Page 16 - THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE’S ACCOUNTABILITY FOR HARMFUL CONSEQUENCES OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES- A MULTI-METHOD INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ANALYSIS Ryan Gautier

Chapter One – Introduction
concept than accountability. Liability may be a mechanism of accountability, but the use of liability is problematic when examining international actors, as many international actors do not have obligations under international law, a situation that will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. The breadth offered by examining accountability opens up the study to consider options beyond traditional legal analysis.
2.2. (Un-) Accountability of International Sporting Organisations
Global organized sport has spent much of its history operating, and attempting to remain, outside of the purview of the state. It was only in the 1950s in the United States, or the 1970s in Europe, that the state put sporting organisations on notice that they could be subject to regulation.25 Regulation of sport has largely been limited to economic matters, such as ensuring that organisations comply with antitrust/competition law, or European Union (‘EU’) rules on the freedom of movement of workers.26
Otherwise, the state has been kept out of the governance of sport. A few factors have contributed to this situation. First, unlike international organisations (‘IOs’), international sporting organisations do not have states members that are involved in their governance. Second, international sporting organisations are nigh-universally headquartered in Switzerland, which is known for neutrality and a hands-off approach to oversight of organisations headquartered there. Third, international sporting organisations have actively fought against political ‘interference’ for years. All of this has fostered a belief in those who oversee sport that sport is exceptional.27 Even governments have bought into the notion that sport is exceptional. This belief has been expressed in instruments such as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, stating that the EU shall “take[] account of the specific nature of sport,”28 and in a recent United Nations
25 For an American example, see Radovich v National Football League, 352 U.S. 445 (1957) (finding that unlike professional baseball, professional football was subject to antitrust laws). For a European example, see Case C- 36/74 Walrave and Koch v Association Union Cycliste Internationale [1974] ECR 1405 (holding that the practice of sport is subject to European Community law when it constitutes an economic activity).
26 Simon Gardiner, John O’Leary, Roger Welch, Simon Boyes and Urvasi Naidoo, Sports Law (4th edn, Routledge 2012) 146.
27 See Hans Bruyninckx, ‘Sports Governance – Between the Obsession with Rules and Regulation and the Aversion to Being Ruled and Regulated’ in Barbara Segaert, Marc Theeboom, Christiana Timmerman and Bart Vanreusel (eds), Sports Governance, Development and Corporate Responsibility (Routledge 2012).
28 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’) Article 165.
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