Corruption in sports: problems of sports autonomy and management
According to independent estimates, from 800 million to 1.2 billion people in the world engage in professional or amateur sports. The trends of recent decades, such as professionalization, politicization, commercialization, and medicalization, as well as autonomy and bad management of sports, have had a serious impact and even devastating effect on modern sport. Modern professional sports are an industry with a multimillion-dollar turnover, which covers, in addition to sports competitions, many types of economic activity with limited reporting and transparency requirements. According to some estimates, the sports industry produces more than 145 billion US dollars annually. The relationship between corruption and sports has a long history, but corruption and doping scandals both at home and abroad, in recent years, have shown that corruption does not appear on its own, isolated from the sports environment, it reflects the situation in sports in general. Historically, sports organizations enjoy significant autonomy in governance and are independent of the state. Their activities are governed by their own rules and charters. Most decisions in sports are made behind closed doors. As a result, the principle of autonomy in sports has become a kind of shield that allows sports organizations at various levels, from international to the national ones, against interference in their activities by the state. In this context, non-profit sports organizations are especially vulnerable and exposed to corruption risks due to rapidly growing and practically uncontrolled sources of financial income and resources.