China’s human rights violations against one million Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims in Xinjiang have for years upset human rights defenders, IOC members, and representatives of national governments. But four months prior to the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, China’s critics are still divided on the question of a boycott of the global sport event.

The project on strengthening athlete power in sport (SAPIS) has released a review of academic literature about athletes and sports governance and makes it available for free to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Human Rights Watch criticises the international basketball federation for not protecting victims and witnesses against intimidation and retaliation in a sexual abuse case in Mali where the national basketball federation in Mali obstructed the investigation. HRW calls for the international president to resign for overseeing institutionalised acceptance of sexual abuse.

Proposals for a closed European Superleague were shot down earlier this year but research shows that UEFA's Champions League in effect may be just as closed with only three new clubs out of 75 reaching the group stages over the last decade.

Odense, Denmark’s third largest city and home of leading sports and journalism university departments, has offered free conference facilities to Play the Game’s next conference. The event is organised next to a Tour de France stage and one of Europe’s biggest sports festivals.

After seven years, Brazilian prosecutors are finally investigating allegations against the FIVB president Ary Graça and his allies. Previous findings seem confirmed, but police are raising fresh charges of tax fraud against world volleyball’s most powerful leaders.

Play the Game/Danish Institute for Sports Studies is recruiting a researcher with an academic background or similar research expertise who can contribute to and expand our leadership role in the international debate on sports policy and governance.

Researchers, athlete representatives, and anti-doping experts have developed a tool named the National Anti-Doping Governance Observer (NADGO). A new report reveals the results from benchmarking 11 national anti-doping agencies and explains the methodology.

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, Olympic power broker, has been sentenced to prison in a criminal court. Investigative reporter Jens Weinreich has observed the Kuwaiti Sheikh for many years and has been threatened by the Sheikh’s aides several times. He describes the methods that brought Ahmad to power and assesses the implications of the conviction for the Sheikh and the Olympic system. Not much is likely to change.

What does the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and space politics have to do with each other? Quite a lot and it demonstrates China’s ability to mix sport and politics in their national self-promotion, writes senior analyst Stanis Elsborg.

Under what circumstances is it possible to imagine that one or more national football associations boycott the World Cup in Qatar? Matthias Fett lays out three scenarios and their consequences for FIFA and the associations and reaches the conclusion that the most likely boycott would happen in the US.

Sports governance worldwide has had the legs knocked out from under it. Yet, national and international sports administrators are slow in realizing the magnitude of what has hit them.

An in-depth investigation by Andy Brown from Sports Integrity Initiative reveals the details about race walker and former Olympic Champion Alex Schwazer’s complex struggle with the antidoping system that has culminated with an Italian judge demanding an investigation of WADA and the IAAF.

The recent election of South African Patrice Motsepe as new president of the Confederation of African Football shows how FIFA continues to meddle in African football politics leaving little hope of much needed reforms.

Today, Thomas Bach has been re-elected as IOC President for a final four year term without any opponents or opposition. Using Bach’s doctoral thesis as a departure point, Jens Weinreich describes how constantly planning for the future has provided Bach with an unprecedented hold on power in the Olympic system.

When the Japanese people now faces dramatic cost overruns while preparing the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, they are not the first to learn a hard economic lesson. A recent academic study argues that the Olympic Games are naturally subject to severe cost overruns, while the IOC criticises the study for mixing budgets and attributing non-Olympic costs to the Olympic budget. This article examines claims and counter-claims in the debate about Olympic costs.

Hosting major sports tournaments can confer prestige on a country, but in the case of Egypt, the 2021 Handball World Championship will do little to repair its relations with the US, Italy and states in the Gulf, argues James M.Dorsey in this analysis.

The wounds in the international anti-doping community are unlikely to be healed after the Court of Arbitration for Sport put a legal end to six years of the Russian-international doping scandal. Was CAS under influence of the IOC, or is sports law not strong enough yet?