by MCM

Created on: May 25, 2009   Last Updated: June 04, 2009

Arbitration in sport is a recent development in modern legal history. Its appearance corresponded with the "astonishing growth with which professional sport and high level sport in general has developed"[1]. It's now a big-money industry. Sponsorship deals worth millions of euro, dollars, or pounds are commonplace. For example, Chelsea's record breaking 50 million pound five year sponsorship deal made with Samsung in April 2005, was quickly broken by Manchester United. They announced on 6 April 2006 that they had secured sponsorship from American finance company AIG for the princely sum of 56.5 million over four years[2], having turned down a deal worth an estimated 65 - 70 million with an online gambling company.[3]

Sports disputes nowadays require speedy and expert resolution to minimise impact upon such lucrative sponsorship deals. Not only that, but if the contentious issue does not reach a speedy conclusion it could take a considerable amount of time out of an athletes relatively short career span, or even put an end to it. As well as that, the issues discussed in sports litigation are difficult for normal judiciary and arbitrators to comprehend quickly, as they involve issues and procedures particular to the life of an athlete. Add to the mixture the fact that the nature of modern high profile sport now largely involves competition between nations or individuals from different countries, and a potent concoction is created. Tensions between different nations, various cultures, suspicions about the impartiality of each other's judicial system, and language barriers make the area of international sports arbitration an extremely tough one.

Formation of the CAS

The Court of Arbitration for Sport was the brainchild of the then president of the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.), Juan Antonio Samaranch, who saw in 1981 that the creating of a sports specific jurisdiction could be the solution to the problems in sports arbitration. An I.O.C taskforce headed by H.E. Judge Kba Mbaye worked out the C.A.S policies. The I.O.C officially ratified its statutes in 1983 and they came into force in June of the following year with Mbaye as President[4]. Its headquarters are in Lausanne in Switzerland and it has two other offices in New York and Sydney. Since then, the C.A.S has gone from strength to strength with its caseload growing from a single request for arbitration in 1986 to 311 requests in 2008[5].

Modifications to date

As a result of the observations

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