Football, tennis, rugby world bodies rank among the best
Transparency, integrity and democracy among benchmarks set by independent survey
Dubai: Ever wondered how an international governing body has been performing? How ‘corrupt’ is a body or how easy is it to deal with an association or what sort of integrity and work ethics do these bodies follow?
The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) has conducted a detailed assessment of the 33 international federations that fall under its purview.
Leading the group of being ‘among the best’ is a handful of sports bodies led by football governing body, Fifa along with the International Tennis Federation (ITF), World Rugby (WR), the Badminton World Federation (BWF), the International Equestrian Federation (IEF) and the International Cycling Union (ICU) who have all made the top-level A1 cut.
All six world governing bodies have scored between 170 and 187 points in the questionnaire as per the review done by independent sports governance consultancy, ‘I Trust Sport’.
This is the third review conducted by the ASOIF, the earlier two being done on its members in 2017 and 2018. The world body has observed that its members have shown substantial overall improvements after grouping the 30-odd International Federations (IFs) (for the first time) based on their total score.
A total of 31 IFs participated in the latest governance review, down from 33 that attended during the second review two years back. The ASOIF had last year cautioned its members that the third review would involve a more compliance-based concept, with greater transparency about their results amid pressure from the public, higher authorities and the media.
This has led to ASOIF grouping the IFs into four categories based on their scores.
The process of judging these IFs is simple: each of the IFs falling under the purview of the ASOIF were given questionnaires that were required to be completed through an updated self-assessment between a time frame of November 2019 to January 2020.
A total of 50 indicators were divided across the principles of transparency, integrity, democracy, control mechanisms and development and solidarity with each of the criteria scored out of four, meaning a score of 200 was the highest possible for IFs to achieve.
Only the International Boxing Federation was left out as the AIBA has been suspended by the IOC over issues surrounding its finances and governance in June 2019, while one IF declined to participate as World Karate is not among the IFs listed in the survey.
Following the self-assessment, independent sports governance consultancy I Trust Sport reviewed the responses and moderated the scores.
The International Basketball Federation, International Fencing Federation, International Table Tennis Federation, International Triathlon Union, United World Wrestling, World Athletics, World Sailing and World Taekwondo have all been ranked in the A2 category with each scoring between 140 to 158 points.
The International Gymnastics Federation, International Hockey Federation, World Rowing, the International Volleyball Federation and the International Canoe Federation featured in category B.
The largest category also features the International Federation of Sport Climbing, the International Golf Federation, the International Handball Federation, the International Shooting Sport Federation, the International Modern Pentathlon Union and World Archery in category B with scores between 120 to 137 points.
The International Swimming Federation, the International Judo Federation, the International Surfing Association, the International Weightlifting Federation, the World Baseball Softball Confederation and World Skate were all included in category C and the lowest-ranked category with scores between 84 to 119.
Former ITF President Francesco Ricci Bitti, who is the ASOIF President and Chairman of the Governance Task Force, was pleased with the progress made by international bodies.
“A lot of progress has been achieved and the overall trend is clearly positive. Certain reforms take longer to be implemented as they require changes to the statues or the approval of the General Assembly,” he remarked.