
such special majority. Bindra, now the BCCI president, dropped
a bomb at this juncture, accusing Australian delegates of trying to
recruit him as their candidate, thereby splitting the powerhouse fos-
tered by him and Dalmiya.
Dalmiya was nominated for the position again the next year. At an
ICC meeting on 22–23 March 1997, England, Australia and New
Zealand proposed the creation of an executive board consisting of a
chairman and representatives of full members to run the ICC, while
there would be the two-year position of a president with ceremonial
power. Many members protested the division of authority. After pro-
tracted discussions, it was decided that the president would lead the
executive board.20 Dalmiya, having united the majority of the associate
members, won unanimously at the ICC conference in June 1997, thus
becoming the first Asian to head any international sport organisation.
Instead of occupying the ICC office in the clock tower in the Lord’s
cricket ground, he stayed in Kolkata and ran world cricket till 2000
over teleconference and occasional visits to England.
As part of his globalising efforts, Dalmiya started one-day cricket
tournaments involving the Test-playing nations in cricketing out-
posts such as North America and Southeast Asia. An example was the
Friendship Cup, contested between India and Pakistan, which was
played in Toronto, Canada, from 1996 to penetrate a new market. The
inaugural Asian Cricket Council Trophy, held in September 1996 in
Malaysia, gave countries such as Brunei, Fiji, Japan, Maldives, Papua
New Guinea and Thailand their first taste of one-day international
cricket. The Mini World Cup in Bangladesh in 1998 made a profit
of £8m, whereas the World Cup in England in 1999 netted around
£32m. Dalmiya organised a ‘cricket week’ from 2 to 9 April 2000 which
20Majumdar, Twenty-two Yards to Freedom, p. 417.

406 S. Naha
consisted of a one-day match between Asia and the Rest of the World
in Bangladesh and a 15-match tournament for the emerging nations
in Zimbabwe, in which Denmark, Holland, Ireland, Kenya, Scotland
and Zimbabwe A participated. He considered appointing a number of
former cricketers as brand ambassadors who would visit countries such
as Fiji and Thailand to assist development programmes.21 Most of the
associate countries remained loyal to him as the ICC started sharing the
revenue generated by broadcasting rights and sponsorship. Nevertheless,
probably as a rhetoric to reassure full members, Dalmiya declared in
an interview that he was a traditionalist who thought Test cricket was
real cricket. One-day cricket was the version suitable for introducing the
sport to new countries.22
During Dalmiya’s three-year leadership, the ICC’s bank balance
swelled from £20,000 to £11m—a massive resurgence factoring in
the expenditure for the organisation’s expansion and global develop-
ment programmes.23 Dalmiya overhauled the ICC by establishing
a new cricket committee comprising cricketers to deal with playing
aspects and chief executives to handle management issues, setting up
a new finance and marketing committee, and upgrading the develop-
ment committee.24 Full members started playing nearly equal number
of matches among themselves. The ICC reserved the rights to organise
World Cups and Champion Trophies and receive a large share of reve-
nue, implemented a plethora of new regulations for organising matches,
incorporated a number of new countries into its fold, and professional-
ised its own structure with specific committees for audit, finance, code
of conduct, women’s cricket, development, and dispute resolution. To
make the ICC representative of the cricket world, the system of rotat-
ing the post of the president every two years among the full members
was adopted. It was in complete contrast with the FIFA or IOC
presidencies which were monopolised by a single person for decades.
21Pat Gibson, ‘Dalmiya Widens ICC’s Net’, The Times, 9 February 2000.
22Vivek Chaudhury, ‘Chairman Dalmiya in the Hot Seat’, The Guardian, 1 May 2000, p. A8.
23Subroto Sirkar, ‘Improving ICC’s financial position was his main gain’, The Hindu, 1 July 2000,
http://www.thehindu.com/2000/07/01/stories/0701028l.htm, accessed on 7 July 2016.

24‘Dalmiya Assumes Leadership of International Body’, India Abroad, 27 June 1997, p. 60.
The organisation’s annual meeting, traditionally held in London, took

place in Kolkata in 1997. The venue is now rotated among cricket-play-
ing nations.
Despite generating the financial windfall, Dalmiya was criticised for
being overbearing and replacing old tradition with new money. His
conduct of the match-fixing controversy in 2000 left a lot to be desired.
Matthew Engel, editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, the annual
that has symbolised and championed cricket’s ‘tradition’ since 1864,
wrote that Dalmiya almost split the cricket world in his quest to con-
trol it, and had been an incompetent leader who should be replaced by
someone more capable.25 The former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell
called Engel’s criticism ill-informed and nonsensical, stating that the
ICC should extend Dalmiya’s term for its own benefit.26 The ICC chief
executive, David Richards, who had worked for the ICC from before
Dalmiya’s appointment, said in an interview, ‘we started from a small
base and we’ve come a long way in a short time, especially under the
present president’, adding that the organisation had overcome centrifu-
gal national interests and become a global body. An annual sum of £1m
was reserved for development programmes across the world.27 Dalmiya
retained his clout even after the end of his term as the ICC president.
His friction with the English cricket board continued. When England
was unwilling to tour India in 2001 due to security concerns in the
wake of terrorist attacks, he did not compromise as his predecessors
would have done and announced that India would cancel its 2002 tour
of England unless the visit took place.28
Although he had been accused of corruption many times in his
career, none of the claims were ever substantiated. In 2000, tax police
raided his office and various properties across India. Arun Agarwal,
an Indian financial adviser, alleged that Dalmiya abused his position
25‘Dalmiya Gets ICC Backing’, The Times, 2 April 1999.

26Mark Baldwin, ‘Dalmiya Hits Back over Call to Resign’, The Times, 17 April 1999.
27Christopher Martin-Jenkins, ‘World Cup Profits to Help Cricket’s Growth’, The Times, 22 June
1999.
28Vivek Chaudhury, ‘Defiant Dalmiya Confronts the Snipers’, The Guardian, 3 November 2001,
p. A2.
408 S. Naha
of power as the solitary negotiator in various deals. Dalmiya allegedly

sold the television right for the Mini World Cup in 1998 for £1.875m,
which Dalmiya disputed, saying that the deal was worth £6.25m. His
old associate Bindra turned against him‚ remarking that Dalmiya was
‘in the grip of the mafia and sharks’.29 Dalmiya would challenge his
critics to sue him and prove him guilty in the court of law. He also
dismissed insinuations that racism underpinned much of the criticism
he faced. However, he was never short of friends. The journalist Rajan
Bala was told by his counterpart from the largest circulated Bengali
newspaper that the latter’s chief editor considered Dalmiya ‘prime min-
isterial material’ and prohibited sport correspondents from writing any-
thing critical of him.30 Kolkata newspapers, even those not read too
widely, were taken seriously within the sporting sphere for their proxim-
ity with the captain of the Indian team and the most powerful person in
Indian sports.
Decline
A section of cricket administrators in India were not happy with
Dalmiya’s meteoric rise. One of them was his old friend Bindra.
Dalmiya opposed some of Bindra’s decisions about monetary hand outs
to provincial associations and sponsorship deals in the late 1990s, con-
sidering them unprofitable. While he was justified in overturning unac-
ceptable decisions, his use of strong-arm tactics such as banning Bindra
from the BCCI for two years as punishment for abusing him increased
the number of his adversaries. Some of Dalmiya’s associates in the CAB
too were looking for an opportunity to subdue him. They found one
when spectators rioted on consecutive days of the Test match between
India and Pakistan in Kolkata in 1999. Dalmiya’s order to evacuate the
galleries to protect cricketers backfired as the police used unnecessary
29Mike Selvey, ‘Dalmiya Sues over TV Rights Abuse’, The Guardian, 1 May 2000, p. A2.
30Rajan Bala, The Covers Are Off: A Socio-historical Study of Indian Cricket 1932–2003 (New
Delhi: Rupa, 2004), p. 223.
violence to drive out spectators, causing many injuries and widespread

criticism. Some CAB officials reportedly accused Dalmiya of misman-
aging the fixture and playing with the lives of spectators. They remarked
that the match referee Cammie Smith did not contradict Dalmiya in
fear of missing assignments in the future.
Moreover, it was alleged that Dalmiya interfered too much in the
work of the two joint-secretaries. Some people even conjectured that
he had retributively set the police upon the CAB members who had
mulled suing him for disclosing the association’s account which showed
a profit of Rs. 11.4m.31 What hurt his reputation the most was the
allegation that he no longer looked after small clubs, the policy which
had underpinned his success both at the local and global level. He was
blamed for populating the CAB and the BCCI with inefficient min-
ions. The candidates defeated in elections purportedly dominated the
office-bearers with his support. Many employees from his personal busi-
ness were employed in CAB work, and he was accused of awarding bids
for advertising, transport etc. to people close to him.32 He mishandled
a television rights deal in 2004 which cost the Board more than a mil-
lion pounds. His negotiations with the ICC about unjustified penalties
meted out to Indian cricketers, and the ambush marketing clause dur-
ing the Champions’ Trophy in 2002 and the World Cup in 2003 which
would have hurt Indian cricketers the most, caused severe frictions
between the BCCI and the ICC. His failure to persuade the Indian gov-
ernment to waive entertainment tax led to the Champions’ Trophy in
2004 being shifted to England.33 His attempts to thwart the govern-
ment’s plan to take over cricket administration in 1999 had made him
unpopular in political circles. His bitter experience with Scindia, who
never had sufficient time for cricket owing to his political responsibility,
might have driven much of Dalmiya’s apathy towards politicians. When
asked to give up the BCCI, he was said to have told the Secretary for
31Bartaman,22 February 1999, p. 1.

