The governance network of European football: introducing new governance approaches to steer football at the EU level

Abstract

The authors of this article aim at introducing a new approach in the academic debate on governance failures in professional football. In recent years, political, legal and economic driving forces have led to the emergence of a governance network in European football. We state that this provides the European Union (EU) with the opportunity, if not the duty, to get a grip on the football sector through meta-governance. Further improvement of the network's democratic legitimacy through the enhancement of its democratic anchorage via the introduction of more openness, stakeholder participation and meta-governance by the EU should help the network to deal with the growing complexity of the football world. This way, governance networks in sport can be the solution to the governance failures in the sector, just like governance networks were the solution to many examples of government and market failures in modern society.

Keywords:

• sport governance networks
• governance networks
• meta-governance
• democracy
• good governance
• democratic performance

Acknowledgement

We express our sincere gratitude to Professor Barrie Houlihan and to two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their excellent comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Union Royale Belge Sociétés de Football Association and others v. Bosman and others, Case C-415/93 [1995] E.C.R. I-04921.

2. Walrave & Koch v. Association Union Cycliste International, Case C-36/74 [1974] E.C.R. I-1405.

3. Meca-Medina & Majcen v. Commission, Case C-519/04 [2006] E.C.R. II-3291.

4. A list of these projects can be found at footnote 149 of the European Commission's Staff Working Document ‘The EU and Sport: Background and Context, Accompanying Document to the White Paper on Sport’ (European Commission 2007a).

5. Since the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, article 165 of the treaty on the Functioning of the EU grants the EU an express role in the field of sport. However, the Member States only granted the EU a supporting competence, the weakest type of the three principal types of EU competence.