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ОглавлениеChapter 1. Sport as an area of legal regulation Chapter 2. Governance of the elements of sport Chapter 4. Governing of sport events Chapter 5. Offences and responsibilities in the field of sport Для бесплатного чтения доступна только часть главы! Для чтения полной версии необходимо приобрести книгуChapter 4. Governing of sport events§ 1. On some issues of legal governance of arranging sport eventsThe current version of the Federal Law as of December 4, 2007 No 329-FZ “On Physical Culture and Sport in the Russian Federation” (hereinafter the Law on Sport) represents the main document, regulating organization and holding of competition within the framework of the Russian legislation. According to the Law on Sport, sports competition is a kind of sport event, and is closely related to the notion ‘sport’ and ‘professional sport’. Following the definition, presented in cl. 18 art. 2 of the Law on Sport, sports competition is a competition among athletes or teams of athletes in different kinds of sports (sport disciplines) aimed at revealing the best competition participant, and is held according to the provisions (regulations), specified by the organizer. Basically, sports competition is the main form of a sport activity and one of the central categories of the Law on Sport. Particularly sport competitions allow athletes to perform, as well as other participants to be engaged, and moreover, the greater part of the Law on Sport provides for distribution of authorities concerning its organization and holding. The Russian Federation holds competition at different levels. It should be noted, that an official status is given to those competitions, which are introduced in the Unified calendar plan of interregional, all-Russian and international physical culture and sport events (UCP) in accordance with the Procedure, specified by the Ministry of Sport and Tourism of the Russian Federation. The UCP includes physical culture and sport events, financed at the expense of the federal budgetary funds, provided by the Ministry of Sport and Tourism of the Russian Federation for such purposes (with the exception of military and service-oriented kinds of sport), as well as by means of other sources, not prohibited by the legislation of the Russian Federation. The UCP registers sport events with respect to kinds of sport, included in the All-Russian register of kinds of sports (ARRKS) (except for the kinds of sport of the first and third parts of the ARRKS), which represent an integral system of sports competition and training activities, corresponding to the sport of higher level achievements and resolving tasks on sport development, selection of athletes into the national sports team of the Russian Federation and ensuring results-oriented training of the national sports team of the Russian Federation (major and reserve team) for its successful participation in large-scale international competitions: Olympic, Paralympic, Deaflympics, world and European championships. Significantly, inclusion of sport events in the UCP is carried out with respect to the sports specifics as to scheduling calendar plans of international sports federations, which facilitate the development of the kind of sport in the world and (or) in Europe. In addition, when including sport events into the UCP, the Unified Sports Classification System of Russia is considered, approved according to the procedure, set forth by the Provision on the Unified Sports Classification System of Russia, approved by the Decree of the Ministry of Sport and Tourism of the Russian Federation. In accordance with the UCP, the federal level provides for holding international, all-Russian and interregional sports competitions. For example, the large-scale international competitions include the following: the Olympic, Paralympic, Deaflympics, Youth Olympic Games, universiades; championships, world championships and world cups, including those held in the territory of the Russian Federation. The all-Russian sports competitions include championships, cups, spartakiada games and universiades of Russia. Interregional sports competitions are held according to the territorial principle among the sports teams of the Russian Federation territorial entities. Official regional and local sports competitions are held subject to the Unified Calendar Plan, approved by the executive authority body of the Russian Federation territorial entity in the field of physical culture and sports. At the federal and regional levels there are oftentimes sports competitions with several statuses at a time, such competitions are usually referred to as open sports competitions. In this case, for example, in regional sports competitions declared for a single territorial entity of the Russian Federation, take part athletes and (or) sports teams from other regions, or foreign participants are invited to all-Russian competitions. Conditions on holding open sports competitions are specified by the competition organizers. In certain cases such competitions prove to be of interest for international sports federations (associations), for example, for providing athletes with additional competition opportunities and gaining sport points based on its results. All the more so, as a number of foreign countries, like Germany, for example, practice holding internal competitions with foreign athletes engagement. Therewith, the authors would like to remark on certain lack of proper regulation of such competitions open status at the legislative level. It seems advisable to introduce into the Law on Sport additional criteria and conditions regulating open sports competitions organization. In particular, to introduce the provision obliging a foreign athlete (team) to obtain a participation approval from the national sports federation, with a mandatory presenting of such approval to the competition organizer. The form of approval and the procedure of its obtaining and submitting shall be specified by the federal executive authorities in the field of physical culture and sports. For certain sports competitions being of particular importance for the Russian Federation, held in the name of the Russian Federation both in its own territory and abroad, a separate special status shall be introduced, allowing the competition organizers to include it in the UCP. Therewith, provisions should be made, so that the initiators of such competitions would require respective approvals for organizing and holding them, issued by the All-Russia Sport Federation, federal executive authorities in the field of physical culture and sports, and international sports federation (association). While foreign participants shall provide the organizer with an approval from the national sports federation as to which country they represent. In other cases with respect to international competitions held in the territory of the Russian Federation, the initiators of such competitions so that to organize and hold them shall obtain the respective approvals from the all-Russia sports federation, executive authorities of the Russian Federation territorial entities, the international competitions are to take place in. Shall a sports competition be not included into the international calendar, foreign participants shall present an approval of the national sports federation as to which country they represent. It should be further remarked on the importance of regulatory norms in the general structure of legal regulatory norms of the sports competition organization and holding. Part 6 art. 20 of the Law on Sport specifies, that organization and holding of a physical culture or sport event shall be carried out in accordance with the provision (regulations) on such physical culture or sport event, set forth by its organizers. Therewith, it is obvious that such regulations shall be acknowledged subject to