32Ibid.,
22 February 1999, p. 8.
33Sumit Mukherjee, ‘From King-maker to Pariah’, TOI, 17 December 2006, p. 22.
410 S. Naha
Sports, N.N. Khanna, ‘We have not come here to listen to trash from
you’.34 Such attitude, and the tendency to approach the government
only for benefits, did not charm those looking for a chance to dispose
of him.
Dalmiya courted some avoidable controversies such as an eye dona-
tion scandal which besmirched his reputation as a skilful negotiator.
The CAB’s offer of 1000 free Test tickets to the India–Australia Test
match in 2001 to those who pledged to posthumous eye donation was
resisted by voluntary organ donation campaigners. The International
Eye Bank and Ganadarpan, two organisations which promoted organ
donation for medical purposes without material incentive, called this
offer unethical and illegal. As a response to the nationwide campaign
by voluntary organisations against the growing human organs traffick-
ing racket, the government had enacted the ‘Transplantation of Human
Organs Act’ in 1994. Under the Act, ‘offering’ any human organ for
‘payment’ became a punishable offense, with a minimum two years of
imprisonment and Rs. 10,000 fine. Dalmiya held a meeting with the
representatives of welfare association but was unable to convince them
that the CAB wanted to popularise organ donation and the ticket was
more of a goodwill gesture than a commercial incentive.35
The West Bengal government pitted a former police chief against
him as the presidential candidate in the 2005 CAB election. Dalmiya
won in spite of the state’s best efforts to humiliate him. However, his
stock plummeted when Sourav Ganguly, the Indian captain from
Kolkata who was long considered his protégé, was first stripped of cap-
taincy and then dropped from the national team for poor performance.
Much of the respect Dalmiya received from the people of Kolkata was
due to his intervention to include Ganguly in the Indian team in 1996
against fierce opposition. His detractors used Ganguly’s dismissal as an
opportunity to float the rumour that Dalmiya, a non-Bengali, did not
care about the Bengali icon anymore. Bindra stated that Dalmiya had
34Jaywant Lele, I Was There—Memoirs of a Cricket Administrator (Mumbai: Marine Sports, 2011),
p. 12.
35Nilanjan Dutta, ‘Eye for Test Match Tickets Scheme Draws Flak in Kolkata’, TOI, 1 March
2001, p. 7.
always interfered with team selection, and was responsible for Ganguly’s
misfortune.36 When Dalmiya moved up the date of the team selec-
tion for the next series and lobbied for Ganguly’s inclusion, Bindra
remarked that this was a ploy to placate the cricketer’s followers ahead
of the India–South Africa encounter in Kolkata. The match could have
sparked riot in the absence of the local hero in the team.37 Ganguly was
selected to play in the next series but Dalmiya was by then out of favour
and options to retain his power over Indian cricket. Dalmiya’s main
rival, the central minister of agriculture Sharad Pawar, wanted Ganguly
to shift to his camp. He promised to reinstate the cricketer if Dalmiya
stopped intervening in his favour. A politician from Maharashtra, Pawar
made a public show of sympathy towards Ganguly by inviting him to
his residence in New Delhi to talk about the future of Indian cricket.38
Cornered by his opponents, Dalmiya lost the BCCI elections in
November 2005. Pawar asked the Congress leader Sonia Gandhi for
help in return for greater influence for Congress in the Maharashtra
State Assembly. Gandhi instructed her political secretary Ahmad Patel
to call Congress politicians involved in cricket administration, such
as Rajshekhar Reddy from Andhra Pradesh and Digvijay Singh from
Madhya Pradesh, and mobilise support for Pawar. The sport minister
Oscar Fernandes and the Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav turned
against Dalmiya.39 His defiance of the encroachment of politicians into
cricket proved to be his undoing. He subsequently faced corruption
charges which, even though never proved, spoiled his credibility. He was
expelled from the BCCI for alleged misappropriation of funds during
the 1996 World Cup. The BCCI official Shashank Manohar made a
statement that during Dalmiya’s tenure, litigations were all the Board
was involved.40 Even Ganguly turned against him during the CAB
elections in 2006, accusing Dalmiya of having played with his career.
36ABP, 1 November 2005, p. 7.

37Ibid.,22 November 2005, p. 7.
38Aajkal, 21 December 2005, p. 1.
39ABP, 30 November 2005, p. 1.
40Aajkal, 2 December 2005, p. 1.

412 S. Naha
The Supreme Court exonerated Dalmiya in 2007 for want of evi-

dence, and in 2010 the Kolkata High Court dismissed similar charges
levelled by the CAB. Acquitted of corruption allegations, he contested
and won the next CAB presidential election. He was appointed as the
interim BCCI president from June to October 2013 when the cur-
rent president, N. Srinivasan, was under prosecution for his involve-
ment in match-fixing and financial irregularities. Finally, he returned
as the BCCI president in March as Srinivasan was forced to resign.
His time at the top was short as his health declined and he died on
21 September 2015. In a piece evaluating his administrative career,
the English cricketer Mike Atherton wrote that Dalmiya had the
biggest impact on transforming cricket from a pastime to a com-
modity, and shifting the sport’s epicentre from England to India.41
As someone reluctant to give interviews, Dalmiya hardly ever opened
up to journalists about his legacy. The media outpour after his demise
unanimously admitted to his significance as the person who revolu-
tionised cricket.
Conclusion
Dalmiya's emphasis on marketing as the way of ensuring cricket’s sur-
vival and growth was nearly equally praised and contested during his
lifetime. On the one hand, Ganesh Mahalingam, the head of sales and
marketing of LG India, an official sponsor of the 2003 and 2007 World
Cups, remarked that Dalmiya was largely responsible for ushering cor-
porate sponsorship into cricket. On the other hand, former English
cricketer and senior MCC official Ted Dexter commented that flow of
money eroded cricket’s integrity and ethical responsibility.42 Not every-
body liked the transformation of the ICC from a gentlemen’s club to
a rich, powerful, and professional business enterprise. Commenting
41Mike Atherton, ‘Despair at Modern Cricket? Blame Dalmiya’, The Times, 24 September 2015,
p. 66.
42Joanna Slater, ‘Cashing in on Cricket’, Far Eastern Economic Review 166, no. 9 (6 March 2003),
p. 33.
on Dalmiya’s impact on India, a correspondent to the Mumbai Mirror

newspaper wrote that he was to Indian cricket what Steve Jobs was to
Apple.43 His career illustrated many historical shifts in global sport,
including asymmetrical shifts in a global sport’s organisation from its
centre to its former periphery, and the effect of commercialisation on
tradition and ideology. His contribution can be analysed by focusing
on five major loci of action: integration of Asian and African nations
into a power bloc; judicious use of political influence; effort to separate
sport and politics which collapsed after his reign to cricket’s detriment;
decolonisation of cricket’s administration; and unprecedented commer-
cialisation. A full assessment of his legacy will be possible after at least a
decade. While time tests his career, it is essential to recognise the extent
to which he influenced his contemporaries and posterity.
Timeline
1940: Born in Rajasthan.

