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After the first transgender athletes participated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, some called for the immediate exclusion of transgender women in sports while others argue that this exclusion is discriminatory behaviour in violation of human rights law. Under current standards, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has sought to address the balance between fairness and inclusion by allowing eligibility to be decided on a sport-by-sport basis for all transgender athletes (IOC, 2021). What if an international federation or national governing body concludes that transgender athletes should be prohibited or subjected to rigorous conditions for participation? Would those qualifications stand up to legal challenge by an affected athlete? Will some athletes have better legal protection based on the location of their challenge?

The United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) have domestic legal provisions that protect transgender individuals from discrimination based on their gender identity whereas the European Union (EU) includes protections based on sex alone (Patel, 2021). This chapter will discuss transgender inclusion policies in Olympic sport and address how potential challenges to the policies will be handled in court using existing case law. Legal precedent in similar challenges is rare. However, when eligibility policies do not explicitly ban transgender athletes or appear to be a targeted response to a specific athlete or individuals, it becomes more likely that those policies will not be considered discriminatory. Courts are hesitant to interfere in a governing body's policies if that organization appears to have a legitimate reason for its sport governance decisions.

This paper examines the role of senior personnel within Active Partnerships as the personnel seek to strategically manage UK policy developments. This paper explores how Active Partnerships engage with the policy process within an environment characterized by systemic structural changes, mounting fiscal challenges, political uncertainty and a succession of public health concerns.

Using the Multiple-Streams Framework (MSF), a case study approach was adopted, focusing on the perspectives of senior personnel. Semi-structured interviews with individuals involved in the management and operation of five Active Partnerships across the South of England and one national stakeholder that works closely with Active Partnerships were conducted. Data were collected during the period following Andy Reed's review of the operation of Active Partnerships. The interviews were complemented by documentary analysis.

Findings illustrate that while senior practitioners within Active Partnerships often behave in line with Lipsky's notion of street-level bureaucrats, by maximizing collective leverage, advocating priorities and providing a voice for local partners, the senior practitioners adopt behaviors more akin to policy entrepreneurs. In this sense, they seek to influence the policy process at critical junctures in order to promote preferred outcomes and protect sectoral interests.

This study has explored the relationship between strategic management and the policy process in the context of the rapidly changing policy domain that frames the work of regional sports organizations known as Active Partnerships. The conceptual frame of the investigation is the concept of “policy entrepreneurship”, which seeks to articulate how individuals and collectives engage in the policy process, in order to secure outcomes conducive to their objectives. This, in turn, provides a sense of context for the contemporary challenges associated with the management of sport and physical activity (PA).

The purpose of this paper is to overcome the traditional general approach to sport policy by taking an entrepreneurial perspective. This helps link the fragmented literatures of entrepreneurship, public policy and sport entrepreneurship in order to develop a new perspective of sport entrepreneurship and public policy.

A literature review is conducted that highlights the need for public policy to focus on entrepreneurship in sports contexts.

In the past, sport policy focused more on governance and political elements but these can be embedded into a policy entrepreneurship perspective regarding sport. This helps to redefine and bridge the literature on sport entrepreneurship and public policy.

Most sport policy research has tended to take a more organizational behavior or political science approach. Thus, this paper takes a new perspective by incorporating the nascent sport entrepreneurship literature into public policy debates. This is helpful to public policy planners but also sports managers who need to work together to build better policy initiatives.

This chapter examines the creation and development of trans inclusion policies in community sport in Australia. More specifically, it explores the impact of such policy, or lack thereof, on trans and gender diverse people who are currently engaged or wish to engage with community sport in the state of Victoria, Australia. This chapter evaluates the impact of Federal legislation and guidelines for the inclusion of trans and gender diverse people in Australian sport, and how sport organizations have responded in creating trans athlete policies for community sport participation. Next, we discuss the experiences and challenges for trans and gender diverse athletes playing and competing in community sport. We examine how these athletes work against institutional norms which typically reinforce a rigid gender binary. This chapter draws on a range of research projects in Australia by the first author and concludes with some recommendations for future research and both policy and practice.

In this chapter, we explore gender equity issues in relation to the governance of sport in Wales. Our focus is primarily on Sport Wales (SW), the national agency responsible for developing and promoting sport and physical activity in Wales and for distributing National Lottery and Welsh Government funding. As a public authority, SW has a statutory responsibility to promote equality and eliminate direct and indirect discrimination. Their recent policy commitments express a desire to advance equality and promote inclusion and diversity within sports organisations in Wales. They also set the agenda for National Governing Bodies (NGBs) in Wales, in terms of providing a policy framework for understanding and pursuing gender equity in sport and sport governance. In this chapter, we present a snapshot of the governance and leadership policy landscape for Welsh sport, with a specific focus on gender equity. We present data collected from publicly available online policy documents relating to SW, and their NGB partners, relevant to gender equity provision. Based on the data, we suggest that there is evidence of progress in terms of the numbers of women on boards in Wales as well as the creation of gender equity policies within NGBs in Wales. We argue, however, that progress is inconsistent across the different NGBs in Wales, and it is less clear whether sport governing bodies can implement policies to effectively challenge organisational culture and ethos. We concluded by suggesting future Wales specific research priorities on this topic.

