The Australian and New Zealand Sports Law Journal 2025: Vol 18

ARTICLES

Competition Law and Antitrust Disputes in the Era of Sports’ Hyper-Commercialisation: America and Australia Compared
Edelman, Marc; Windholz, Eric

The twenty-first century has seen the hyper-commercialisation of sports. With hyper-commercialisation has come competition from actors both powerful and passionate for a share of the economic pie. This competition has sometimes escalated into conflict over legal and economic rights requiring judicial adjudication. This article explores the similarities and differences in the twenty-first century application of United States antitrust and Australian competition law to commercial sports. Observations and insights are then distilled from that examination about how courts and the law in the two jurisdictions have responded (and may in the future respond) to sports’ hyper-commercialisation.
 

The Basis of a Duty Relationship between a Sport Governing Body and its Premier Athletes as a Novel case in Negligence
Thorpe, David 

This paper argues that the governing bodies of Australian contact sport owe a duty to take reasonable steps to care for the health and welfare of those who played, and play, in their premier level competitions. The paper argues that a duty of care owed by a governing body to its premier-level athletes is a ‘novel case’ to be resolved through a ‘salient features’ approach. It examines in detail how the salient feature ‘control’ elicits other salient features, particularly those of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘reliance’. The paper also argues that, for two reasons, the High Court’s determination in Agar v Hyde that the International Rugby Football Board did not owe a duty of care to the plaintiffs who were injured when scrummaging is not relevant to the governing bodies of Australian contact sports. First, that the sport governing bodies (SGBs) of Australian contact sport do not fit the description of the IRFB, ‘governing body’ described in Agar v Hyde. Second, on the basis that the IRFB is not a governing body in the context of Australian SGBs, the question of a duty of care must be determined through a ‘salient features’ approach. The argument that a governing body does not owe a duty of care to its premier-level players because it is merely the organiser of a competition that participants voluntarily enter, accepting all risks of harm, is also disputed in this paper.
 

Putting the ‘SIA’ in SISA – Translating Australia's Sports Integrity Blueprint for South Africa
Flowers, Nick; Begg-Jassiem, Wafeekah

South Africa faces the need for a pivotal shift from a substance-centred anti-doping regime toward an integrated, whole-of-sport integrity framework. This article maps the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport’s statutory foundations, shows how recent WADA non-compliance concerns exposed the limits of a narrow approach, and draws comparative lessons from Sport Integrity Australia on risk-based testing, intelligence sharing and streamlined adjudication. It argues for a strategic redesign linking prevention, intelligence, results management and independent adjudication in a single, accountable agency (‘Sport Integrity South Africa’) – and offers a pragmatic blueprint for policymakers and practitioners to embed integrity as sport’s organising principle.

Can the International Doping Community Restore Trust and Transparency in the System?
Wolohan, John

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Chinese swimmers Xu Jiayu, Qin Haiyang, Sun Jiajun, and Pan Zhanle stunned the World by winning gold in the menʼs 4x100 medley relay, a race the Americans had won at every Olympics other than the boycotted Moscow Games in 1980. While the Chinese swimmers celebrated in the pool, the other swimmers were quick to question whether two of the swimmer, Qin Haiyang and Sun Jiajun, should have even been allowed to compete in Paris because they, along with 21 other Chinese swimmers, had previously tested positive for trace amounts of the banned performance enhancing heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ) without being sanctioned for violating the anti-doping rules.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and CHINADA followed the established appropriate procedures under the WADA Code (WADA, 2021) when they ruled that the positive tests were the result of food contamination, and therefore no action was required. The paper begins by reviewing the facts of the case. Next, the paper examines what WADA and CHINADA did once the athletes tested positive and compares it to what the WADA Code required the organizations to do. The paper then examines the reaction by the international anti-doping community, especially that of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Besides the reaction of USADA, the paper briefly outlines the involvement of the United States Justice Department and the FBI. Since the results of the Chinese tests became public before the Paris Olympics, the paper also examines the response of the International Olympic Community (IOC). The paper concludes by examining the impact the case has had on WADA’s reputation in the international anti-doping community and the future of the anti-doping organization.

THE HAYDEN OPIE KEYNOTE ADDRESS, 2025 ANZSLA ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Access to Justice and the Court of Arbitration for Sport
Haas, Ulrich