Recommendations of the French Senate Inquiry on Doping

The French Senate has release its report into doping in sport. Here is how Reuters reported the release:

The top two in the 1998 Tour de France - Italian Marco Pantani and Germany's Jan Ullrich - were taking the banned blood booster EPO, a French Senate inquiry into sports doping said on Wednesday.

The medical stubs enclosed in the 918-page report, when compared against a separate list of test results, also reveal that American Lance Armstrong tested positive for EPO in 1999.

Just three days after the end of the 100th Tour, an event that was dogged by persistent speculation about doping, the 21-member parliamentary group said a "truth and reconciliation" commission should be created to lift the veil of silence on illegal practices.

The group recommended that the French government finance studies about the extent of doping, its risks and the range of drugs used.

"We cannot properly fight something that we don't understand," parliamentarian Jean-Jacques Lozach, the group's spokesman, told journalists.

"Speaking of doping doesn't harm sport but instead contributes in the medium and long term to restore its greatness. Not speaking about it often means not doing anything."

In a press release responding to the report, the UCI -- the international body which governs cycling -- essentially called the report old news, and suggested that the doping problems of cycling are a thing of the past:

"In recent years, cycling has been totally transformed. It is now possible to race and win clean and there is a new culture within the peloton where riders support and believe in clean cycling. Cycling now has the most sophisticated and effective anti-doping infrastructure in world sport. Today, cycling leads the way in the fight against doping in sport"

These comments are evocative of the kind of statements that UCI has made in the past, most famously with respect to Lance Armstrong.

The fact that the French Senate has seen fit to investigate doping provides another illustration of the public-civil share governance of sport when it comes to doping. The recommendations of the report call for a greater governmental role in the regulation of doping in sport. Aided by my high school French and Google Translate below are the recommendations of the report, mostly in coherent English. Not that in the below the acronym AFLD refers to the French Anti-Doping Agency.

PROPOSALS OF THE INQUIRY: THE SEVEN PILLARS OF THE FIGHT AGAINST DOPING

1. Know

• Establish a "truth and reconciliation" commission under the auspices of the sports movement, making the date on current and past doping practices in sport (Proposal No. 1).
• Allow and support the implementation of retrospective epidemiological studies to improve the current state of knowledge regarding the use of doping and health risks (Proposal No. 7).
• Identify in statistics relating to offenses which resulted in conviction cases under any doping (Proposition 8).
• Conduct regular work of academic research on the traffic of doping products in France, on the model of Donati report and Paoli (Proposal No. 10).
• To establish federations by a risk analysis of Doping-specific discipline (Proposal No. 36).

2. Prevent

• Establish an anti-doping charter schools in all sports and physical activities (Proposal No. 3).
• Include in the strategy of prevention of doping control program for educational purposes (without penalty) for non-licensees (Proposal No. 4).
• Strengthen the training and education of current and future physicians to the issue of doping in the initial and continuing training (Proposal No. 5).
• Establish agreements between the AFLD and school sports associations in the second degree (UNSS and UGSEL) on shares of doping prevention (Proposal No. 12).
• Develop specific awareness campaigns on the risks of taking performance-enhancing drugs in gyms (Proposition 13).
• Restart the regional commissions prevention and fight against doping led by the corresponding inter-doping (Proposition 14).
• Refer to the AFLD responsibility AMPD (Proposal No. 15).
• Provide opportunities to the AFLD to prohibit athletes work with some doctors who participated in doping practices (Proposal No. 2).
• Restore the monopoly of AMPD in certification before delivery of licenses for sports sanctioned (Proposal No. 16).
• Streamline map AMPD and ease their implementation framework (Proposition 17).
• Better information on the existence of the toll in the AMPD and SPF (Proposal No. 18).
• Refer to the AFLD jurisdiction doping prevention, by loading the regional policy coordination, facilitation of AMPD through its inter-related, and management of toll (Proposition 19).
• Attach clear regulatory doping prevention medical monitoring, transmitting the results to the department controls the AFLD and allowing the results to feed the biological passport (Proposal No. 20).
• Establish a validation procedure sports schedules by the Ministry on the basis of risks to the health of athletes (Proposition 21).
• Set a "right to rest" for players that could be sports, their unions and public authorities (Proposal No. 22) argued before the judge.
• Transforming the French Agency against Doping Agency in the prevention and fight against doping (Proposition 23).
• Create a department of prevention of doping in the AFLD, whose orientations are defined by the Scientific Steering Committee (Proposal No. 52).

3. Check

• Define all competitions held in France as national default, subject to the communication by the International Federation a list of international events it intends to control (Proposal No. 28).
• Ensure specialization doping samplers approved by reducing their number and increasing their continuing education (Proposal No. 25).
• Establish, at the AMA, an accreditation process or international accreditation samplers (Proposal No. 26).
• Support to the AMA limiting the jurisdiction of international federations to only sporting events in the organization of which they are actually involved (Proposition 27).
• Support to WADA a period during which the NADO does not have jurisdiction autonomous control of an international competition (Proposal No. 28).
• Support to the AMA to be allowed to control a NADO international competition without approval of the FI or the AMA when the FI does not intend to exercise its jurisdiction (Proposal No. 30).
• Systematically agreements between the AFLD and international federations to share the monitoring programs on international events (Proposition 31).
• Increase the proportion of spot checks in total control of the AFLD (Proposition 32).
• Include in professional team sports, collective location of the team during the season and an individual obligation for all season players (Proposition 33).
• Specify, in out of competition testing, those made unexpectedly, as defined by the World Anti-Doping Code (Proposal No. 35).
• Provide priority transmission of the results of passport anti-doping authorities before transmission athletes (Proposition 37).

4. Analyze

• Expand the scope of commodities in the analyises (Proposal No. 39).
• Provide a mission of the Inspectorate General of Youth and Sport on how the national laboratory Chatenay-Malabry, as well as the relevance and the manner of its affiliation with a university (Proposal No. 40).
• Support to WADA removing the distinction between substances and methods prohibited at all times and those are the only competition (Proposal No. 6).

5. Sanction

• Refer to the AFLD the sanctioning authority in the first instance (Proposal No. 41).
• Bring to a four-year term of suspension when taking heavy doping (Proposal No. 43).
• Provide systematic therefore what fines imposed a suspension of two years or more (Proposition 44).
• Wear EUR 100 000 ceiling of possible fines for sports (Proposal No. 45).
• Assign the AFLD the product of financial penalties (Proposal No. 46).
• Establish a mechanism repented to improve the overall effectiveness of the fight against doping (Proposition 57).
• Allow the AFLD to impose collective punishment against teams that have been more than two individual penalties during a season (Proposal No. 47).
• Develop sanctions on the basis of elements of non-analytical evidence (Proposal No. 48).
• Create a sanctions committee, separate from the College, responsible to impose disciplinary sanctions on the basis of educated by the Agency (Proposal No. 49) records.
• Expand the profile of President of the AFLD in connection with the diversification of functions of the Agency (Proposal No. 50).
• Transforming the department controls department investigations and control (Proposition 51).
• Support to WADA removing the power to sanction international federations against international sports (Proposition 42).

6. Penalize

• Penalize detention products against persons practicing a sport within an institution of sport and physical activity (APS) (Proposal No. 9).
• Extend the possibility for Customs to resort to "buying shots" for doping (Proposition 11).
• Encourage the adoption by the European Union harmonization directives in the fight against the trafficking of doping products (Proposal No. 60).

