Abstract
Sports have come under massive scrutiny by communities and stakeholders in their treatment of women administrators and female athletes in the past years. There is also a wide and long-ongoing debate as to whether esports should be included and recognised as a “sport” at the Olympic Games, given its glorification of violent tendency in the respective games, and the relatively young and susceptible audience base. However, the sporting industry have long come under public inspection in their operations and the societal risks that came with them, as illustrated by the rampant use of performance-enhancing substances in the 20th century, as well as match-fixing in sports. Apart from adhering to formal legislation and regulations in their operations, the sporting industry is also subjected to manage some form of “social expectation” as a legal liability. This concept is oft-cited as the social license to operate, which is generally coined as “the ongoing acceptance or approval from the local community and other stakeholders”, wherein organisations are expected to obtain and maintain “acceptance or approval” as a form of informal “license”, in order to establish credibility and legitimacy in their operations. The social license to operate has been contemporaneously adopted in other industries, such as horse-racing. Using the case studies of gender discrimination in sports and the glorification of violence in esports, this paper examines and evaluates the operation of social license within sports, and investigating into the proximity of social relationship between sporting organisations and their stakeholders.
Presenters
Chui Ling GohPhD Candidate, Law/ Sports Law Studies, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
ESPORTS, SOCIAL LICENCE TO OPERATE, OLYMPIC, SPORTS, HUMAN RIGHTS