The implementation of whistleblowing policies is emblematic of the reforms undertaken by international sports organisations in the aftermath of major governance and integrity scandals. However, sport has particular organisational and cultural characteristics that reduce the likelihood of whistleblowing behaviour. This article looks at the quality of reporting policies in sports to assess how far the reporting mechanisms encourage whistleblowers.

A whistleblowing policy quality assessment system was built and applied to 45 international sport organisations.

The research identified 23 reporting mechanisms but, despite marked differences between them, most policies are of low quality. In particular, whistle-blower protection regimes and promotion strategies are lacking.

The research suggests that reporting mechanisms currently in place are not likely to encourage whistle-blowers and questions the performance of these mechanisms as well as the objectives of the organisations, which may reflect “window-dressing” strategies. This may have implications for other areas of “good governance” reform.

An assessment questionnaire for sport reporting policies has been created and tested. It was sent to international sport organisations to assist them in identifying policy gaps and improving their policy.

The analysis does not limit itself to the presence or absence of “good governance” measures. It also explores their quality. It proposes a comprehensive assessment grid for whistleblowing policies in international sport that practitioners and researchers may wish to use in future.

Purpose – The aim of the chapter is to understand why, in a country that has such strict government alcohol policies, sport is allowed – and allows itself – to be associated with, and source income from, alcohol consumption.

Design/methodology/approach – The analysis builds on previous research on the government–sport relationship in Sweden, and on documents produced by the government and sport.

Findings – The chapter shows how a close and long-standing relationship between the government and sport has created a ‘drinking problem’ for sport, and that this is nurtured by the government through its actions vis-à-vis sport in matters related to alcohol. These actions are at odds with the overall aim of Swedish alcohol policy, and distinctive from the government's actions vis-à-vis actors outside the realm of sport but aligned with government sport policy and the long-standing government–sport relationship. In that sense, the association between sport and alcohol has less to do with alcohol than with the mutual dependence between the government and sport, and with both parties' interest in maintaining common agreements and good faith. In addition to providing these tentative explanations, it is suggested that ‘the politics of forwarding’ is one of the systemic effects that follow from the particularities of the Swedish government-sport-alcohol nexus.

Research limitations/implications – Research from other contexts is needed as the chapter is only a first tentative step in uncovering the government's role in the sport–alcohol link in countries with sport systems that are characterized by a combination of extensive public support to sport and an autonomous member-based sport system.

Alcohol stands in an ambiguous relationship to sports, and there is a common belief that participation in sports prevents alcohol consumption. Although this is not always the case, sports clubs can be important settings for health promoting alcohol policy interventions .The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of implementing alcohol policies in eight football clubs in Sweden and, in particular, how the implementation process is conveyed in the clubs’ alcohol policy projects, the similarities and differences between this case study and Durlak and DuPre's implementation model and the recommendations for successful alcohol policy implementation in relation to the result.

In total, 15 semi‐structured interviews on the subject of sports’ club alcohol policies were conducted with project leaders and board members from eight sports clubs. The interviews were analysed using Durlak and DuPre's model of factors affecting implementation processes.

The results show that almost all the factors in Durlak and DuPre's model were comprehensively manifested in the football clubs’ alcohol policy projects, although with slightly different significance and emphases.

The results are discussed in relation to recommendations for successful alcohol policy implementation in sports clubs. Recommendations are presented in six areas: an explicit message; fit; internal policy dissemination; alcohol policy as a part of overall policy; support; and actors.

Many sports clubs do an excellent job of implementing alcohol policies successfully and it is imperative to incorporate their “good” practices into research and provide assistance to those whose policies and practice are less developed.

This paper aims to examine the effect of innovation-driven polices on innovation efficiency of sport firms listed on the new Third Board in China.

Firm innovation efficiency, including comprehensive innovation efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale innovation efficiency were calculated by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) models. The input variables and output variable in the DEA model were selected through correlation analysis. The effects of several innovation-driven policies on the innovation efficiency of sport firms were analyzed by a series of multiple regression analyses.

Regarding the innovation efficiency evaluation of sport firms, total research and development (R&D) investment and total R&D staff are two suitable input variables, and total profit, sales revenue and new effective patent are three suitable output variables. Income tax relief for high-tech enterprise has a positive effect on comprehensive innovation efficiency and pure technical efficiency, and governmental subsidies have a negative effect on comprehensive innovation efficiency and pure technical efficiency. However, pretax deduction of R&D expenses does not have a significant effect on comprehensive innovation efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale innovation efficiency, and income tax relief for high-tech enterprise and pretax deduction of R&D expenses also have no effect on scale innovation efficiency. For a large-scale sport firm, the negative effect of “governmental subsidies” and the positive effect of “income tax relief for high-tech enterprise” on its pure technical efficiency are more significant. For a sport firm with more R&D staff, governmental subsides and “income tax relief for high-tech enterprise” have more positive effect on its innovation efficiency.

The study findings could potentially provide practical guidance to both managers and government-industry policymakers in the sports industry.

Firstly, this paper focused on Chinese sport firms from a rising industry in a developing country (China). The related conclusions are conducive to the governmental management of new industries and the innovation management of new enterprises. Second, this paper analyzed the effect of three special innovation-driven policies on three types of innovation efficiency and explored enterprise innovation development in more detail. Third, this paper not only discusses the effect of innovation-driven policies on innovation efficiency, but also the heterogeneity of their effects.