7. Cooperate

• Provide national coordination in the fight against doping, responsible mainly for analyzing the results of the various regional commissions (Proposition 58).
• Specify in Article L. 232-20 of the Code of sport information involving any doping are systematically brought to the attention of the OCLAESP and communication of information relating to any doping is formalized by an agreement between everyone involved (Proposal No. 55 ). Is addressed to all records in custody of persons suspected of having committed an offense referred to in Articles L. · Provide that the AFLD 232-9, L. 232-10, L. 232-25 and L. 232-26 of the Sports Code (Proposal No. 56).
• Suggest to the AMA to recommend members to communicate the point of contact responsible for the criminal prosecution of doping at the national level (Proposition 59).
• Establish 8 doping corresponding inter within the regional offices available to the AFLD full time (Proposal No. 24).
• Encourage the AFLD to enter into agreements with the major federations for the organization of exchange of location data (Proposal No. 34).
• Share data with teams intelligence to conduct a qualitative analysis of the results in the crossing, especially with location data (Proposition 38).
• Systematically transmit department analyzes the AFLD a sample of doping products or suspected to be when they are seized by customs or other law enforcement (Proposition 54).
• Expand the base of the "Buffet" tax and affect the recipe ceiling, the AFLD to ensure equal funding subsidy / tax affected.

Costs and Benefits of Doping

Doping, it seems, is everywhere these days -- prominent athletes caught doping n the past few weeks include Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell, Ryan Braun and a promise of more to come. Here I take a quick look at the costs and benefits of doping from the athlete's perspective.

Consider Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers player implicated in the emerging scandal involving the Biogenisis anti-aging clinic. He has agreed to a 65 game suspension, the rest of the season, which equates to a $3.4 million forfeiture of salary. Big money? To place that into context, consider that Braun is receiving $144.5 million in salary from the Brewers ($133 million still to be paid) -- a salary which may have benefited from past performance improved via breaking the league's drugs policy.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Max Scherzer stated the obvious:

“I still don’t think the punishment fits the crime. MLB hasn’t closed the loophole to create the incentive to cheat. He still has his contract and he’s still financially gaining from this.”

The Brewers will still owe Braun $113 million after this year.

Scherzer said he’d be in favor of Braun’s contract being voided.“You gotta start cutting out contracts,” Scherzer said.

There is no doubt that a lifetime ban and voiding of contracts, even if practically possible given the players union, would rebalance incentives against doping. However, it wouldn't eliminate it.

To understand why, consider what has been called the "Goldman Dilemma."

There’s a well-known survey in sports, known as the Goldman Dilemma. For it, a researcher, Bob Goldman, began asking elite athletes in the 1980s whether they would take a drug that guaranteed them a gold medal but would also kill them within five years. More than half of the athletes said yes. When he repeated the survey biannually for the next decade, the results were always the same. About half of the athletes were quite ready to take the bargain.

Only recently did researchers get around to asking nonathletes the same question. In results published online in February, 2009 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, exactly 2 of the 250 people surveyed in Sydney, Australia, said that they would take a drug that would ensure both success and an early death. “We were surprised,” James Connor, Ph.D., a lecturer at the University of New South Wales and one of the study’s authors, said in an e-mail message. “I expected 10-20 percent yes.” His conclusion, unassailable if inexplicable, is that “elite athletes are different from the general population, especially on desire to win.”

With more than 50% of athletes willing to sacrifice most of their adult life in exchange for winning, lifetime bans and severe financial penalties just don't compare.

Detroit's Scherzer is correct that more biting penalties are needed, especially in baseball and other non-WADA sports. However, such penalties will only comprise one part a more effective doping regime.  

FIFA's Alternative Reality

Often, FIFA appears to act according to the norms of behavior which govern some alternative universe.

Yesterday, Sepp Blatter demanded that Brazil do something to sop its citizens from exercizing their democratic right to public expression:

FIFA President Sepp Blatter says Brazil might have been the wrong choice as host of the 2014 World Cup if the tournament is affected by more social protests similar to those at the Confederations Cup.

Blatter told German press agency DPA that "if this happens again, we have to question whether we made the wrong decision awarding the hosting rights."

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets during the warm-up tournament in June, demanding better public services and expressing their anger over the cost to stage the World Cup.

After the Confederations Cup, FIFA spoke with the Brazilian government. Blatter says it's "now aware that next year the World Cup shouldn't be disturbed," adding that he'll discuss the matter with Brazil President Dilma Rousseff in September.

As far as ham-handedness, it is all there -- FIFA's president confusing himself with a head of state, hubristic interference in a sovereign nation's politics and the utter tone-deafness as to how hs comments will be received.

The Brazilian government reacted perfectly predictably:

Brazil’s government underlined the right of its citizens to protest after FIFA President Sepp Blatter said soccer’s governing body may have erred in selecting that country to host next year’s World Cup.

More than a million people took to Brazil’s streets during last month’s Confederations Cup, a test event for the World Cup, to demand better public services and to complain about the government spending almost 30 billion reais ($13.5 billion) on the World Cup...

“The success of the Confederations Cup proves Brazil is the correct choice to host the World Cup,” Brazil’s sports ministry said in an e-mailed statement after Blatter’s comments. “As for the demonstrations, Brazil is a democratic country that guarantees its citizens full freedom of expression.”

Three months ago, Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s top administrator, said “less democracy is sometimes better for hosting a World Cup.”

More and more I am coming to believe that many of FIFA's problems stem from a culture that is so far removed from the real world that its institutional actions reflect the goings on of an alternate universe.

Senator Lindsey Graham Suggest Sochi Olympic Boycott

I don’t know if putting the Olympics on the table is the right answer, but I do know this: What we’re doing is not working. #Russia

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) July 17, 2013

Politico reports that US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has floated the idea of the US boycotting the 2014 Sochi Olympics as a statement of protest over Russian

Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Wednesday that the United States should weigh boycotting the 2014 Winter Olympics over Russia’s conduct around the world, including the country’s handling of NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

“Yes, I would consider it. I know athletes would be heartbroken,” the South Carolina Republican told NBC News’s Kelly O’Donnell in an interview broadcast on “Today.” “I don’t know if putting the Olympics on the table is the right answer, but I do know this: What we’re doing is not working.”

Graham said the move would put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to change his ways.

“I love the Olympics, but I hate what the Russian government is doing throughout the world,” Graham told NBC News. “If they give asylum to a person who I believe has committed treason against the United States, that’s taking it to a new level.”

Graham also pointed to the Olympics in Nazi Germany as an example of when governments need to take a stand.

Hard to see this getting traction, but serves as a reminder that sports and large-scale geopolitics are never far apart.

The Proposed Reforms from Transparency International Unimplemented by FIFA

Below you can find the recommendations made by Transparency International in 2011in its report Safe Hands: Building Integrity and Transparency at FIFA which I have identified as having not been adopted by FIFA in its reform process. These of course comprise part of the reform evaluation wich I recent discussed at Play the Game and to which FIFA responded to here.

Overall, I identified 28 statements in the form of recommendations in the Safe Hands report. Of those 28, FIFA failed to even partially implement 23. Those 23 are listed below, to aid in discussion and (ideally) debate. Questions worth thinking about include: Which ones are most important? Which ones are secondary? Which may be off the mark? Comments welcomed either here or via email.