1959: Became the chairman of his family business.
1963: Supplied building materials for the Birla Planetarium in
Kolkata.
1979: Joined the BCCI as deputy treasurer.
1983: Elected the treasurer of the BCCI.
1987: Organised the World Cup along with colleagues from the
BCCI and the PCB.
1990: Elected the secretary of the BCCI.
1991: Supported South Africa’s readmission to international cricket
and organised their tour of India.
1992: Re-elected the secretary of the BCCI.
1993: Sold the television rights to broadcast Indian cricket to a
non-governmental enterprise after a landmark court ruling.
43Vijay Tagore, ‘Dalmiya: 1940–2015 Messiah, Rebel’, Mumbai Mirror, 21 September 2015.
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/sport/cricket/DALMIYA-1940-2015-MESSIAH-REBEL/arti-
cleshow/49040382.cms, accessed on 6 July 2016.
414 S. Naha
1996: Coordinated the World Cup co-organised by India, Pakistan

and Sri Lanka.
1997: Elected the president of the ICC.
2001: Elected the president of the BCCI.
2001: Confronted the ICC over a ‘racist’ sanction against five Indian
cricketers.
2003: Formed a contract system for cricketers and started pension for
former cricketers and umpires.
2004: Organised the resumption of regular India–Pakistan cricket
matches.
2006: Expelled from the BCCI on corruption charges.
2007: Resigned as CAB president.
2008: Elected the president of the CAB.
2010: Readmitted to the BCCI as no charges were proved and he
withdrew his case.
2013: Became the interim president of the BCCI.
2015: Elected the president of the BCCI unopposed.
2015: Died of a cardiac arrest in Kolkata.
Bibliography
Bala, Rajan. 2004. The Covers Are Off: A Socio-historical Study of Indian Cricket
1932–2003. New Delhi: Rupa.
Bale, John. 2004. The Mysterious Professor Jokl. In Writing Lives in Sport:
Biographies, Life-Histories and Methods, ed. John Bale, Mette Krogh
Christensen, and Gertrud Pfister, 25–40. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Bose, Mihir. 2011. Conflicting Loyalties: Nationalism and Religion in India–
Pakistan Cricket Relations. In The Cambridge Companion to Cricket, ed.
Anthony Bateman and Jeffrey Hill, 203–217. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lele, Jaywant. 2011. I Was There—Memoirs of a Cricket Administrator.
Mumbai: Marine Sports.
Majumdar, Boria. 2004. Twenty-two Yards to Freedom: Social History of Indian
Cricket. New Delhi: Penguin.
Manley, Jonathan. 2005. The International Journal of the History of Sport

Announces Its History of Sport Achievement Award Winners. Editors’
Bulletin 1 (2): 38–40.
Slater, Joanna. 2003. Cashing in on Cricket. Far Eastern Economic Review 166
(9): 32–34.
Sources
Aajkal
Amrita Bazar Patrika
Anandabazar Patrika
Bartaman
Daily Mirror
India Abroad
Khelar Asar
Mumbai Mirror
The Guardian
The Hindu
The Statesman
The Times
The Times of India
Espncricinfo.com
16
Arab Autocrats Put Their Stamp on Global
Sports Governance
James M. Dorsey
The careers of three of the most prominent international sports

executives from the Gulf illustrate how Middle Eastern autocracy and
the lack of transparency and accountability of global and regional
associations have reinforced each other over the last decade. The three
men—International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Sheikh
Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah of Kuwait, Asian Football
Confederation (AFC) President Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa
of Bahrain, and disgraced former FIFA executive committee mem-
ber Mohammed Bin Hammam of Qatar—symbolize much of what is
wrong with international sports governance: manipulation of sports for
the political gain of governments and/or powerful individuals, and a
refusal to adhere to fundamental values such as human rights enshrined
in the organizations’ charter and corruption.
J. M. Dorsey (*)
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS),
Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: jmdorsey@questfze.com
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76753-6_16
418 J. M. Dorsey
The three men represent the tip of an iceberg in which executives

from the Middle East as well as other parts of the world worked
together to support autocracy in the most volatile region on the globe
as well as self-serving governance in international sports associations.
Their careers and styles of sports management highlight how profound
the malaise in international sports is and the depth of reform that is
needed to tackle the problem. They also demonstrate the similarities in
the culture of Middle Eastern autocracies and international sports asso-
ciations, involving centralized, non-transparent governance that relies
on backroom deals and old-boy-networks.
Those similarities ultimately contributed to the worst crisis in FIFA’s
more than a century-old history that erupted in 2010 around Qatar’s
successful bid for the 2022 World Cup hosting rights. Reforms since
implemented by FIFA have addressed the rough edges of structural
governance issues of FIFA and the AFC, but have failed to tackle some
of the two groups’ most basic problems, such as a failure to acknowl-
edge and properly manage the relationship between sports and politics,
that they share with other international sports associations. Ironically,
that has had consequences for two of the three top Middle Easterners
in global soccer governance with Al-Khalifa so far having successfully
evaded substantial damage to his career and reputation. Their travails,
however, have failed to spark a rethink of the cosiness between Middle
East autocracy and international sports.
No doubt, Al Sabah, Al Khalifa and Bin Hammam share a genuine
passion for sports, and particularly soccer. They nonetheless could not
divorce themselves from their backgrounds as either men who hail from
autocratic ruling families or, as in the case of Bin Hamam, a commoner
who benefitted from close ties to Qatar’s ruling family. The difference in
family heritage has made little difference in terms of their vested interest
in their nations’ autocracy as well as their career paths, wealth, ambition
and sense of entitlement. Theirs is a generation whose advancement
was shaped by commercial acumen and ties to government rather than
education and merit. Their move from national to international sports
governance served both their personal ambition as well as the soft policy
goals of their ruling families.
16 Arab Autocrats Put Their Stamp on Global Sports Governance 419
A Serious Challenge
The downfall of Bin Hammam, who was banned for life from
involvement in professional soccer in 20121 and the forced resignation
of Al-Sabah from FIFA’s governing council2 in 2017 following reference
to a Kuwaiti executive of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) in a
FIFA-related US indictment of a Asian soccer executive are indicative of
international sports governance’s refusal to recognize and come to grips
with its incestuous, inextricable ties to politics. Bin Hammam’s demise
was driven by the challenge he posed to the leadership of Sepp Blatter,
the since disgraced-long standing president of FIFA, rather than his
relentless, rules-breaking pursuit of the Qatari World Cup bid on behalf
of the Qatari government.
Asian soccer reformists had high hopes that Bin Hammam’s
beginning of the end in the spring of 2011 would allow them to unravel
a cesspool of government interference, struggles for power, corruption,
greed and vested interests that undermined governance, transparency
and accountability in their continent’s beautiful game. Yet, years later
FIFA and regional soccer associations have tackled financial and per-
formance corruption but done little to address their relationship to
politics—a move that would challenge the influence of Arab autocrats
on the governance of the sport. To be sure, his successor, Al Khalifa, is
unblemished in terms of corruption but stood accused of failing stand
up for the rights of soccer players who were dismissed from Bahrain’s
national team, arrested and allegedly tortured for participating in
peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations.3
1James M. Dorsey, Bin Hammam banning puts AFC marketing contract in the firing line, The
Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, 18 December 2012, https://mideastsoccer.blogspot.
co.uk/2012/12/bin-hammam-banning-puts-afc-marketing.html.
2James M. Dorsey, Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad: The rise and fall of political corruption in interna-
tional sports, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, 1 May 2017, https://mideastsoccer.
blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/kuwaiti-sheikh-ahmad-rise-and-fall-of.html.
3Michael Casey. 2011. Bahrain soccer stars pay price for protesting, Associated Press, August 25,
reprinted by Bahrain Center for Human Rights, http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/4556.

420 J. M. Dorsey
The Bin Hammam affair was not only at the center of the worst
scandal in Asian soccer but also of the most serious challenge to the
credibility of good governance in world soccer body FIFA and the most
controversial awarding of a World Cup in football history. The affair
coupled with the failed efforts to reform the governance of Asian soccer
and the controversy surrounding Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022
World Cup serves as a prism of everything that is wrong in the global
governance of the game: the cozy intimate relationship between poli-
tics and soccer in which soccer executives, certainly a majority of those
in the Middle East and West Asia, serve the interests of their political
masters; the role soccer federations play in enhancing the power base of
autocratic leaders; the principle of money talks whether its corporate or
public funds or the funds of states run like family enterprises; the power
of a tiny state like Kuwait to shape the soccer politics of a vast conti-
nent like Asia that is home to the world’s most populous states; and the
emphasis on the personal interests of nation’s top soccer executives at
the expense of those of the sport.
Ironically, Bin Hammam, the highest official ever to have been
banned, was both an integral clog of the system and the odd man out.
A self-made millionaire who like many Gulf businessmen benefitted
from opportunities in a government-dominated economy flush with
oil and gas dollars, Bin Hammam unlike many others was in soccer for
the glory and a genuine passion for the sport. Friend and foe agree that
he genuinely cared about football and was generous to his associates.
His downfall was his ambition and his failure to grasp that accepted
business practices in the Gulf often violate international business and
accounting standards. He ran the AFC much like he would have run his
business in Doha.
That naiveté may well have been what sparked his demise. It was evi-
dent not only in how he managed the AFC but also in the way he ran
his 2011 FIFA presidential campaign against the wishes of both Blatter
and the Qatari emir and conducted crucial commercial negotiations on
behalf of the Asian soccer body. Bin Hammam troubles began when he
handed out envelopes with $40,000 each to 25 officials of the Caribbean
Football Union (CFU) gathered for the Qatari’s campaign meeting in
the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Trinidad’s Port of Spain, each of whom had
a vote in the presidential election. Bin Hammam has repeatedly denied

