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"Preface" [2007] ELECD 253; in Bogusz, Barbara; Cygan, Adam; Szyszcak, Erika (eds), "The Regulation of Sport in the European Union" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: The Regulation of Sport in the European Union

Editor(s): Bogusz, Barbara; Cygan, Adam; Szyszcak, Erika

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847203632

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 9

Extract:

Preface
If he helped me out in training we would be bottom of the league and if I had to
work in his world of big business, we would be bankrupt! (José Mourinho, on his
relationship with Roman Abramovich)1

This collection is the outcome of a one-day seminar on the Regulation of
Sport in the European Union held at the University of Leicester, 11 May
2006. The seminar was part of The Modern Law Review seminar series, bring-
ing together academics, sociologists, practitioners, political scientists and
economists within the context of whether sport, as a discipline, raises distinct
regulatory issues by comparison to other social and economic activities. A
thread running throughout the volume is the desire to address the issue of
whether sport is special. The contributions in this book engage with this ques-
tion and consider whether the time has arrived to recognize the existence of a
distinct lex sportiva. The legal discipline of `sports law' has become accepted
both by academic writers and by practitioners who suggest that sports law is
not just a composite description of other branches of law, such as competition
law or intellectual property and how they are applied to athletes or sporting
federations.2
The arguments which are put forward by the proponents of a distinct sports
law are not without substance. Athletes are subject to the rules and regulations
of sporting federations which have powers to make binding quasi-judicial
decisions and ultimately terminate a sporting career. Such decisions ...