In coming posts I'll do the same with respect to the unimplemented recommendations from the pre-reform commissioned paper of Mark Pieth and those found in the first report of the FIFA IGC.

• FIFA should set up a committee of insiders and outsiders to review its code of ethics for the organization and its officials (be they elected or appointed, paid or unpaid) and employees.
• Clear conflict of interest policy with a transparent interests register for leaders (published, for example, on the FIFA website) 
• Disclosure of income of leading staff members as well as remuneration of members of the Executive Committee and other key bodies
• Guidelines for giving and receiving gifts at all levels of football governing bodies.
• Special guidelines for high-risk areas
• FIFA should establish a help desk to answer questions from anyone to whom the code applies about handling difficult situations (for example, how to deal with a specific invitation, or which gifts might be appropriate in a specific situation), providing anonymity if required.
• A maximum of two terms for positions including the Executive Committee and the Finance Committee
• Transparent and competitive elections and appointment processes
• Presence of non-executive (i.e. external) directors to the Executive Committee, Finance Committee and all major bodies
• The general secretary and the directors should be appointed for a set time-limit (for example five years with reappointment).
• We recommend that the multi-stakeholder group assesses the current standards
• Setting up a remuneration committee to decide on the remuneration packages, including bonuses, pensions, etc. of all senior FIFA officials. It should be guided by clear criteria, which should be decided by a larger decision-making body. Membership should include both internal FIFA and external (independent) representatives, the chair being one of the independent members. A report by the remuneration committee should be published in FIFA’s annual report. (These recommendations parallel good practice in the business world.)
• Publishing the audit reports from the local as well as from central independent auditors to give an account of the financial control system.
• Establishing an “Audit from below” i.e. publishing the use of funds in detail per confederation and member federation, so that interested parties can see whether the payments made match the services and/or goods/infrastructure received.
• [T]here is a need for additional transparency and more detailed public reporting. Public reporting cannot be limited to financial information; it must also disclose the criteria for, and processes behind, decisions made at the top.
• There should also be formalized and consistent reporting on anti-corruption activities integrated into already established reporting processes (e.g., accounting).
• FIFA needs clear published guidelines for the initiation and execution of investigations.
• Whistleblower protection rules and the appointment of an independent ombudsman Each suspicion has to be investigated professionally, by a body independent of the Executive Committee
• Each suspicion has to be investigated professionally, by a body independent of the Executive Committee
• Each breach of rules/code of ethics must have consequences. If a list of offences and sanctions is published, no board decisions will be seen as arbitrary.
• Any breach of criminal law must be referred to the appropriate authorities for prosecution
• FIFA, as well as its confederations and national federations using money allocated by FIFA, should report annually on anti-corruption policies and their implementation, as well as on any allegations and the actions taken.
• The organizing committees for all events under the direct control of FIFA, especially the FIFA World Cup but also FIFA Women’s and Youth tournaments, should be obliged to use Integrity Pacts4 (anticorruption contracts) for any construction projects and to publish reports under the new Sector Supplement Events of the Global Reporting Initiative, which provides guidelines for Corporate Social Responsibility.

FIFA Responds to My Reform Report Card

FIFA has graciously provided a response to my initial evaluation of the FIFA Reform effort which was published at Play the Game last month. Below is the FIFA response in full. I note that FIFA officials are not among those who requested my data spreadsheet which listed the various reforms.

I will respond in greater depth  in subsequent posts. For now, here is FIFA:

FIFA Response of 5 July 2013

Dear Mr Pielke

We have read the article published on the playthegame.org website on 19 June 2013: http://www.playthegame.org/news/detailed/a-report-card-on-fifa-reform-5625.html

We consider that the said article does not reflect the reality of the reform process undertaken by FIFA since June 2011. Equally, it does not properly reflect the positions which have been publicly expressed by the Independent Governance Committee (IGC) on the implementation process of the governance reforms. In addition, it is worth adding that the integrity, competence and expertise of Prof. Mark Pieth and the various other members of the IGC is well documented and publicly available.

In your article, specifications of the large number of recommendations that you claim have been omitted by FIFA’s reform process are missing. Further, may we comment on some of your references: With regards to Alexandra Wrage, FIFA directly and swiftly responded to each of her criticisms, as many of them were inconsistent with the facts. Guido Tognoni, on the other hand, has not assumed any role in the FIFA governance reform process and therefore may not be considered as an official source of reference.

Since its launch by President Joseph S. Blatter at the FIFA Congress in June 2011, the FIFA reform process was undertaken and formalised on a clear, specific and publicly communicated basis and framework. A two-year road map outlining the stages and timelines of the reform process between October 2011 and the FIFA Congress in May 2013 was established. The Independent Governance Committee (IGC) was set up with the support of four Task Forces (Task Force FIFA Ethics Committee; Task Force Transparency and Compliance; Task Force Revision of Statutes; and Task Force Football 2014) with the mandate to propose recommendations in the areas of ethics, compliance and other amendments to the FIFA Statutes.

In light of the above, the recommendations made by the IGC in its first report to the FIFA Executive Committee on 20 March 2012 as well as the additional proposals made by the four Task Forces since the launch of the process in October 2011 are to be considered as reference when commenting on the overall results of this process. Earlier reports issued by Prof. Mark Pieth and Transparency International in 2011 served as input for the analysis made by the IGC and the Task Forces, and essential ideas from these reports were further developed and incorporated in the IGC report.

As documented by FIFA, the IGC proposals have been implemented and have been followed in their great majority. For more details on the IGC recommendations and the reforms implemented by FIFA, please see:

·         http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/bodies/congress/news/newsid=2089615/index.html
·         http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/bodies/congress/news/newsid=2089422/index.html
·         http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/bodies/02/08/92/28/fifagovernancereformprocessoverview_neutral.pdf

In its second report to the FIFA Executive Committee (from 6 February 2013), the IGC states the following:

“The goal of the first phase of the project was the establishment of independent and professional judicial and financial/compliance oversight bodies respectively, including leadership by independent and internationally renowned experts in their fields.

The IGC made several concrete recommendations in that respect, which have been supported by the Executive Committee and approved by FIFA’s members at the Congress in 2012:

·         The Ethics Committee has been divided into an investigatory and an adjudicatory chamber;
·         Both chambers are now be chaired by independent (in accordance with an new definition of independence) persons, meeting the necessary professional requirements;
·         The Ethics Committee has been given the competences and resources to discharge its purpose. Specifically, the investigatory chamber is able to draw up a budget at its own discretion in order to conduct professional investigations with internal or external resources;
·         The Ethics Committee is empowered to investigate and adjudicate past issues or behavior and the investigatory chamber has the power to open investigations completely independently from any other FIFA bodies or officials;
·         The Code of Ethics has been revised and put into force to reflect these structural and procedural changes and to describe the rules of conduct and expected behavior (e.g. conflicts of interest, gifts and other benefits, bribery and corruption) more clearly;
·         A confidential reporting mechanism in order to systematically manage complaints and allegations of all kinds has been activated at the beginning of February 2013;
·         An Audit & Compliance Committee has been established with the typical supervisory role of an Audit Committee and the additional responsibilities for a Compliance Program as well as for Compensation & Benefits;
·         The Chairman of the Audit & Compliance Committee is independent and meets the necessary professional requirements;
·         The Audit & Compliance Committee has been given the competences and resources to discharge its purpose; it has access to persons and information and can decide on the support of external advice at its own discretion.