providing some minimum norms, required for the regulation of competition holding. Legal status of a physical culture or sport event organizer is provided by the Law on Sport. According to cl. 8 art. 2, a physical culture or sport event organizer is a legal or natural person, who initiates a physical culture or sport event, and (or) carries out an organizational, financial and other support of such an event. The given notion is in practice represented by the two constituent parts, provided in different parts of the Law on Sport. Further definition of such a notion is represented in part 1 art. 20 of the given law. Obviously, that with no regard to the characteristics, inherent to an organizer and specified in art. 20, the definition in questions seems to be of rather nominal and purely informative character. For example, the use of a disjunctive conjunction ‘or’ in the definition allows to regard a person as an organizer only subject to his initiative of an event holding, like declaring such an information in mass media. In this regard, only complex interpretation allows for a more precise definition of this notion. It seems to be more appropriate to define an organizer of a physical culture and sport event as a legal or natural person, being an official initiator of such an event, specifying conditions of its holding, assuming responsibilities for its organization and holding according to the legislation requirements of the hosting country, and being vested by virtue of the foregoing with commercial and other rights for such an event, including the right to suspend, postpone or terminate the event. Still, the integration of art. 2 and art. 20 in general proves to be insufficient for the regulatory framework of the respective event organization. Apparently, law-makers inherited the legal model of a public event organizer, specified earlier in the Federal Law of June 19, 2004 No. 54-FZ “On Assemblies, Meetings, Demonstrations, Processions and Pickets”. This is a well-grounded legal analogy with a rather coherent transformation and the required commercial constituent. An analysis, carried out with regard to the authorities of the sports competitions organizers based on art. 2 and 20 of the Law on Sport, allows to single out the following groups: 1) initiative (the right to initiate a sport event); 2) regulatory (definition of the competition holding conditions, development and approval of the regulations (provisions) of a competition, including definition of the name); 3) calendar-administrative (specifying and changing the event holding dates, postponing and termination of a competition and its stages); 4) organization-arbitrational (on authorizing referees to officiate during competitions); 5) evaluating (competition scoring and determining winners); 6) authorities on assigning rights for holding competitions; 7) other authorities to ensure effective competition holding. With respect to the possibility of the said authorities assignment, only the last category seems to be assignable to third parties, as others could be referred as ‘exclusive’, that is, with no right to be assigned to third parties. Conspicuous is the fact, that a sports competition organizer is vested with a special (main and twice specified by the law) authority: drawing up and approving the regulations (provisions) with regard to a competition, and specifying conditions of its holding, which includes introducing criteria for athletes admission to a competition, criteria of the achieved sport results, the procedure of event financing, safety measures with regard to anti-doping rules and methods, conditions of entry for audience and mass media representatives, their code of conduct and other required rules. That is, even in the case of possible assignment of rights for competition holding, all basic inalienable rights and obligations of the organizer shall be attached to the corresponding organization. This set of authorities only allows to “split off” for the small assignable rights group, defined usually either in the respective agreement or in the competition regulations. In practice, in case of assignment of the rights for international competition holding, there appears an international sports federation assistant, who partially undertakes technical and current problems in the process of the respective competition holding. With regard to the competition holding it should be specified, which authorities of the organizer could be alienable (assignable). In our opinion, holding of a sports competition represents a system of measures, provided by a such event organizer (or a person, authorized by an organizer for holding a competition for and on his behalf) of legal, economic and organizational character, aimed at effective, accurate and complete realization of the specified regulations (provisions) of a competition, and ensuring condition of its holding subject to adherence to the rights and interests of the participants, organizers, audience and other persons, an likewise implies making corresponding agreements required for the normal course of the competition holding, and ensuring their fulfillment (raising financial resources, renting sports facilities, covering expenses and making arrangements for participants transportation, boarding and lodging, producing competition symbolics, performing ticketing, registering participants, carrying out accreditation of mass media representatives and other similar activities), as well as performing other actions, aimed at the current communication with participants concerning their interaction with each other and with competition organizers. In other words, a certain residual (but no less important) segment of an organizer authorities is assigned to the third party. It seems that such rights could also be assigned (by virtue of using in art. 20 of the Law on Sport the notion ‘exclusive rights’, but providing no definition of ‘delegable/assignable’ and ‘non-delegable/non-assignable’ rights, as for example, in art. 16), which are nominally referenced to as ‘commercial rights’ and ‘rights for broadcasting’ (part 2–5 art. 20 of the Law on Sport). Separately should be mentioned some on-coming novations of the Law on Sport, approved by the State Duma of the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of Russian Federation in the first reading. In particular, according to the draft law all the authorities, specified in cl. 1 art. 16 of the Law on Sport, can be exercised by an organizer together with other organizers of such events; namely, it is allowed to organize and hold in respective kinds of sport the Championships and the Cups of Russia, to develop and approve provisions (regulations) concerning such competitions, to grand a status of a Champion, Championship winner, Winner of the Cup of Russia, as well as to delegate the right of holding such competitions to other physical culture and sport organizations, being of non-commercial nature, for a term no longer than three years. In addition, the draft law makers propose to introduce additional clauses in art. 16 of the Law on Sport, enabling federal executive authorities and executive authorities of the Russian Federation territorial entities to carry out along with the all-Russian sports federations the organization and holding of the Championships and the Cups of Russia in the respective kinds of sport, while other persons shall have the right to carry out along with the all-Russian sports federations the organization and holding of the Championships and the Cups of Russia in the respective kinds of sport in case of taking by all-Russian sports federations the decision on cooperative organization of such sports competitions in accordance with part 11 art. 20 of the Law on Sport subject to an approval of the federal executive authority in the field of physical culture and sports. |
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