that he was bribing potential voters, asserted that Blatter knew in
advance that he was offering the CFU delegates compensation for their
expenses, and accused the FIFA president of deliberately setting him up
so that he could run for re-election unopposed.
Ultimately, FIFA was unable to make the bribery allegation stick.
It did succeed in forcing Bin Hammam to withdraw from the race.
Bin Hammam’s success in appealing FIFA’s decision to suspend him
days before the election and initially ban him for life in the Lausanne,
Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration of Sports (CAS) allowed his
opponents with Blatter in the lead as well as reformists in Asian soccer to
tackle him on his management of the AFC. The court refused to give Bin
Hammam a clean bill of health. It left little doubt that the judges believed
that the Qatari was more likely than not guilty of the charges brought
against him. Instead, Bin Hammam was ultimately ousted on the basis of
an independent audit of his financial management of the AFC.
Peter Velappan, the AFC’s Malaysian secretary general from 1978 to
2007 noted in his self-published memoir that “football enjoyed com-
plete patronage from the royal families and the sheikhs.”4 Describing
the impact on governance of imperious men like Bin Hammam,
Velappan reported that the Qatari had eliminated financial oversight
in the AFC by introducing an audit committee that had authority over
the group’s finance committee. He said the audit committee’s task was
“to blindly support all the statements of accounts which he had drawn
up for submission to the AFC Congress. There was absolutely no trans-
parency in these accounts.”5 Velappan charged that Bin Hammam
had “hijacked” the AFC’s $1 billion marketing rights contract with a
Singapore-based company and “made his own negotiations with the
other partners. He submitted to the AFC Executive Committee in
March 2009 a proposal for AFC to sign a three-cycle contract for the
period 2012–2014 (12 years). This was against the standard practice
and against the law of natural justice. The AFC Finance and Marketing
4Peter Velappan, Beyond Dreams, the Fascinating Story of the Blessed Life of Peter Velappan s/o
Panliappan Kuala Lumpur: Peter Velappan s/o Palaniappan, 2014, p. 241.
5Ibid. Velappan, pp. 186–187.
422 J. M. Dorsey
Committee had very few details of this nor was it transparent.

He wanted to bulldoze this through the AFC Congress with no one
knowing the true revenue figures to the AFC from such a long contract.
It was such a high risk as no one could predict the future status of the
company in the current economic situation. It was putting AFC into a
serious financial dilemma should the company go bankrupt in the next
few years,” Velappan wrote.6
In an interview, three years before publication of his memoir
Velappan described Bin Hammam as the “architect of bribery and cor-
ruption first in the AFC and then in FIFA.” He described the AFC
and FIFA as “a culture of corruption.” Velappan added that “the prob-
lem was that he (Bin Hammam) never understood Asia. Asia is mul-
ticultural. He was never at ease with anyone. Communications was a
big problem because his English was not proficient. His strength was
money, not his leadership and not his skills.”7
The Beginning of the End?

Al Sabah’s woes, unlike the banning of Bin Hammam that ultimately
failed to rock the boat, potentially could be the beginning of the end,
not only for the Kuwaiti’s political and sports governance ambitions but
also for the system that allowed him to rise in the first place. Widely
viewed as one of the three most powerful men in international sports,
Al Sabah, a pony-tailed member of Kuwait’s ruling family, and former
minister and head of OPEC, is the living denial of a separation between
sport and politics, a fiction upheld by both international sports associa-
tions and governments. The fiction allowed sports and political officials
to politically corrupt sports and create an environment that enabled
financial and performance corruption.
6Ibid. Velappan, p. 187.

7James M. Dorsey. 2011. Asian Football Federation moves to dismantle Bin Hammam’s legacy,
The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, August 2, http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.sg/2011/08/
asian-football-federation-moves-to.html.
Al Sabah resigned from FIFA in 2017 after the US Attorney’s Office

in New York’s Eastern district implicated the Kuwaiti in its investigation
of corruption that led to the indictments of scores of FIFA officials and
their associates, but did not identify him by name. With his resignation,
Al Sabah in effect acknowledged that he was one of four unidentified
co-conspirators in the US attorney’s indictment of Richard Lai, a mem-
ber of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee and president of the
Guam Football Association. Lai was accused of receiving more than
$850,000 in bribes between 2009 and 2014 “from a faction of soccer
officials in the AFC region” to help “officials in that faction identify
other officials in the AFC to whom they should offer bribes. The goal
of this scheme was for the faction to gain control of the AFC and influ-
ence FIFA.”8
While Al Sabah denied Lai’s assertions, he was widely believed to be
the Kuwaiti official of the OCA referred to in the indictment. Al Sabah
has headed the OCA for the past 26 years.9 Lai pleaded guilty to wire
fraud conspiracy in the United States and confessed that the OAC had
offered bribes to influence past elections in the AFC. Symptomatic of
the malaise in global sports governance and the power of the scions of
Arab autocracy, neither the OAC nor the IOC of which Al-Sabah is a
member deemed it necessary to launch an investigation, let alone sus-
pend the Kuwaiti official.
Moreover, Al Sabah’s meshing of politics and sports to the detriment
of global governance did not start with the Lai indictment. It dates
back years involving allegations of vote buying as well as harness-
ing international sports associations with FIFA in the lead in support
of his domestic Kuwaiti power struggles by suspending Kuwaiti mem-
bership on charges of political interference.10 The suspension followed
8U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York, FIFA Audit And Compliance Committee
Member Pleads Guilty To Corruption Charges, 27 April 2017, https://www.justice.gov/
usao-edny/pr/fifa-audit-and-compliance-committee-member-pleads-guilty-corruption-charges.
9Simon Evans, Asia Olympic chief quits FIFA role over bribery scandal, Reuters, 30 April 2017,
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-soccer-fifa-asia-idUKKBN17W0EC.
10James M. Dorsey, Kuwaiti rulers fight their internal battles on the sports field, The Turbulent
World of Middle East Soccer, 19 June 2016, https://mideastsoccer.blogspot.sg/2016/06/kuwaiti-
rulers-fight-their-internal.html.
424 J. M. Dorsey
a 2016 Kuwaiti government decision to dissolve its national sports