The IGC regards it as extremely important that FIFA, as a first step in its governance reform, has decided to create a professional and independent investigation and adjudication function as well as a credible Audit & Compliance Committee. The Chairmen of the Investigatory Chamber and the Adjudicatory Chamber of the Ethics Committee and the Audit & Compliance Committee are the kind of independent and professional chairpersons the IGC has been suggesting.

The revised Code of Ethics and Organization Regulations are important instruments for the effective work of those bodies.”

With reference to the above, you may also want to note that the formal election of all the FIFA judicial bodies as well as the election of the Audit and Compliance Committee took place at the FIFA Congress 2013.

As for the IGC reports, these can be found on the web page of the Basel Institute on Governance: http://www.baselgovernance.org/gov/governance-in-sports/fifa/

In addition to the above-mentioned reforms related to the Code of Ethics, Ethics Committee and the Audit and Compliance Committee, other proposals made by the IGC and the four Task Forces have been implemented by FIFA, including but not limited to:

Enhanced financial controls of the FIFA development programmes via:

·         Establishment of a Development Committee dealing specifically with FIFA’s development programmes;
·         Enhanced control of funds (e.g. audits, requirements);
·         Public disclosure of use of funds (on FIFA’s website FIFA.com);
·         New General Regulations on FIFA Development Programmes.

For more details on the FIFA development programmes, please see:

·         http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/02/08/26/84/circularno.1357-fifadevelopmentprogrammes-newgeneraldevelopmentregulationsandamendedfapregulations_neutral.pdf
·         http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/footballdevelopment/news/newsid=2038951/index.html?intcmp=fifacom_hp_module_media_statements

Female members in the Executive Committee: Election for the first time of a woman to the Executive Committee and co-opting of two women to the Executive Committee.

Hosting of the FIFA World Cup: FIFA Congress to decide on the venue for the final competition of the FIFA World Cup™ based on a shortlist consisting of up to three bids submitted by the FIFA Executive Committee, with the stipulation that FIFA Congress shall not award the hosting rights to more than one FIFA World Cup™ at the same meeting.

Integrity checks: Persons who hold or seek to hold an official FIFA position as President, vice-president, female member or other member of the FIFA Executive Committee, chairman, deputy chairman or member of the Audit and Compliance Committee, or chairman, deputy chairman or member of the judicial bodies shall undergo an integrity check prior to their election or re-election, in accordance with standards established by FIFA. Certain integrity checks will be made at confederation level, however, the FIFA Ethics Committee will have access to the files and can launch investigation if it deems necessary. Furthermore, you may want to note that the confidential reporting mechanism mentioned above can be used for reporting of inappropriate behaviour and infringements of the pertinent regulations of FIFA.

Election of the President: A candidature for the office of FIFA President shall only be valid if supported by a total of at least five member associations and if the candidate has played an active role in association football for two of the last five years before candidacy. The conditions to be observed during a candidature for the office of President shall be stipulated in the Regulations Governing Candidatures for the Office of President. These regulations shall be issued by the Executive Committee.

With regard to the age/terms of office, the FIFA Congress 2013 decided to postpone both items until the FIFA Congress in 2014, so that they can be further analysed and concrete proposals can be submitted.

With regard to independent observers in the FIFA Executive Committee you may want to note that the chairman of the Audit and Compliance may attend all meetings he deems necessary in his entire discretion (please refer to the press conference of Prof. Mark Pieth and the three independent chairmen of the Ethics Committee and the Audit and Compliance Committee on FIFA’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXVZMZ1PhFY).

Considering all the above and regardless of whether the recommendations constitute main recommendations, sub recommendations, higher, medium or lower level recommendations, an objective observation of the reforms implemented can only confirm that the overall result of this process contributes to greater transparency, stronger separation of powers, enhanced ethics and compliance structures and corresponding procedures in line with FIFA’s constant aim to adapt its structures and procedures where relevant and on the basis of the needs of the organisation and the game.  

We hope you find this information useful.

Best regards,

FIFA Communications & Public Affairs

Tracking Power at the Tour

At the Science of Sport Ross Tucker explains how he will be tracking the performance of riders in the Tour de France during the mountain stages.

During the Tour, what I'll do ahead of each mountain stage is graphically show you the expected times, and the expected power outputs.  Then, after the stage, once the data are in, we can compare each climb to the various predictions, and describe again the insights the performances offer.

Again, I can't stress enough that this is not done with judgment of performance in mind.  It's partly because the study of the limits of performance is fascinating, and partly because we can develop informed, insightful opinions on the state of the sport by understanding the power output.  I confess, upfront, and will continue to do so as the race develops, that these are imperfect methods, involving estimates and assumptions.  Where possible, I will provide actual SRM data to validate the models (or reveal their inaccuracies), and hopefully by the time the Tour rolls into Paris in just under 3 weeks, we'll all be better for it.

It is a busy time of year for me, so I will also apologize in advance if I can't keep up with very stage of the race - these long posts obviously draw significant time away from other responsibilities, so no guarantees!  I will however guarantee that I'll share brief thoughts and the insights and analysis of others over at our Twitter and Facebook pages, so do follow us there if you would like more frequent, shorter thoughts during this 100th Tour de France.

The goal here is to establish baselines of performance and to raise flags when performance exceeds that which may be physiologically possible. Tucker explains:

The power output of course produces the time, and so the first point of analysis is to compare times from one year to the next.  If a rider in 2013 produces an ascent of Alp d'Huez that is faster than anything Pantani, Ullrich, Virenque and Armstrong were able to produce given the doping of that era, then it should be pause for concern and some suspicion.

This has been an "unpopular" concept because some people assume it to be the equivalent of guilt based on performance - if you are too fast, you must be doping.  That's not entirely true, though it would be almost patronizing to say that there isn't an element of truth in it.  The reality, as far as I'm concerned, is that in the past, doping exerted such a large effect on performance that it pushed performances beyond what is possible with normal physiology.  . .

In time, advances in training, technology and preparation may slowly erode that advantage, but within a narrow period of a few generations, the effect of the doping seen in cycling in the 90s and early 2000s was so large that I don't believe it possible to match doped performances, and so if or when it happens, some very important questions must be asked.  Certainly, in the last few years, every Grand Tour has experienced a "slowing down", and the times in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta have been, with one or two exceptions, slower than they were prior to the biological passport's introduction.  In 2011, I wrote a piece for the New York Times describing this and since then, the performances have remained slower.  Not proof of a clean sport, by any means, but an encouraging sign.

Care must always be taken to maintain a stance of innocent until proven guilty (and by extension, what constitutes criteria of guilt), however, closer attention to the metrics of quantitative performance can serve as a useful complement in efforts to manage doping in sport.

NYT on Sunil Gulati

It is encouraging to see the mainstream media paying attention to FIFA governance and the role of Sunil Gulati in it. A few days ago the NYT did an analytical piece on Gulati's new role. Here is an excerpt:

Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation, was elected to the 25-member executive committee of FIFA, soccer’s governing body, in an 18-17 vote by members of Concacaf, the regional organization consisting of countries from North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

On the surface, this is positive: the United States now has a seat at the table, as Gulati said, in the group that makes most of the important decisions in global soccer, including selecting the dates and sites for major tournaments. That presence is no small development for a country that has problems related to its own professional league. Major League Soccer does not have a promotion-and-relegation system, unlike most of the rest of the world, and it does not play its season in the traditional international window; having FIFA’s approval for these idiosyncrasies, Gulati noted, is important.

