Play the Game/the Danish Institute for Sports Studies is recruiting an academic researcher who will contribute to developing the professional profile of the institute and strengthening our international leadership role within the governance of sport.

Analysis: In 2013, then-FIFA Secretary General Jérôme Valcke stated that “less democracy is sometimes better for organising a World Cup”. He reasoned that a “strong head of state” reduces organisational costs. Economist Matthias Fett looks at the numbers and tests this hypothesis.

Play the Game calls upon potential partners to declare their interest in hosting Play the Game 2021, the 12th world communication conference on sport and society.

The governance structures in national sports organisations in 13 different countries will come under close scrutiny in the coming year as Play the Game initiates the third round of the National Sports Governance Observer project with a number of new partners.

To Global Athlete Director General Rob Koehler, sports democracy is ‘a democracy limited for the few’ that needs to change. The former WADA Deputy Director General heads up an international athlete-led movement that was established earlier this year in order to promote athletes’ rights all over the world.

The upcoming 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo has raised questions about national identity and belonging among the Japanese population. Especially tennis player Naomi Osaka, who is daughter of a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, has been subject to some surviving racism in Japan, Asger Røjle Christensen reports from the Japanese capital.

The President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, calls for tougher sanctions against athletes’ entourage in his speech at the World Anti-Doping Agency’s fifth World Conference on Doping in Sport in Katowice, Poland.

On the final day of Play the Game 2019, participants heard about the Canadian struggle for safe sport and how attempts to establish an independent Pan-Canadian body to oversee safe sport in the country – built on elements and principles known from the establishment of the national anti-doping agency – have stalled due to political hesitation and push back from national sports organisations. Yet the Canadian experience may still serve as an inspiration for other countries.

At the start of 2019, it was fair to say there was no single transnational anti-mega-event movement. In a matter of months, this changed as anti-Olympics organisers from Rio de Janeiro, Pyeongchang and Seoul, Tokyo, Paris, and Los Angeles came together in Tokyo in July with the goal of solidifying their transnational connections into an active movement against the Olympic Games.

The Director of Legal & Business affairs of the IAAF has asked Play the Game to share the federation’s viewpoints in response to a debate about the Caster Semenya case at Play the Game 2019.

As Play the Game 2019 comes to an end, a group of athlete organisations sends an open letter to IOC President Thomas Bach to bring attention to the important issue of human rights.

"Implementing and practice good governance in your organization means that people got to change. And I don't believe everyone understand the need for change. Or simply want a change," WADA Vice President Linda Helleland said at Play the Game 2019

"The history of sport organizations has demonstrated an ingrained reluctance to ask obvious questions or to challenge officials whose conduct has been inadequate or improper," said Richard W. Pound in his presentation at Play the Game 2019.

Opening address at the 11th international Play the Game conference, 13 October 2019 in Colorado Springs, USA, by Jens Sejer Andersen, international director of Play the Game.

New Olympic and amateur sport legislation in U.S. Congress, while less anti-athlete, must do more to protect child athletes, and so should the IOC. Gigi Alford from the World Players Association and Sport & Rights Alliance comments on a congressional bill.

"Democratically elected governments, who would usually call for civic engagement, seem to prefer athletes that move only those muscles that do not affect the tongue.", says Jens Sejer Andersen, International director at Play the Game, ahead of the Play the Game 2019 conference.

A change of leadership brought hopes of better times to the African Football Confederation (CAF). 30 months later, its problems seem to go broader and deeper than ever. Osasu Obayiuwana reports from a soccer-mad continent on an uncertain course.

An independent response from Ali Jawad, Olympic Para-Powerlifter and Global Athlete Start Up member, to the article entitled ‘WADA president ‘welcomes feedback’ from iNADO after call for a separation of powers’.