organizations in an effort to sideline Al-Sabah and his brother, Sheikh
Talal Al-Fahad, who headed Kuwait’s National Olympic Committee
(NOC). The decision was part of a longstanding power struggle within
the Gulf state’s ruling family that has played out in Kuwaiti courts as
well as international sports. The decision constituted the government’s
response to a 2016 ruling by the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration
of Sports (CAS) to uphold FIFA’s banning a year earlier of the Kuwait
Football Association (KFA) on the grounds that a new Kuwaiti sports
law amounted to political interference. The ban prompted the IOC
and 15 other international sports associations to suspend their Kuwaiti
members on the grounds that the law compromised the autonomy of
sport. It was the second time in five years that Kuwait was banned by
the IOC and prevented from participating in Olympic Games.
CAS backed FIFA in in 2016 in a case brought to the court by
Kuwaiti soccer clubs, including Kuwaiti Premier League champions
Kuwait Sporting Club, Al-Arabi SC, Al-Fahaheel FC, Kazma SC and
Al-Salmiya SC. The government hoped in vain that it could get the
bans lifted by creating new sports associations while cancelling the
controversial law. The new organizations effectively lock the Al-Sabah
brothers as well as their supporters out of Kuwaiti sports. Quoting gov-
ernment sources, Kuwait’s Al Rai newspaper reported that the new asso-
ciations would keep “troublemakers and those who created corruption
in sport in Kuwait and put their personal interests ahead of the interest
of Kuwait and its youth out of sports.”11
Earlier, Kuwait’s Public Authority for Youth and Sports headed
by Sheikh Ahmad Mansour Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, another relative of
Sheikhs Ahmed and Talal, sued the brothers as well as other members
of the NOC for $1.3 billion in damages. The authority asserted that the
damages resulted from Al Sabah’s complaint to the IOC about govern-
ment interference. Yet another relative, Youth minister Sheikh Salman
Sabah Al-Salem Al-Homud Al-Sabah charged that Al Sabah without
mentioning him by name was responsible for the “total decline” in
11Ibid. Dorsey.
Kuwaiti sports. Sheikh Salman claimed that the decline stemmed from
“false complaints to international organizations in a bid to suspend the
country’s sport activities.”
Sheikh Salman also blamed Al Sabah for his failure in 2014 to win
an International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) presidential elec-
tion. Sheikh Salman was at the time accused of abusing his position in
government to garner votes. The ISSF has since said that it was investi-
gating Sheikh Salman for ethics breaches. It said that the government’s
legal action against Al Sabah may constitute an “escalation” of politi-
cal wrangling over control of sport in Kuwait. “The ISSF experienced
already during Sheikh Salman’s campaign to become ISSF President
in 2014 that he showed little sensitivity for a democratic process, the
autonomy of sports and ethical behaviour within an election process,”
the group said in a statement.12
Al Sabah, was in April 2015 forced to publicly apologize to Kuwaiti
Emir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, his uncle, and other sen-
ior officials for levelling false allegations against them. The allegations
were widely believed to be part of an effort by Al Sabah to leverage
his status in international sports to engineer his return to government
in a prominent position. Al Sabah had hoped to strengthen his posi-
tion by accusing his relative, former Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser
Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, and former parliament speaker
Jassem Mohammad Abdul-Mohsen Al-Karafi of plotting to topple the
government, launder money and misuse public funds.
Al Sabah had no choice but to withdraw the allegations and publicly
apologize on television after a Kuwaiti court dismissed as fabrications
his evidence in the form of digital documents and video recordings. A
Swiss Court had earlier ruled that the voices heard in the recordings
were those of the former prime minister and the speaker. Al Sabah’s
forced television appearance was intended to humiliate him and thwart
his ambitions in a country in which status and face are important.
12Dan Palmer, ISSF Ethics Committee to investigate Kuwait politician at centre of row with
Sheikh Ahmad, Inside the Games, 14 December 2015, http://www.insidethegames.biz/arti-
cles/1032535/issf-ethics-committee-to-investigate-kuwait-politician-at-centre-of-row-with-
sheikh-ahmad.
426 J. M. Dorsey
“As I seek pardon from Your Highness, I stress that what happened will
be a lesson from which I will benefit and draw appropriate conclusions.
I am in full compliance with the orders and directives of Your Highness
and I promise to turn the page on this matter and not to raise it again,”
Al Sabah said in his apology.13 Al Sabah has nonetheless insisted that he
was the victim of a “personal attack” that was indicative of strained rela-
tions between the government and the sports movement.
Perhaps more to the point, Al Sabah and Kuwait’s travails were the
inevitable consequence of the politicization and political manipulation
of sports in Kuwait as well as elsewhere in the Middle East and North
Africa in which international sports associations were as complicit as are
the region’s autocratic rulers.
Little in Salman’s career as head of the Bahrain Football Association
(BFA), former secretary general of the Bahrain NOC, and president
of the AFC suggested a willingness to uphold values enshrined in the
AFC’s statutes14 such as the group’s neutrality in politics, universally
accepted principles of good governance and management, or his own
electoral promises. Rather than fundamentally reforming the AFC,
Salman since taking office has sought to concentrate power in his own
hands and sideline reformers. Salman’s past electoral battles with Bin
Hammam as well as his election in 2013 and his simultaneous defeat
of Qatar’s Hassan al Thawadi in the competition to fill Bin Hammam’s
vacant seat on the FIFA’s governing committee moreover mirrored the
balance of power in the Gulf where Bahrain and Kuwait were more
closely aligned with Saudi Arabia than Qatar which charted an inde-
pendent foreign policy and projection of soft power that was at odds
with others in the region.
Ironically, it was the 2017 Gulf crisis in which Bahrain joined a UAE-
Saudi led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar aimed at forcing
the Gulf state to fall into line, that brought to the fore the contradic-
tions embedded in the insistence by FIFA and men like Salman that
sports and politics do not mingle. The contradictions were evident in
13Ibid. Dorsey.
14AFC Statutes, http://www.the-waff.com/assets/files/78_3_1387199813.pdf.
FIFA and the AFC’s responses to the Gulf crisis. Asked whether the
Saudi-UAE-led diplomatic and economic embargo of 2022 World
Cup Qatar would impact the tournament, FIFA President Gianni
Infantino insisted that “the essential role of FIFA, as I understand it, is
to deal with football and not to interfere in geopolitics.”15 Infantino’s
position was backed by Salman’s AFC as well as FIFA’s African affiliate,
the Confederation of African Football (CAF), in almost identical state-
ments insisted on upholding the separation of politics and football. They
called on football stakeholders to adhere to the principles of neutrality
and independence in politics as “part of the statutory missions” of FIFA
and its affiliates “as well as the obligations of member associations.”16
Yet, FIFA, on the same day that Infantino made his statement,
waded into the escalating Gulf crisis by removing a Qatari referee from
a 2018 World Cup qualifier following a request from the United Arab
Emirates.17 FIFA, beyond declaring that the decision was taken “in view
of the current geopolitical situation,” appeared to be saying by implica-
tion that a Qatari by definition of his nationality could not be an hon-
est arbiter of a soccer match involving one of his country’s detractors.
By taking that stand, FIFA with Salman’s backing in effect was saying
that sports and politics were not separate but inextricably intertwined.
On an even slipperier slope, the organization also appeared to be judg-
ing the referee’s professionalism based on his nationality. The decision
to remove the Qatari referee was at odds with the values expressed
by Salman, a former soccer player, in his AFC electoral campaigns.
“I believe that too many power and political games are affecting the har-
mony of Asian football when the only game that should matter is the
one taking place on football pitches. As leaders in our sport, we must
never lose sight of the fact that we are first and foremost servants of the
15Reuters,FIFA president says Qatar World Cup not under threat, 11 June 2017, https://www.
reuters.com/article/us-gulf-qatar-fifa-idUSKBN1920T2?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trend-
ing+Content&utm_content=593d6a3004d30154541f7820&utm_medium=trueAn-
them&utm_source=twitter.
16AFC, AFC Upholds Principles of Political Neutrality, 23 June 2017, http://www.the-afc.com/
media-releases/afc-upholds-principles-of-political-neutrality.
17Rob Harris, FIFA removes Qatari match officials due to diplomatic crisis, Associated Press, 11
June 2017, https://apnews.com/632e19b93aa54bb29e58462d80d91127.

428 J. M. Dorsey
game, at all levels and in all corners of the Asian continent,” Salman
declared. He listed as his values “fair play, cooperation, team work,
transparency, integrity and passion for the game.”18
Salman’s failure to adhere to his electoral promises and values contrib-
uted to the failure of both the AFC and FIFA to tackle their incestuous
relationship to politics and Middle Eastern autocracy. In fact, a cleaning
of the AFC’s house in line with recommendations of the internal audit
of the Asian group’s finances in that toppled Bin Hammam could have
helped to put the issue on the table. Instead, Salman’s burial of the audit
and failure to act on its recommendations reflected a lack of good gov-
ernance within the AFC on multiple levels. In a taped and written state-
ment recorded by a FIFA security officer in July 2012 that became public
in April 2015, AFC Finance Director Bryan Kuan Wee Hoong asserted
that AFC General Secretary Dato Alex Soosay had asked him to ‘tamper
or hide any documents’ related to the general secretary that could figure in
the PwC audit.19 The AFC said in a statement shortly after the allegations
became public that Soosay had been suspended pending an internal inves-
tigation.20 The audit by PwC had earlier identified Soosay as well as Kuan
as two of three AFC officials that had authorized payments under Bin
Hamam for which the Asian group could be held legally liable. ‘Our trans-
action review revealed that items sampled were, in most cases, authorized
by the General Secretary or Deputy General Secretary and the Director of
Finance. As signatories, these parties hold accountability for the authori-
zation of these transactions. We also note the Internal Audit and Finance
Committees were aware of this practice’, the PwC report said.21
18Patrick Salomon, Shaikh Salman Fifa Bid Backed’, Gulf Daily News, 13 March 2009, https://
www.thefreelibrary.com/Shaikh+Salman+Fifa+bid+backed-a0195553766.
19Statement by Bryan Kuan Wee Hoong, 26 July 2015; Haresh Deol, Explosive ‘tamper or
hide’ AFC probe video surfaces; Soosay, Where’s this coming from, why now? Malay Mail, 25
April 2015, http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.sg/2015/04/malay-mail-explosive-tamper-or-hide-
afc.html; James M. Dorsey, Alleged AFC cover-up effort highlights Asian soccer’s lack of proper
governance, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, 2015, http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.
sg/2015/04/alleged-afc-cover-up-effort-highlights.html.
20Haresh Deol, Haresh says: When silence is not golden, Malay Mail, 29 April 2015, http://
mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/2015/04/haresh-says-when-afc-silence-is-not.html.
21Ibid. Dorsey, Alleged AFC cover-up.
In theory, Sheikh Salman would have had every reason to act on the
recommendations of the PwC audit given the bitter nature of his elec-
toral battles with Bin Hammam since 2008. Al Khalifa was seen at the
time by many as the candidate who in the words of Velappan would
roll back the Qatari national’s changing the AFC’s “democratic institu-
tion into a dictatorial regime.”22 Those battles were, however, charac-
terized by mudslinging and allegations of vote buying that highlighted
the role of Al Sabah, a strong backer of Al Khalifa and fixture of cur-
rent AFC politics. Two of Al Khalifa’s rivals in the 2013 AFC presiden-
tial election, UAE Football Association President Yousef Al Serkal and
Hafez Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia, accused the OCA and Al Sabah of
interfering in the poll.23 Al Sabah’s OCA was reported to have offered
during Al Khalifa’s failed 2008 campaign several AFC members finan-
cial incentives if they voted for him. News reports said OAC officials
accompanied Al Khalifa on several of his stops in Asia during the 2013
campaign.24
Inside World Football reported that the OCA had employed its polit-
ical muscle in China to persuade Zhang Jilong, who was appointed
as acting president of the AFC in the period between Bin Hammam’s
resignation and the 2013 election to drop his plans to run for office.25
Jilong, who headed the AFC’s finance committee under Bin Hammam,
had emerged as one of the Qatari’s strongest critics and initiated last
year’s PwC audit. He was described, by AFC sources, as ash-faced when
he announced at a private meeting that he was not a candidate in the
AFC election.26 Inside World Football further disclosed a letter by
Soosay to the group’s 46-member associations asking them to remem-
ber their “ethical obligations” when casting their vote. The letter warned
22Ibid. Velappan, Beyond Dreams, p. 186.