So from that perspective, Gulati’s election is encouraging. But it also feels a bit as if a child has put on a crisp white suit just before going out to play beside a giant mud puddle.

Global soccer is, at present, a quagmire of corruption. Bribery, blackmail and cronyism are rampant, and in recent years as many as 10 members of the executive committee have been linked to venalities of varying degrees.

Read the whole piece here.

Grant Wahl Interviews Sunil Gulati: Welcome to the Real World

Sports Illustrated has posted an valuable interview with Sunil Gulati, president of US Soccer and newly elected representative of CONCACAF to the FIFA Executive Committee. In the interview Grant Wahl asked lots of questions about FIFA governance.  Here are some excerpts and my commentary.

It is interesting to learn the amount of information that Gulati did not have. For instance, here are some examples excerpted from the interview:

Wahl: [Which] FIFA committees are you on right now?
Gulati: I don't know yet. That's to be determined

Wahl: You're unpaid in your position as U.S. Soccer president. You will be paid as a member of the FIFA Executive Committee. How much?
Gulati: Formally, I haven't been told that yet. I'm sure I'll find out in the weeks to come and I'll find out the rules and regulations about disclosure.

Wahl: Is there a specific FIFA policy that prohibits disclosure?
Gulati: I've asked that question and I don't know the answer to that.

Wahl: Do you know how much Blatter receives in compensation?
Gulati: No.

Wahl: Should members of the FIFA ExCo know such a thing?
Gulati: I'm sure some members of the FIFA ExCo do. I don't.

Gulati explained what it means to be on the ExCo:

Gulati: What does [the FIFA ExCo spot] mean? It's a seat at the table of essentially the board of directors of the body that governs soccer throughout the world. So whether it's discussions about the long-term growth of the game or changes to the laws of the game, which eventually go to the IFAB, or the use of funds from the World Cup and how those are divvied up, development funds, all those things. It's a normal board of directors, so having a voice there is certainly positive.

A member of a board of directors ought to know many of the things that Gulati does not, so hopefully Wahl or other reporters will follow up with many of these same questions in the fall.

Wahl asked Gulati about the recent CONCACAF Integrity report, and the limited answer provided by Gulati suggests that he was without much information at all about CONCACAF governance in recent years as a member of its Executive Committee:<

Wahl: The CONCACAF Integrity Report came out and there were some staggering examples of improper behavior by former leaders Chuck Blazer and Jack Warner in the report. You served on the CONCACAF Executive Committee during their time in power. Were you aware of their activities in that report?
Gulati: The answer is no.

Wahl: There was good journalism done — admittedly not enough by me, but by others — revealing improper behavior that ended up in that Integrity Report. Do you feel like you should have done more?
Gulati: There are two things. One can always say one should do more in certain situations. But secondly, and more importantly, in the midst of various legal proceedings, I'm not going to talk about this. I'm not involved in any legal proceedings, but I think it would be inappropriate to say very much about that given FIFA proceedings and other potential proceedings.

Wahl: Are we looking at FBI and IRS investigations into Blazer and Warner, as has been reported?
Gulati: Given various proceedings, I'm not going to comment on anything else here.

It is of course fair enough and to be expected that Gulati does not want to discuss the issues associated with corruption in CONCACAF. However, it is remarkable that as a member of the CONCACAF Executive Committee (that organization's "board of directors") Gulati was completely unaware of the finances of the organization -- which as we have learned were often co-mingled with the personal finances of Jack Warner an Chuck Blazer. 

Recall that Blazer and Warner appropriated approximately $88 million of football funds for personal use. How does that go unnoticed by the CONCACAF Board? Should a member of the CONCACAF ExCo have known more? I would expect that Gulati will face -- appropriately so -- further questions about what he did and did not know, from the media and various investigators.

Wahl asked Gulati about his views on the FIFA reform process and the criticisms that former FIFA IGC member Alexandra Wrage made about the process (she ultimately resigned from the committee in April):

Wahl: You just got back from the FIFA congress in Mauritius. How would you grade the FIFA reform process and what it's accomplished so far?

Gulati: Well, since what I do for a living is grade students, I'd say incomplete. What's been done up to now, I think, is a long way toward addressing some of the issues, but I think more needs to be done. So setting up independent chambers on the ethics panel for adjudicating and investigating, that's a big plus. Setting up the external audit and compliance group under Domenico Scala is a great advance. And the people that are in charge of those three groups, from everything I've seen, read and witnessed and talked with them about, are highly qualified and highly professional. That's a big plus.

The rewriting of the ethics code is a big plus. It's pretty clear what's happened the last few years with seven, eight, nine people who've left the ExCo either by their own decision or by formal investigation or some combination of both. That doesn't happen if people are just saying let's forget about the past and move on. Some of those things happened a long time ago. Under the new code of ethics they can be investigated and disciplined for that. Those are all pluses.

There are any number of other things, in terms of the funding of programs, the audit and compliance area, the transparency of funding development projects, external bids within the general area of finance the whole bidding process has changed. I'm not talking about the World Cup bidding process, but the bidding process for contracts with FIFA for business.

The changes are incomplete in my view on the World Cup [host] decision-making. The only formal decision to be made so far is the final decision will be made by 209 countries.

Wahl: Alexandra Wrage resigned from the IGC and had a very public critique of the IGC's work. Do you think her criticism was off the mark?
Gulati: I don't agree with Alexandra's comments. I think much was accomplished in the process and much still needs to be done. To the extent she believes other things still need to be done, that's fine. To the extent she believes the 18 months didn't accomplish anything, I think that's off the mark. Frankly, I think [her criticism] was unfair to the three people that are now in charge of the adjudication, investigation and audit/compliance [bodies], all of whom to me are highly qualified, highly independent and have done from what I've seen so far a commendable job on the issues.

Gulati's optimistic view of the reform process jibes with FIFA's own view, but is hard to square with an objective evaluation.

Finally, one of Gulati's comments was revealing for what it says about how those who govern football view the world. When Wahl asked Gulati about US support for Blatter in the 2011 FIFA election, noting that he was the only one on the ballot. Gulati replied:

Gulati: [F]rankly I'm not sure what world you live in. I live in the real world.

At some point Sunil Gulati will have to choose between the red pill and the blue pill. He is not quite there yet. As Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix, "Welcome to the real world."

Analysis: A Report Card on FIFA Reform

Over at Play the Game I have a new analysis up focused on a (somewhat) objective evaluation of the FIFA reform process. Here is how it begins:

Last month at the FIFA Congress in Mauritius FIFA President Sepp Blatter declared that the governance reform process that he had initiated two years earlier had come to a close, "We have been through a difficult time. It has been a test for football and those who lead it. As your captain, I can say we have weathered the storm." 

Mark Pieth, a professor at the Basel Institute of Governance and the man hand-picked by Blatter to lead the FIFA Independent Governance Committee to advise the reform process, said of the two-year effort, “In a relatively short space of time, it's quite spectacular so far what has been achieved.” FIFA announced that the process had been a resounding success: “the majority of the reform recommendations by the IGC were implemented.”

Such comments are difficult to reconcile with the perspectives of other close observers. One member of the FIFA IGC, Alexandra Wrage, a governance expert and president of TRACE International, resigned from the committee just over a month before the Congress in Mauritius, explaining, “It’s been the least productive project I’ve ever been involved in. There’s no doubt about that.”

