The Conundrum of Competition Law in Sporting Authorities: Challenges and Way Forward

Regulating sporting authorities presents a difficult conundrum from a Competition law standpoint. The absolute power of these authorities and handling anti-trust matters creates a disparity in its jurisdiction point of view. Sports has been competitive traditionally, but a growing economy and two-faced force, namely globalisation and industrialisation, has turned sports into a global business . Organising sports nowadays have had a unique evolution, where the sporting authorities expense millions of cash to organise the same. The advertisement sponsorship, Ott rights, and many other sponsorships provide an unimaginable digit profit to the authorities; there, anti-trust’s question comes in; it is said that in the last IPL (2020) board (BCCI) almost have had 220-million-dollar sourcing . Tiger woods, an internationally renowned golf player, made 2.07$ million by winning the 2019 title. In India, the competition commission scrutinised BCCI and All India Chess Federation for their anti-competitive behaviour, especially their abuse of dominant position. Sports governance is still new age to the Indian Governance model. Competition Law in the EU governed the sporting authorities for decades in India; it is still evolving. The monopolistic nature of sporting authorities has resulted in many economic problems as revenue sharing, non-clause profit and credits. These problems inevitably attracted the attention of the competition commission, which aims to secure the market by assuring fair play. This paper will discuss sports governance and competition law and cases in India.