23James M. Dorsey, AFC Election Marred by Interference Allegations and Candidates’ Track
Records, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, 26 April 2013, https://mideastsoccer.blog-
spot.sg/2013/04/afc-election-marred-by-interference.html.
24Ibid. Dorsey, AFC Election.
25Andrew Warsaw, Exclusive: Leaked letter warns AFC members against accepting bribes,
Inside World Football, 22 April 2013, http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2013/04/22/

exclusive-leaked-letter-warns-afc-members-against-accepting-bribes/.
26Interviews with the author.
430 J. M. Dorsey
against “offering and accepting gifts and benefits; bribery; and conflicts
of interests.” Soosay went on to note that “it is the duty and obligation
of the Confederation to prevent the introduction of improper methods
and practices which might jeopardize the integrity of, or give rise to,
the abuse of football …”.27 Former AFC executive Velappan reported
that Bin Hammam had complained to the FIFA ethics committee that
the OAC had given funds to NOCs to be distributed among national
soccer organizations to secure their votes in favour of Al Khalifa.28 OAC
denied the allegations.
Bin Hammam posed a formidable challenge to the ambitions of Al
Khalifa and Al Sabah. A self-made entrepreneur, Bin Hammam made
his money in the construction boom when his native Qatar like other
Gulf states was first flush in cash in the wake of the 1973 oil boycott
of the USA and the Netherlands that sent oil prices soaring. Passionate
about soccer he graduated from heading Qatar’s successful Al Rayan
SC in the 1970s and 1980s to the presidency of the Qatar Football
Association in the 1990s. Driven by ambition, Qatar soon became too
small a pond as he eyed membership of FIFA’s executive committee. His
initial effort to challenge South Korean business magnate Chung Mong
Joon for the FIFA vice-presidency in elections in 1994 failed. Two
years later, however, he won a seat on the executive and in 2002 he was
elected for the first of three consecutive terms as AFC president.
Bin Hammam quickly established himself, according to Velappan’s
memoir29 and interviews with the ex-secretary general and other former
and current AFC officials and staff30 as the representative of Asia despite
the fact that three other Asians were also members of the FIFA executive
committee. Bin Hammam’s position was strengthened by the fact that
he, according to Velappan and investigative journalists Jens Weinreich
and Thomas Kistner, served as the bagman for the emir of Qatar, Sheikh
27Ibid. Warshaw.
30Multiple interviews with the author between 2011 and 2014.

Hamad, who funded FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s electoral campaigns31

and at times put one of his personal planes at Blatter’s disposal.
Velappan, who as secretary general worked closely with Bin
Hammam at the AFC, described the Qatari initially as hard working
and spending much of his time at AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.
That changed five years into Bin Hammam’s presidency when in
Velappan’s words the Qatari’s “true nature began to unfold.”32 It was at
that point that Bin Hammam sought to gain autocratic control of the
group by creating working conditions that would prompt long-standing
AFC staff to resign so that he could replace them with Bin Hammam
loyalists. According to Velappan: “Hammam dismantled the entire
internal structure of the offices (in the AFC) headquarters and opened
them up like store rooms depriving the staff of privacy and a conducive
working environment … Hammam unilaterally decided to terminate
… employment contracts and gave all the staff a four-year contract
without a guarantee of renewal or the accepted international terms and
conditions of service. This naturally upset the long serving staff, many
of them quitting the AFC’s service in utter disappointment.”33
Bin Hammam also moved to curtail open management by cutting
back on the length of meetings of core AFC bodies, including the execu-
tive committee, and forcing committee members to give notice two weeks
of any issues they may want to raise in meetings. Decision-making was
moreover centralized in Bin Hammam’s hands. He would often inform
loyalists of his decisions and instruct them on how to vote in committee.
Al Khalifa solidified his power base by driving through a resolution at
the AFC congress in 2014 in Sao Paulo that combined the post of AFC
president and FIFA vice-president rather than maintain the vice-presi-
dency as an elected position. The resolution also served to weaken
reformers led by Jordanian Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein whose elected
31Ibid. Velappan, Beyond Dreams, p. 174; Jens Weinreich, Macht Moneten Marionetten, Ein
Wegweiser Durch Die Olympische Parallelgesellschaft: Bach, Putin, Blatter, Scheichs und
Oligarchen, Berlin: Sports and Politics, 2014, pp. 35, 45–46; and Thomas Kistner, FIFA Mafia:
Die schmutzigen Geschäfte mit dem Weltfußball Muenchen: Droemer HC, 2012.
33Ibid. Velappan, Beyond Dreams, pp. 174–175.

432 J. M. Dorsey
term as FIFA vice-president ended in 2015.34 Six months later, Al

Khalifa used a proposal to recognize Central Asia as a separate soccer
region on the continent to eliminate the post of a women AFC
vice-president. That post was held by Australian Moya Dodd, another
prominent reformer.35
Looming in the background of Al Khalifa’s reluctance to embrace
transparency and accountability in deed rather than only in word were
question marks about his role in the arrest of 150 athletes and sports
executives, including three national soccer team players, in early 2011
on suspicion of having participated in mass anti-government protests
in Bahrain.36 Athletes had organized a demonstration on 21 February
2011 to protest against the government’s violent crackdown on anti-
government manifestations.37 Al Khalifa has used the mantle of a ficti-
tious separation between sport and politics to deny any involvement in
the arrests or express any empathy with his national team players, who
were publicly denounced as traitors in Al Rased, a widely viewed talk
show on state-owned television.38 Two of the players asserted that they
were tortured in prison.39 While Al Khalifa may, as a member of a ruling
family, have felt restricted in what he could say publicly, he could have
displayed greater compassion on the back of an independent commis-
sion40 whose conclusions and recommendations were accepted by the
government which established that protesters had been tortured.
34AFC, Unity and Solidarity Prevails at AFC Extraordinary Congress, 10 June 2014, http://www.
theafc.com/media-releases/unity-and-solidarity-prevails-at-afc-extraordinary-congress.
35Keir Radnedge, A Step Backwards for Women and for Football in General, World Soccer,
9 December 2014, http://www.worldsoccer.com/columnists/keir-radnedge/step-backwards-

womenfootball-general.
36Associated Press, Bahrain Government Cracking Down on Athletes, USA Today, 18 April
2011, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/2011-04-18-bahrain-government-protests-crack-
downathletes.htm, Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, List of Sport Players, Referee and
Clubs Targeted Because of Their Involvement in the Protests’, 2011, http://byshr.org/wp-content/
List-of-sport-players-Referees-and-Clubs-targetedBecause-of-their-involvement-in-the-protests-
BYSHR.pdf.
37https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfU0iFFP98, 10 April 2011.
38https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unM0W3RIHXU, 13 April 2011.
39Ibid. Casey.
40Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, ‘Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry’, 10
December 2011, http://www.bici.org.bh/BICIreportEN.pdf.