Following the Congress, Guido Tognoni, former FIFA Secretary General, told a Swiss television station that, “Mark Pieth has good intentions but to me he’s like Sepp Blatter’s poodle. He must bark loud but he’s not allowed to bite. He had a promising approach but, of course, he’s banging his head against a block of granite.”

With such claims and counter-claims flying about, colored by interests and personalities, it can be very difficult to get a sense of what was actually accomplished in the FIFA reform process. In order to provide a somewhat more objective basis for evaluating the process, I have undertaken a formal evaluation, with a first look at the results presented here.

To see how the evaluation comes out, both for FIFA and for its IGC, head over here. Comments welcomed here or by email, as this is a work in progress.

Further Thoughts on Sepp Blatter's FIFA Salary

A few months ago I offered a guesstimate at Sepp Blatter's FIFA salary of $6 million. I have just read through the 2012 FIFA Financial Report which was released a few weeks ago in Mauritius (here in PDF) and have a few additional thoughts.

In 2012 FIFA had total personnel expenses of $90,649,000 covering 412 employees, for an average of about $220,000 per employee (from p. 73). However, the report also notes that "key personnel" received $33,500,000 in compensation in 2012 (from p. 94). These "key personnel" include members of the FIFA Executive Committee, Finance Committee and management.

If we subtract the compensation of the "key personnel" from the total and also the 38 personnel who fall in that category, we find that the average salary of a non-key FIFA employee is about $153,000.

There are 25 members listed on FIFA's Executive Committee (let's set aside those who are suspended or otherwise outcast) including FIFA President Sepp Blatter. The Finance Committee is comprised of member of the ExCo, but for salary purposes, let's treat them as separate salaries. We do not know how much compensation these 25 receive, we just have a snippet of information from Mohammed bin Hammam in 2011 who revealed the ExCo compensation in 2010 to be 200,000 Euros, or about $280,000.

Since 2010 was a World Cup year FIFA's revenues were high and the pay to the ExCo was apparently high as well:

"We don't get any salaries," Bin Hammam said. "We are only getting bonuses [and FIFA expense reimbursements]." One FIFA source told SI.com that personal bonuses for the executive committee are larger in years when FIFA's profits are higher, as was the case in 2010.

For simplicity sake and to likely err on the over, let's go with $250,000 as the average compensation of the 24 members of the Executive Committee (minus Blatter) including whatever bonuses are received by those 6 ExCo members who put in additional duties on the Finance Committee. That totals $6 million.

If we subtract that total from the $33.5 million that leaves $27.5 million to be allocated across FIFA management, shown in the organization chart below from the FIFA website showing its administration:

That means 13 individuals average annual compensation of $2.12 million each. I see perhaps 5 or 6 organizational levels in the organization chart. Assuming a simple rule that salaries double from one level to the next, and that the lowest "key personnel" makes $400,000 per year implies that Blatter makes >$12 million per year. That seems high. You can play around with the allocation of the $27.5 million in any number of hypothetical ways, of course, and unless FIFA has a somewhat flat salary structure, it is hard to come up with an allocation to Blatter of $6 million or less, which would be 2-3 times the average of the "key personnel." The alternative of course is that the "key personnel" are very handsomely paid.
 
So right now, I'm taking the over on my April guesstimate as a slightly better than 50-50 proposition. I am pretty confident that (let's say 95%) that Blatter's 2012 salary falls into the range of $2.12 million ("key personnel" average) and $12 million (~6 times the "key personnel" average). That's my guesstimate for today.

Analytics Advice for Phil: Putt for Show, Drive for Dough

If you have another look at the title of this post you'll see that it flips on its head conventional wisdom about golf scoring, where it is almost an article of faith that matches and tournaments are won via the short game. Mark Broadie, a professor at Columbia Business School, published a paper in 2011 (here in PDF) which took a look at 8 years of data (2003-2010) on the PGA Tour to rigorously evaluate where the pros gained the most shots.

What he found was surprising:

Many people claim that the short game and putting are the most important determinants of golf scores. For example, Pelz (1999, p.1) writes, “60% to 65% of all golf shots occur inside 100 yards of the hole. More important, about 80% of the shots golfers lose to par occur inside 100 yards.” Several academic studies have reached similar conclusions. In contrast, strokes gained analysis of PGA TOUR data shows that the long game is the most important factor explaining the variability in professional golf scores. . .

The availability of detailed golf shot data makes it possible to create golf measures that allow consistent comparisons between different parts of the game. Using the starting and ending locations of each shot, strokes gained gives the number of strokes a golfer gains or loses relative to an average PGA TOUR tournament field. Analysis of over eight million shots on the PGA TOUR in 2003-2010 shows that the long game (defined as shots starting over 100 yards from the hole) accounts for more than two-thirds of the scoring differences between PGA TOUR golfers.

Of the three components to the game -- long (>100 yards), short, and putting -- the contribution of the long game to shots gained (over the average player) is huge:

Using data from 2003-2010 for golfers with at least 120 rounds, the contributions to total strokes gained are 72%, 11% and 17% for the long game, short game and putting, respectively. By this measure, the long game explains more than two-thirds of the variation in total strokes gained.

So when Justin Rose won the US Open yesterday, what you saw was the consequence driving in the fairway and long irons to the green, just as Broadie's research indicates is most important. Mickelson falling short resulted not from his short game -- though missed putts and a thin sand wedge from the green made for good TV -- but his inability to hit the fairway and the poor position that placed him in for his long approaches.

Based on the data that Broadie provides for individual players we can look at this another way. If Mickelson improves his putting and short game by another 20% (from his 2003-2010 average) he would gain an additional 0.12 strokes per round over his competition. In contrast, were he to improve his long game by 20%, he would gain 0.24 strokes per round - or a stroke per tournament.

The data show that Mickelson was 12th overall in both the long and short game and 95th in putting.  This would suggest that he has the most to gain in improving his putting. However, when looked at in terms of strokes gained, Mickelson was almost a full stroke behind the Tour leader in the long game, 0.22 in the short game and 0.57 in putting.

If these findings hold today (would need updated data to determine) then this suggests that Phil has a lot more room for relative improvement in the long game than in putting and the short game combined.

The BCCI's "Operation Clean Up": Governance not Cheerleaders

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has announced a 12-point plan to address the fixing scandal that threatens the Indian Premier League. First, some background courtesy of the WSJ:

Shoving a towel into their waistbands, fiddling with a necklace, untucking their shirts; these are signals that investigators allege three Indian cricketers used to communicate with bookmakers across India in an attempt to fix parts of matches for illicit financial gain.

Delhi Police said Thursday they had arrested three players from the Rajasthan Royals cricket franchise for allegedly spot-fixing—trying to arrange a predetermined outcome in certain key moments—in the Indian Premier League. The league is a hugely popular annual tournament involving many of the best cricketers from

Spot fixing in cricket occurs when a player deliberately rigs part of the game, for example by bowling a poor delivery from which a batsman can easily score runs. Several high-profile international convictions have tarnished the sport in recent years, which resulted in fines, player bans and even jail time.

The scandal has already led the head of the BCCI, which oversees cricket in India, to step aside. The BCCI 12-point plan is a further response to the scandal.

The 12-point plan is as follows:

1. Removal of sleaze; no cheerleaders, no after-match parties for players and support staff.
2. Strict code of conduct to be followed by players, support staff and franchise owners.
3. Restriction of movement in players’ dug-out and dressing room. The owners from now on will be restricted from entering the dug-out and dressing room during matches.
4. All players and support staff of franchises need to furnish their telephone numbers with the BCCI before the start of the tournament.

