From 15 to 17 January 2020, Llinks Partner Mr. Wei Wu was invited to London, Britain to attend the International Forum on Sports Law.
The International Forum on Sports Law was initiated by Mr. Dirk-Reiner Martens, the late founder of the FIBA Basketball Arbitration Tribunal ("BAT") and the well-known arbitrator of the Court of Arbitration for Sports ("CAS"). The forum takes an invitation-only approach, therefore only opens to the most influential judges and lawyers, managers of the four major North America professional leagues and the five major European leagues, as well as core members and professors of major international sports associations in Europe, Asia, North America and South America. The aim of the forum is to gather the initial promoters, legislators and executors of sports policies in the world, summarize the industry trends of the past years through small-scale, practice-oriented meetings, and discuss over the most likely idea for future legislation, governance, dispute resolution and implementation. Mr. Wu as one of the forum's international founding members (together with Dr. Dirk-Reiner Martens, Richard McLaren, Michele Bernasconi, etc.), has been invited by the forum founders since three years ago to attend the forum in the role of representative of the Asian sports law community.
The forum is divided into three days, focusing on the heated issues in order to grasp the practice and theoretical trends of major sports organizations, sports federations and dispute resolution institutions in the field of international sports. The forum began with a comprehensive discussion on the most recently concerned anti-doping issues. Mr. Richard McLaren, leader of the investigation over the large-scale doping scandal in Russia, summed up the latest behavioral patterns of various doping violations and illustrated the current challenges in the field of anti-doping. The forum then focused on the core topics such as financial fair-play policies, sports rule reforms, and a series of gender equality disputes triggered by the case of South African transgender athlete Caster Semenya.
At the second stage of the forum, Mr. Wu analyzed the reform and implementation of the sporting financial fair-play policies in various countries, together with Mr. Michele Bernasconi, Mr. Juan de Dios Crespo Pérez, other front-line lawyers from Europe and the United States, as well as senior officials from international sports confederations. From the legislation perspective, Mr. Wu started with the China Football Association's latest policies focusing on financial fair-play and significant regulations through comparative studies. He pointed out that China's innovative practice has been reflecting the changes, challenges, opportunities brought about by financial fair-play policies to Asian football. The policies originated from the highly commercialized European football, and gained popularity under global recognition. The financial supervision policies of the Chinese Football Association also emerged and improved in the course of cooperation with UEFA, and has become an excellent example of Asian football balancing both business upgrading and financial health. Through the heated discussion, the attendants gained new thoughts on the profound relationship between the "competition balance" and "financial balance" of sports events under the influence of reforming policies.
This forum fully followed Mr. Martens's consistent pursuit of truth-seeking and innovation through the continuous development of new theories and ideas in rigorous practice. For the China sports industry which is also in the process of active reform, the idea of Mr. Martens represents the spirit of exploration which is of outstanding reference value. In the context of China's "Outline for Building a Leading Sports Nation" which strongly advocates "exchange, co-construction, and multilateral cooperation", rational reference to advanced experience at home and abroad has far-reaching significance to the governance and reform of China 's sports industry, even the practice and theoretical development of sports law. With the recognition of the international sports arbitration community and confederations, Llinks Law Offices will uphold the spirit of the forum, work together with global wisdom to cultivate influential intergenerational talents for sports, and gradually help Chinese sportsman to make their own voice on the international stage.