The commission headed by Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, a glob-

ally acknowledged Egyptian-born US law professor, reported that Al
Rased “named protesters from various groups such as journalists, ath-
letes and medical staff at SMC (the Salmaniya Medical Complex where
many demonstrators were treated during the 2011 protests). During
the course of these programmes, photographs were shown of protesters,
who were described as traitors linked to Iran, and a liability to Bahraini
society. The Commission has been informed that some persons men-
tioned in the Al Rased programme were arrested shortly afterward.”
The 489-page report cited the example of one unnamed athlete
believed to be one of the national soccer teams who was arrested a day
after he was featured in Al Rased.41 Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa,
a relative of Al Khalifa and son of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who
served as head of Bahrain’s Higher Council for Youth and Sports and its
NOC and commander of the Royal Guard phoned into the Al Rased
broadcast on dissident soccer players and athletes to warn opponents of
the regime. ‘To everyone that demands the fall of the regime, may a wall
fall on their heads. Everyone involved in such issues and networks will be
punished. Whether he is an athlete, an activist, or a politician, he will be
punished in this time. Today is the judgment day … Bahrain is an island
and there is no escape. Everyone who took a part in this will be punished
and everyone supporting us will be rewarded’, Prince Nasser said.42 In a
message on Twitter on the day that 15 of the arrested athletes, including a
national soccer team player, were sentenced to prison, Prince Nasser said
that if he had the authority he would have given them life in prison.43
A UK court with the endorsement of the Crown Prosecution
lifted Prince Nasser’s immunity44 in 2014 on the grounds that the
41Ibid. Bassiouni.
42https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5b1M92mbU0.
43Bahrain Human Rights Center. July 2011, http://bahrainrights.org/BCHR/wp-content/
uploads/2011/07/sport10.jpg.
44HighCourt of Justice. FF v Director of Public Prosecution, 7 October 2014, https://www.google.
com.sg/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCcQFjAC&url=htt
p%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecchr.de%2FBahrain-de.html%3Ffile%3Dtl_files%2FDokumente%
2FUniverselle%2520Justiz%2FUrteil%2520High%2520Court_Bahrain%2520Prinz
%2520Nasser_20141007%2528eng%2529.pdf&ei=9pybVLSUBomJuATP0oCADQ&us-
g=AFQjCNHRKQv5EoxKHBalfmA6Nb0W87QgZw&bvm=bv.82001339,d.c2E&cad=rja.
434 J. M. Dorsey
prosecution expected that initial evidence submitted would be supple-

mented by information that would allow it to open an investigation
into allegations that the NOC chief had been involved in the commis-
sioning of serious human rights violations.45 Prince Nasser has denied
the allegations46 but had no opportunity to do so in court because he
was not a party to the proceedings. In a separate statement, the Bahrain
government condemned the court ruling as “an ill-targeted, politically
motivated and opportunistic attempt to misuse the British legal system
… The government of Bahrain again categorically denies the allegations
against Sheikh Nasser. The government reiterates its firm condemnation
of torture and recognises its responsibility to investigate any reasonable
allegation.”47
Al Khalifa immediately after the court verdict cancelled at the
last minute his attendance at the Leaders Sports Business Summit in
London, one of the most important annual gatherings of the global
sports industry.48 Al Khalifa had allegedly been named in initial evidence
submitted to the prosecution.49 That evidence included a report by the
state-owned Bahrain News Agency (BNA) that Nasser in April 2011
had “issued a decree forming a committee of inquiry into the violations
which had been committed by some of the sports entities members.”
The committee was instructed “to prepare a detailed report in this regard
and request the commission to take the necessary measures against
those found guilty of insulting their country and leadership, according
45Ibid. High Court of Justice. The Queen on the application of FF Claimant—and—Director of

Public Prosecutions Defendant—and—European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
(ECCHR) Interested Part, Annex to Order Dated 7 October 2014, Statement of Reasons for
the Order, emailed to the author by Melanie Riley, Director Bell Yard Communications Ltd. on
behalf of the Bahrain government.
46Multiple emails to the author and The Huffington Post by Prince Nasser’s spokespersons,
Schillings and Bell Yard Communications.

47Email to the author from Melanie Riley.
48Andrew Warshaw, A Bridge Too Far, Salman Drops Out of Leaders Conference in Chelsea,
Inside World Football, 8 October 2014, http://www.insideworldfootball.com/world-football/

asia/15603-abridge-too-far-salman-drops-out-of-leaders-conference-in-chelsea.
49The evidence was shared with the author on the understanding that the source would remain
confidential.
to each offense committed.”50 The evidence submitted asserted that

‘this committee was set up to investigate and punish athletes who had
participated in the protests of February and March 2011, and chaired
by Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, the (then) Bahrain Football
Association chairman.”51
Al Khalifa at one point supplemented his denial of involvement in
the detention in Bahrain with the charge that the allegations were a
conspiracy by an unidentified government against him.52 Yet, in a state-
ment, his association said that its suspension of players, including the
national team members, “falls under misconduct, and the breaching
of the rules and regulations of sporting clubs … not to engage in any
political affairs.”53 Abdul Rahman Sayar, the then secretary general of
the soccer association, went further, telling BNA that “the Federation
in association with the clubs strives to impose all the necessary penal-
ties and suspensions on those who violated the law from the athletes
whether they were players, administrators, or coaches, through their
participation in illegal demonstrations or gatherings or anything that
tries to overthrow the regime or insults the state symbols”.54
The Bahrain Human Rights Centre reported that at least 30 play-
ers and officials were suspended by the soccer association.55 BNA
said that a BFA board meeting chaired by Al Khalifa also penalized
50Bahrain News Agency,

, (Sheikh Nasser issues a decision to form an official commission of inquiry into the abuses
committed by some members of the sports movement), 11 April 2011, http://www.bna.bh/
portal/news/452380?date%C2%BC2011-04-11.
51Ibid. Bahrain News Agency.
52James M. Dorsey, Asian Soccer Elects Controversial Bahraini as President, The Turbulent
World of Middle East Soccer, 2 May 2013, https://mideastsoccer.blogspot.sg/2013/05/asian-soc-

cer-elects-controversial.html.
53ESPNsoccernet Staff, Bahrain Players Banned, ESPN, 7 April 2011, http://www.espnfcasia.
com/story/903928/bahrain-players-banned-for-role-in-protests.
54Bahrain News Agency, 7 April ‫رايس‬.. ‫نيناوقلل نيفلاخملا ةيدنالاو نييضايرلا فاقيا‬
‫’ةمظنالاو‬,2011 (Sayar: Stop athletes and clubs in violation of laws and regulations) http://www.
bna.bh/portal/news/451999.
55Bahrain Human Rights Centre, ‘Bahrain: Arrest, Military Trials, & Suspension from Sport
Activities, for Athletes Who Practice Their Legitimate Rights’, 7 July 2011, http://www.bahrain-
rights.org/en/node/4374.
436 J. M. Dorsey
six clubs in the wake of the protests, a move that led to the demo-
tion of two of the teams.56 The clubs had sent a letter to Al Khalifa
requesting a suspension of matches because of the turmoil in the
country.57
In return for Al Sabah’s continued support, Al Khalifa manipulated
in 2015 AFC election procedures to ensure the Kuwaiti a seat on FIFA’s
governing body that would have enabled him to eventually run for
the FIFA presidency.58 Al Sabah’s plans suffered a severe setback with
the indictment of scores of FIFA officials on corruption charges in the
United States and the demise in 2015 of former FIFA President Sepp
Blatter.59
The manipulation should have been a wake-up call for the problems
involved in non-transparent political dealings in global soccer designed
to not only maintain political control but also ensure that a closed circle
of executives and politicians remained in power. Al Sabah’s resignation
from FIFA raised the question how long his 25-year long membership
of the IOC would remain tenable and whether he could survive as head
of the OCA as well as the Association of NOC. It also cast a shadow
over Al Khalifa’s presidency of the AFC that is likely to come under
greater scrutiny as US investigations proceed.
56Bahrain News Agency,

(Bahrain
Football Association relegates Al-Malikya and Al-Shabab and penalizes the downgraded clubs) 20
April 2011, http://www.bna.bh/portal/news/453609.
57Mohamed Touq,
(6 local
clubs ask to stop their sports activities), Al Wasat, 20 February 2011, http://www.alwasatnews.
com/news/528146.html.
58James M. Dorsey, Global Soccer’s Backslapping, Backstabbing Backroom Deal-making Politics,
The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, 18 April 2015, https://mideastsoccer.blogspot.