5. Adequate number of ACSU officials in the team hotel as well as the ground to supervise the proceedings.
6. Jamming of cell phone towers at the ground during matches.
7. Captains’ meeting to be held in order to get more suggestions and prepare elaborate blueprint.
8. No national selector will be allowed to get associated with any franchise in any capacity.
9. All the players need to disclose every financial transaction they are carrying out with any particular organisation or person.
10. Franchises need to furnish all details of the remunerations and contractual obligations of players and support staff.
11. Players from now on will be prohibited from using ear plugs and microphones.
12. Security control policy will be formulated soon.

These proposals range from the farcical (no cheerleaders as a way of addressing fixing?!) and the just plain dumb ((jamming of cell phone towers?) to the profoundly innovative (player disclosure of financial transactions). Journalists, professors (me included) and politicians routinely have to disclose remuneration which falls outside of their professional contracts. Why not athletes?  In the US the NFL has already adopted a similar set of policies.

Reform is likely going to have to go deeper. In a 2011 submission to an inquiry on governance of the International Cricket Council, Transparency International made recommendations for the harmonization of governance standards across ICC member federations. These were as follows:

30. The ICC should require, as a condition of membership, that domestic boards have in place codes of conduct and procedures that reflect the global best practice that TI recommends ICC itself puts into place.

This would include:

• Tone from the top and ethical leadership
• Code of ethical conduct covering all relevant areas including conflicts of interest
• Risk assessment
• Best-practice policies and procedures and their independent monitoring and review
• Creation of an Anti-corruption Tribunal at domestic level to hold individuals and organisations to account, if existing anti-corruption mechanisms are inadequate.

31. All of the above would need to be underpinned by greater transparency and independence, with the ICC having oversight of each domestic board’s adherence to these requirements. The ICC should be able to review whether domestic boards are adhering to these codes of conduct and procedures, and should have strong sanctions, including financial sanctions, available to it if member countries’ boards or federations are judged to have infringed the rules. For example, ICC should be empowered to exclude a member nation from competing in international matches if fails to adopt and enforce an approved Anti-Corruption Code in its own jurisdiction.

32. This will undoubtedly represent a significant change in the governance of world cricket, and inertia or vested interests may cause there to be opposition. However, TI considers it vital that if a message of zero tolerance for corruption is going to be taken seriously, the managers, administrators and leaders of the game operate to the highest standards of ethics and integrity.

As with FIFA and its various scandals, effective reform will necessarily result from the adoption of standards of good governance and best practices which have been developed in contexts outside of sport. So far, FIFA has been resistant. Perhaps the BCCI and ICC can do better. To do so, however, it is probably best to focus on the governance, not the cheerleaders. 

Financial Fair Play, the English Language and Legal Standing

At Capital.de Stefan Szymanski has a delightful essay on the offense to the English language that is UEFA's Financial Fair Play. Stefan has kindly posted up the original English version at Soccernomics. Here is an excerpt:

Whenever Financial Fair Play is mentioned the names of Roman Abramovitch and Sheikh Mansour are quoted- what they are doing to football, it is alleged, is unfair. Yet in reality they are convenient scapegoats for a political deal that UEFA has stitched up between football’s rich and poor.

The economic reality is that most clubs do not have a sugar daddy and a very large fraction are insolvent. According to UEFA 55% of clubs in Europe’s top divisions reported a net loss in 2011, 38% of clubs reported negative net equity, and 16% of club accounts reviewed contained a qualification expressed by the auditors as to financial viability of the company. This does not make UEFA look like a good housekeeper, so they want to impose tighter regulations. However, since almost all of the insolvent clubs are minnows, it might look as if they were doing the bidding of the big clubs. UEFA would not dare to restrict the freedoms of the established powers and by focusing on sugar daddies they are actually helping them by ensuring that no currently small club will ever pose a serious challenge. Voila, call it Financial Fair Play, and who could disagree?

This was Orwell’s point. The decline of English, he thought, was a political phenomenon. “Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness”, and if we allow this to go unchallenged we will indeed fall into slovenly thought. UEFA, with the support of many politicians, want us to use warm phrases emptied of their original meaning as camouflage for the pursuit of an agenda which has little to do with fair play and much to do with the exercise of power. But if we listen to Orwell, we need not be fooled. All we have to do is to ask what the words really mean.

It is safe to conclude that Szymanski is not a fan of FFP. Here is the conclusion of a recent academic that Sztmanski collaborated on with Thomas Peeters, which explored the effects of FFP on the EPL via an economic model (Vertical Restraints in Soccer: Financial Fair Play and the English Premier League, here in PDF):

[W]e find that had the Financial Fair Play regulations applied fully in the English Premier League in the 2009/10 season, wage to turnover ratioswould have fallen by as much as 15%, which is in line with the theoretical predictions of Dietl et al (2009). As such, the FFP break-even rule will in many ways resemble a North American salary cap, although the latter applies the same spending cap to all teams. In other words, our paper shows that in this context a vertical restraint may restrict competition in exactly the same way as a horizontal agreement between competing firms. Salary caps have been justified in US courts under the theory that they promote competitive balance among the teams. On top of this, they are agreed upon in a system of collective bargaining with unions representing the players, and such agreements are exempt from antitrust. The break-even rule under FFP has not been negotiated as part of a collective bargaining agreement with unions, and furthermore such agreements are not exempt from competition law in the EU. Therefore, analyzing the impact of FFP on competition in national leagues is important to assess whether it complies with EU competition law.

The rationale advanced by UEFA for its regulation is not the promotion of competitive balance, but “discipline and rationality” in club finances. Considered as a vertical restraint, this might be deemed to have pro-competitive properties if the rules help to preserve the integrity of the competition and the financial stability of the clubs. On the other hand, our results demonstrate that the break-even rule could be construed as a means to raising profitability and therefore an anti-competitive vertical restraint under EU competition law.

The Swiss Ramble recently offered a deep dive into the economics of FFP, and like Szymanski, offers a fairly negative evaluation:

While the majority of clubs are in favour of FFP’s attempts to tackle football’s economic woes, there is a concern that far from making football fairer, all this initiative will achieve is to make permanent the domination of the existing big clubs: survival of the fattest, if you will. The argument goes that those clubs that already enjoy large revenue (like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Bayern Munich) will continue to flourish, while any challengers will no longer be able to spend big in a bid to catch up.

However, more fundamental than the policy effectiveness of FFP is likely to be its legality under European law. The regime has already been challenged, here is The Guardian reporting:

UEFA's financial fair play regulations face a legal challenge in the European courts after a players' agent argued the rules will unfairly restrict the amount of money he can earn. Daniel Striani, an agent registered in Belgium, has lodged a formal complaint with the European commission against the rules, which require clubs in European competitions from 2011 to move towards breaking even financially.

Striani is represented by Jean Louis-Dupont, a lawyer who in 1995 successfully challenged football's contract rules on behalf of a Belgian player, Jean-Marc Bosman, a legal victory which allowed players to move for free at the end of their contracts. Dupont argues that, as in the Bosman case, he will defeat Uefa's FFP rules even though they are supported by the European Commission.

