Venue: University of Liverpool Management School, University of Liverpool

Dates: Thursday 4th and Friday 5th June 2026

Conference theme: Political governance and the reshaping of the sports industry

Governments have long been interested in the role that sport can play in achieving political aims. However, the concept of political governance was not explicitly defined until Henry and Lee (2004: 34) wrote that it could be understood as the processes by which governments or governing bodies seek to steer the sports system through “strategies such as regulation and inducement rather than through direct action and control”. Since this definition, which helpfully conceptualized a particular type of sports governance (in addition to systemic governance and organizational governance), we have seen increasing political involvement in the sport industry play out in three distinctively different (albeit interlinked) ways that provide a more nuanced way to understand the concept of political governance and to help understand how governments seek to influence and steer the sports system.

First, we have seen the role of government policy in areas such as health, tourism and the economy, or international relations and diplomacy, that has drawn on sport as a vehicle to achieve wider political ends and enact change. This is the approach that many states in the Middle East are using: sport events and sport tourism are ways in which to diversify from the reliance on fossil fuels and to move towards a more sustainable long-term future. Second, we have seen the application of soft law mechanisms and voluntary regulations that have sought to influence the way that sports organisations are governed (organisational governance) as part of the process of modernization and improving the effectiveness of public-sector funded sport. This involves mechanisms that seek to guide and steer sports organisations - in the UK, the implementation of the Code of Governance for Sports is a clear example of this. Third, and particularly in the context of the growing commercialization of professional sport, we are seeing the increasing role that legislation (and in particular competition law) is playing in determining the shape of the sports industry. The December 2023 judgment on the European Superleague made by the Court of Justice of the European Union has redefined the notion of autonomy in sport and opened up the potential for further challenge under competition law of sporting rules that are considered to be anti-competitive, lacking in transparency or unfair.These three ways further define the concept of political governance and demonstrate that there are tensions between the traditional autonomy of sport and increasing political involvement. It also shows that the concept of political governance is evolving in the face of the changing nature of the sports industry. It is this issue that the 2026 PSA Sport and Politics Group conference seeks to address to better understand the interplay and evolving dynamics between sport and politics. We therefore invite abstracts that discuss the political involvement in the governance and regulation of sport from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• International and national sport governance
• Global governance and institutional integrity
• Challenges to sports autonomy
• The role of regulatory authorities in sport
• Soft power and geopolitics
• Sport diplomacy and foreign policy
• Social justice and athlete activism
• Sport and human rights 
• Environmental sustainability

Call for abstracts: Please submit your abstract (250 words maximum) to Geoff Walters by Friday 30th January at G.R.Walters@liverpool.ac.uk

Venue:

University of Liverpool Management School

Please contact Geoff Walters (G.R.Walters@liverpool.ac.uk ) should you have any questions.

Conference fees and keynote speakers will be confirmed in January 2026 although we expect the registration fee is likely to be in the region of £150.