sg/2015/04/global-soccers-backslapping.html.
59James M. Dorsey, AFC’s Salman re-elected amid renewed corruption and governance ques-
tions, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, 2 May 2015, https://mideastsoccer.blogspot.
sg/2015/05/afcs-salman-re-elected-amid-renewed.html.
Conclusion
Men like Al Sabah and Al Khalifa symbolize the intertwining of sports
and politics. They are imperious, ambitious, power hungry products of
autocracies who have worked assiduously to concentrate power in their
hands and sideline critics clamouring for real reform. Hailing from
countries governed by autocratic, hereditary leaders, they have been
accused of being willing to occupy their seats of power at whatever
price. Ambition, alleged corruption, and greed is their potential Achilles
heel. That is what caused the demise in 2012 of Bin Hammam and Al
Sabah’s setbacks. Al Sabah’s resignation from FIFA and possible demise
may not be the straw that breaks the camel’s back but it certainly should
put the incestuous nexus of sports and politics high on the agenda of
efforts to ensure good sports governance.
Biography of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed

Al-Sabah (Kuwait)
12 August 1963: Born in Lebanon.
1973: Oil boycott of the USA and the Netherlands that sent oil prices
soaring.
Educated at Kuwait University (political sciences) and the Kuwait
Military Academy.
Since 1990: President of the Kuwait Football Association.
From 1990 to 2001: President of the Kuwait Olympic Committee.
Since August 1990: President of the Asian Handball Federation.
Vice President of the International Handball Federation.
Since July 1991: President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA).
Since July 1992: IOC member.
His brother, Sheikh Talal Al-Fahad, head of Kuwait’s National Olympic
Committee (NOC).
Second time that Kuwait was banned by the IOC and prevented from
participating in Olympic Games.
Since 1999: Senior Vice President of the Islamic Solidarity Sports
Federation.
438 J. M. Dorsey
2001–2003: Kuwait’s minister of information.

2003–2006: Minister of oil.
Year 2005: Secretary General of OPEC.
July 2006: Director of the National Security Agency.
2007: First Kuwait Football Association suspension by FIFA on charges
of political interference.
Since April 2012: President of the Association of National Olympic
Committees (ANOC), preceded by Mario Vázquez Raña.
Member of the FIFA Council.
Since 2012: President of the Olympic Solidarity Commission (IOC).
2014: Public apology on television to Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Jaber
Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, his uncle.
Since 2015: Vice-Chair of the Olympic Channel Services S.A., Switzerland.
2015: Al Khalifa ensures Al-Sabah a seat on FIFA’s governing body that
would have enabled him to eventually run for the FIFA presidency.
May 2015: FIFAgate.
16 October 2015: Second Kuwait Football Association suspension by
FIFA on charges of political interference.
27 October 2015: Kuwait Olympic Committee suspension by IOC
from undue government interference.
2016: Kuwaiti government decision to dissolve its national sports
organizations in an effort to sideline Al-Sabah and his brother.
27 April 2017: Probably one of four un-named co-conspirators in the
US attorney’s indictment of Richard Lai US Attorney’s Office in New
York’s Eastern district implicated the Kuwaiti in its investigation of
corruption.
30 April 2017: Resigns from FIFA’s governing council.
Biography of Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim

Al-Khalifa (Bahrain)
2 November 1965: Born in Riffa, Bahrain.
1992: Graduated from the University of Bahrain with a bachelor’s
degree in English Literature and History.
1996: Chairman of the soccer national team.

1998: Elected vice-president of the Bahrain Football Association (BFA).
2002–2013: President of the BFA.
Secretary general of the Bahrain National Olympic Committee.
Since 2008: Electoral battles with Bin Hammam.
March 2009: First AFC presidential campaign.
Spring 2011: Arrest of 150 athletes and sports executives; at least 30
players and officials were suspended by the soccer association according
to Bahrain Human Rights Centre.
2 May 2013: Wins AFC presidential election against UAE Football
Association president Yousef Al Serkal and Hafez Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia.
2013: Elected at Bin Hammam’s vacant seat on the FIFA’s governing
committee and simultaneous defeat of Qatar’s Hassan al Thawadi in the
competition.
2014: Failure to win an International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF)
presidential election; investigated by ISSF for ethics breaches.
December 2014: Uses a proposal to recognize Central Asia as a separate
soccer region on the continent to eliminate the post of a women AFC
vice-president held by Australian Moya Dodd.
15 October 2015: Announces his candidature to become the next presi-
dent of FIFA.
23 February 2016: The conservative British parliament member Damian
Collins, accuses him of bribery to finance his campaign for a seat at the
FIFA executive committee in 2009.
26 February 2016: Election of UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino
as president of the FIFA by 115 votes against 88.
Biography of Mohammed Bin Hammam (Qatar)

8 May 1949: Born in Doha, Qatar.
1970s and 1980s: Head of successful Al Rayan SC football club.
1992–1996: President of the Qatar Football Association.
1994: Fails against South Korean business magnate Chung Mong Joon
for the FIFA vice-presidency.
440 J. M. Dorsey
1996: Wins a seat on the FIFA executive committee.

Member of the Qatari parliament.
2002–2011: Three consecutive terms as AFC president.
March 2009: Submit to the AFC Executive Committee a proposal for
AFC to sign a three-cycle contract for the period 2012–2014.
2 December 2010: Russia and Qatar selected for the 2018 and 2022
FIFA World Cups respectively.
March 2011: FIFA presidential campaign, stood as a clean-up candidate
for FIFA reform.
May 2011: Withdraws candidacy three days before the vote.
23 July 2011: Banned for life from involvement in professional soccer
due to allegations he had bribed 25 Caribbean Football Union (CFU)
members.
19 July 2012: Ban subsequently annulled by CAS due to lack of suffi-
cient evidence.
December 2012: FIFA handed bin Hammam a second life ban from
football.
2017: Gulf crisis in which Bahrain joined a UAE-Saudi led diplomatic
and economic boycott of Qatar.
23 June 2017: AFC upholds principles of political neutrality.
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Global Sport Leaders

Emmanuel Bayle · Patrick Clastres

Global Sport Leaders

ISBN 978-3-319-76752-9 ISBN 978-3-319-76753-6 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934636

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover credit: © Dennis Galante/Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

1 Introduction: Becoming a Global Sport Leader 1

Part I Founding Ideologies

2 Pierre de Coubertin: The Inventor of the Olympic

3 Alice Milliat: A Feminist Pioneer for Women’s Sport 61

4 Jules Rimet: FIFA’s Missionary President 83

5 Henri de Baillet-Latour: Globalising the Olympic

Part II 1970–1980s: The “Dassler Revolution”

6 João Havelange: A Businessman for World Soccer 127

7 Philippe Chatrier: The Fight to Control Professional

8 Juan Antonio Samaranch: From Barcelona Elite

9 Richard (Dick) W.D. Pound: The Architect

Part III 1990s–2000s: Commercialisation, Professionalization

10 Hein Verbruggen: Bringing a Corporate Mentality

11 Jacques Rogge—The Quest for New Olympic Values 273

12 Sepp Blatter: Wielding Power Through FIFA 301

13 Lamine Diack: The Pride of a Continent 337

Part IV The Fall of the IFs and IOC or a New Sporting

14 Bernie Ecclestone: Formula One’s Entrepreneurial

15 Jagmohan Dalmiya: The Prometheus of Modern

16 Arab Autocrats Put Their Stamp on Global Sports

About the Editors

Patrick Clastres, Ph.D. is Professor of sports history at the University

Sandro Arcioni, Ph.D. is CEO and owner of MUPEX sàrl

include international sport federations, their professionalisation and

articles on political scandals. His field of research are scandals, mobiliza-

international sports organizations during the Cold War and co-edited

Table 5.1 Host cities for Olympic Sessions during Coubertin’s

Since the late nineteenth century, communication and information

academics, while innumerable biographies and biopics dissect the lives

Two Models of Globalised Sport

1Bernie Ecclestone, the former head of Formula 1 motor racing.

the institution concerned. Their portraits are based on interviews, the

Management Science, Sport and History

international in terms of their structures and management, as well as

Jules Rimet (FIFA) and Philippe Chatrier (International Tennis Federation—

Long-Serving Presidents: Stability or

twentieth century without suffering irreparable damage. However, it has

Sport’s Career Ladder

as an elite athlete has become a distinct advantage when it comes to

executives, including most executives from Arab countries and former

3Le Monde, 22 June 2015.

Lawyers, Businessmen and Athletes

Generally speaking, the federations governing so-called working-class

given the influence of the media on the development of international

Samaranch is, perhaps, the executive who managed this balancing

European Hegemony over a Male-Dominated

Qatar (2022), are signs of Europe’s waning influence in world sport,

great ambitions within the administration of international sport. Japan,

two major footballing countries to be represented by women are Italy

The “Dassler Revolution”

FIFA awarded Dassler’s newly formed company, ISL, the contract

The Challenge of Increased Professionalization

federal network/system, while pursuing the interests of the international

• Internal governance, including the international body’s marketing

Samaranch, Verbruggen and Blatter were autocratic leaders who exer-