He argues that Uefa's regulations, which prevent clubs making heavy financial losses whether backed by an owner or not, will have five separate consequences he claims are anti-competitive. The first is that they will restrict investment in a club by no longer allowing them to run at a loss.

The second is the key concern being voiced particularly in England, that it will lock in the power of the already rich clubs, whose dominance will no longer be able to be broken by the odd club like Manchester City or Chelsea which has losses supported by a mega-rich owner.

He then argues that the aim of FFP to dampen down players' wage and transfer fee inflation is "anti-competitive", a breach ofEU law. This is because FFP will lead to a "reduction of the number of transfers, of the transfer amounts and of the number of players under contracts per club", and will have a "deflationary effect on the level of players' salaries".

In conclusion, Striani argues that FFP will be "anti-competitive" because it will affect his own ability to earn agents' fees from players' wages and transfer fees.

Stay tuned, more action to come at the lex sportiva frontier!

The Iran Job

I saw The Iran Job on my flight back from London last week. It is a really neat documentary about US basketball player Kevin Sheppard's journey to Iran to play basketball (Sheppard also has the distinction as being capped for the US Virgin Islands football squad).

Here is an excerpt from a Washington Post article on the film:

Iranian teams offer lavish salaries to foreigners willing to play there, and every year a handful of Americans are scattered through the country’s basketball league. The idea for the film was to find an American “who would go into Iran with a lot of the same perceptions and misperceptions as a lot of us,” said Till Schauder, who wrote, produced, directed and shot it.

Sheppard, born in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1979 — the year that Iranians staged a revolution and occupied the U.S. Embassy in Tehran — fit the bill. He said he knew little about Iran before going there.

In the film, Sheppard teaches the Iranians how to raise the level of their play and pump themselves up, and the Iranians teach him about Persian politeness and subtle ways of circumventing government oppression.

Along the way, Sheppard’s views on Iran evolve. “I had all the preconceptions that people were on camels, that they were terrorists, that they were probably making bombs,” he said in a telephone interview from the Virgin Islands, where he runs a basketball camp for disadvantaged youths.

Instead, he finds teammates who confide in him about girl troubles and refuse to let him pay for dinner. He meets women who express their frustration with state-imposed restrictions and young fans who shyly ask for his do-rag as a memento.

Sheppard said he hopes the film, expected to be released next year, will alter U.S. perceptions of Iran at a time when diplomacy is at a low. “I think that once you get an opportunity to see it, you must have a change of heart about the Iranians because you’re going to see real live people, with real lives and real struggles,” he said.

The film is full of funny moments, such as when Sheppard enlists his baffled building manager to help him find a Christmas tree, or when an elderly man selling antiques eagerly tells Sheppard that he smoked marijuana in the United States.

Schauder and his wife and co-producer, Sara Nodjoumi, who is of Iranian descent, said an Iranian government official was initially supportive but then abruptly changed his mind and told them the project was “garbage.” They were denied journalist visas, so Schauder, a German citizen, went on a tourist visa and shot with a small hand-held camera. Eventually authorities caught on, and he was barred from entering Iran. By then, he had shot most of the film.

Despite rising tensions between the United States and Iran, Sheppard said he never had a problem on either end during the two additional seasons he went on to play there. Entering Iran, “I would say, ‘Bazi [play] basketball!’ and they say, ‘Great!’ and let you go. It’s like athletes transcend political pressures. We’re entertainers; we kind of take them away from the problems.”

It is due to be out in the US soon. Check it out, highly recommended.

Technology Aids in Referee Decision Making

Over at the Guardian's Political Science blog I have a commentary up extolling the use of technological aids in referee decision making. I open the piece as follows:

Writing in Nature last week, Nic Fleming argues that "the introduction of goal-line technology to football is likely to perpetrate a mass deception on television viewers." He further worries that, "It will miss a huge opportunity to educate people about the role of uncertainty in science. And it will exacerbate the approaching danger of fake computer-generated video footage."

Here I take the other side. People, especially the sports-viewing public, understand uncertainties just fine. Contrary to Fleming's concern, the opportunities that may actually be missed here include the chance to educate scientists that the public are far more sophisticated than experts generally believe, and the fact that the introduction of technological aids may actually make sports better.

Have a look at both Fleming's Nature piece and my reaction. Is there a dangerhere related to public understanding of uncertainties? I don't think so, but I welcome hearing other views.

Several people have mentioned the Collins/Evans papers on the use of the Hawkeye system in tennis and cricket. I included a link to them (thanks to a suggestion by @AliceBell), though I only agree with parts of their argument.

The parts that I agree with have to do with the central-ness of of legitimacy derived through an alignment of outcome as judged by the officials and as judged by the spectators (this is my jargon, Collins and Evans have their own). I also agree with their conclusion that such technological aids offer much in the way of positive benefits to decision making in sport.

The parts that I disagree with focus on the supposed new-ness of technologies in sport and a corresponding risk to public understanding of uncertainties. My view is much more aligned with Allenby and Sarewitz in that refereeing systems are what they call techno-human systems. The technologies of refereeing sporting events have been evolving for a long time. I would argue that the addition of the Hawkeye system -- or for that matter more, or less officials, instantaneous communication among officials, video replays, heat sensors, doping tests, timing devices, photo finish cameras, changes to the guidelines for adjudicating contingencies and so on -- represents the evolution of a techno-human system that has been under constant evolution, not something so fundamentally new.

Collins and Evans (and Fleming in Nature) worry that the results from Hawkeye (and the like) are presented to viewers without accompanying statistics on uncertainty. However, this is no different than the fact that lines calls have always been presented to viewers without accompanying statistics on uncertainty (such as the number of chair overrules in tennis or missed given goals).

The presentation of such apparently deterministic information has not prevented the public from concluding that uncertainty nonetheless remains -- at least in the context of weather forecasts where there has been a great deal of investigation of public understanding of uncertainties (e.g., here in PDF). Based on that large literature I'd think it likely that people are pretty sophisticated when it comes to sport as well, as it shares many of the same characteristics as weather forecasts (i.e., especially the fact that there are many chances to observe expert judgment and real-world outcomes).

At a minimum, those expressing concern about a danger to the public from increasingly sophisticated techniques of arbitrating sporting events should provide some empirical evidence in support of that danger. As I see it, such sophistication in adjudication simply parallels increasing sophistication in our ability to view the games. Our techno-human systems are evolving. And that is a good thing.

Which Way for Sunil Gulati?

I have a commentary up at Play the Game on Sunil Gulati, head of US Soccer, and his new role on the FIFA Executive Committee. Here is an excerpt to whet your interest:

Gulati, who has not commented on the alleged corruption at CONCACAF which took place while he helped govern the organization, served on the FIFA governance reform committee until his recent election to the FIFA Executive Committee. Thus he helped to develop its recommendations aimed at improving the governance of the organization. Now as a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, Gulati found himself last week in the odd position of receiving advice that he has helped to prepare.

Gulati and colleagues identified as “indispensable” several of the recommendations that the reform committee has proposed to FIFA, but which have not yet been adopted. These include a call for independent integrity checks, term limits in office and full disclosure of compensation.

Surely, as one who helped develop the “indispensable” advice, Gulati might have been expected to be a vocal champion for implementation of the proposals at last week’s FIFA Congress, right? Think again. Since joining the FIFA Executive Committee, Gulati has been almost entirely invisible on issues related to FIFA reform, and based on his actions last week, perhaps even an obstacle.

Go here to read the whole thing, and feel free to come back and comment.