By Kelly Charles Crabb
On August 3, 2016, just two days before the start of the 2016 Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the addition of five sports to the lineup for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games—baseball and softball (considered together), karate, skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing.
The road to the Olympics for these five sports was a long one and the achievement represents hundreds of man hours and the expenditure of large sums of money. Appropriately, a major theme of this process is competition. According to the World Sports Encyclopedia, there are over 8,000 organized sports in the world. However, a Summer Olympic Games, for example, traditionally has featured only 28 sports (more or less). It would be safe to say that the vast majority of the other 7,972 sports would love to be part of the program for the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games offer an opportunity to be seen by billions of people around the globe and sports featured at the Olympic Games gain immediate international recognition and legitimacy. Olympic exposure generates interest which increases the number of participants which ultimately makes the sport more profitable. All of this, of course, is good for the sport—whether or not the sport is played on a professional level.
In 2007, the IOC entertained the adoption of a more flexible system, which they planned to implement for the 2020 Summer Games. The proposed system provided for twenty-five “core” sports and three “floating” sports. The core sports would be relatively “safe” from change (requiring a two-thirds majority vote of the IOC members to be dropped), but the floating sports could be replaced by a simple majority vote.
In 2015, the IOC announced a further evolution of the system. Rather than the core/floating sports dichotomy, the IOC gave the organizing committee for the Olympic Games—in the case of 2020, the organization set up by the City of Tokyo—the ability to propose one or more additional sports for inclusion in the program for its Olympic Games, with the IOC having the final say. The idea is that the host city will have some flexibility to promote traditional local sports and/or sports that are most popular in its region. As one might imagine, the sport of karate (a Japanese word meaning “empty hand” by the way) has a long tradition in Japan. Baseball and softball, which were dropped by the London organizing committee after the Beijing games and were rejected by Rio de Janeiro, were re-added by Tokyo 2020. The sport of baseball is immensely popular in Japan, which has a highly developed professional baseball league and obsesses about the nationally televised high school baseball championships held at Koshien Stadium in the heart of Tokyo.
Under the new system, sports proposed by the organizing committee, if accepted, are included in the program for only one Olympic Games. The organizing committee for the next subsequent Olympics will have the flexibility to propose its own additional sports. The sports involved want to presume that being featured at the prior Olympics will present a great opportunity—that a good showing at one Games will likely augur well for the next—but that, of course, remains to be seen.
It is interesting to note that only five sports—athletics (referred to commonly as ‘track and field’), cycling, fencing, gymnastics and swimming—have been staged at every modern Olympic Games, starting with the first Games in Athens in the year 1896. Some sports are added, only to be later dropped. Judo has been added and then dropped four times. Handball, baseball and softball have been added and dropped twice. A number of others—such as golf and rugby, which were added to the list of sports at the Rio 2016 Games—have been dropped once before. Golf’s appearance at the Rio Games ended a 112-year drought during which golf was not an Olympic sport.
So how does a sport become chosen for the program of an Olympic Games? To use track and field terms, the process is more like a marathon than a hundred-meter dash. The first step, which is monumental in and of itself, requires the sport to have a governing body, or an “International Sports Federation”—often referred to as an “IF.” An IF establishes and administers the rules of its sport, certifies the judges and referees and oversees the various championships—including (for those lucky enough to be selected) the championship events that take place at the Olympic Games.
The IFs must then be officially recognized by the IOC. For this to happen, the IF must comply with IOC’s established guidelines for recognition, which include:
Compliance with the applicable rules of the Olympic Charter (see Rule 25 of the Charter);
Being a signatory and be in compliance with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code (which includes, among other things, effective out-of-competition testing administered by WADA);
Being the only IF governing the sport in question worldwide (there are examples of warring federations, for certain)—for at least five years;
Having at least 50 affiliated countries from at least three continents, for summer sports; or having a minimum of 25 affiliated countries from at least three continents, for winter sports; and
Adherence to (showing “respect” for) the following principles: Monitor the athletes’ health and address education, non-discrimination, fair play and solidarity;
Have as a “key focus” the development of activities for youth;
Ensure “fair” and “transparent” judging and marking system; and
Take into consideration the interest of women practicing the sport.
An IF seeking IOC recognition must submit an application, pursuant to which the IOC asks each candidate to provide information related to eight evaluation criteria consistent with the guidelines mentioned above: governance, history and tradition, universality, popularity, athletes, development of the IF/sport and finance. Here is a small representative sample of the 50 plus questions asked by the IOC in the application:
“Please explain the value added by the sport to the Olympic Games and/or the Olympic Movement, value added by the Olympic Movement to the sport.”
“Number of Anti-Doping Rule Violations?”
“Steps taken by the IF to ensure that the outcomes of the competition will be as objective and fair as possible, including selection & evaluation process for judges, training and certification and impact of judging on results?”
“Steps taken by your IF to present your sport in the most interesting and attractive manner, in particular to young people?”
As noted in the last sample question above, the IOC seems intent on attracting more young people (“millennials” and “founders”) to the Games. This “key focus” is mandated in the IOC’s guidelines. In his statement accompanying the announcement of the five new sports for the Tokyo Games, IOC President, Thomas Bach, stated: “We want to take sport to the youth. With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them….” This may explain the addition to the Tokyo 2020 program of skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing (a sport near and dear to me, as I have worked with the International Surfing Association, the IF for surf sports)—all sports that seem to appeal to the younger generation.
Each application for recognition is submitted and vetted by the IOC’s Olympic Programme Commission (composed of IOC members and representatives of the National Olympic Committees, IFs and athletes), along with the pleas of other sports that desperately want to be included in the next Olympic sports slate. The Committee’s recommendations are then voted on by the IOC members at one of the IOC’s general meetings.
Recognition by the IOC is not the end of the process, but only the crossing of a major hurdle. Recognized IFs, and there is an association of them (ARISF—the Association of Recognized IOC Sports Federations), include the World Squash Federation, which has been rejected at least three times for inclusion in the sports program. The Japanese sport of sumo has a federation on the list (International Sumo Federation), but not even the Tokyo Games of 2020 will feature sumo as an official sport. It all boils down to whether or not the otherwise qualified sports will add value to the program of the Games, as perceived by the IOC.
The process of official acceptance for a sport on the Olympic program can take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. There is international travel (the IOC’s headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland, for example), expensive presentation booklets and other materials that have to be made, experienced analysts and consultants that need to be hired, and so forth and so on. Add to that that all of this takes place over the course of several years—it would be rare indeed for a sport to recognized and accepted by the IOC for inclusion in the sports program for the Games on the first try—and one can understand just how challenging of a process this can be. However, achieving the goal of inclusion in the Olympic Games might well justify the effort.
References
International Olympic Committee, “ International Federations,” at https://www.olympic.org/ioc-governance-international-sports-federations
International Olympic Committee, “International Sports Federations Requesting IOC Recognition—Recognition Procedure” (July, 2013), at http://www.slalomskateboarder.com/ISSA/2015-Discussion/IOC_MASTER_Recognition_procedure_document_for_IFs.pdf
Official Website of the Association of IOC Recognized International Sports Federations, at http://www.arisf.org/ioc.html
Olympic Charter (English), August 2, 2016, at https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/General/EN-Olympic-Charter.pdf#_ga=1.175668517.647696195.1473274559
Kelly Charles Crabb is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP and an Adjunct Professor at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California, where he teaches a course on sports law. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School (1984) and a member of the bars of the states of New York and California.
