The Birth of European Union Sports Law

Employing a methodology drawn from policy studies, this article claims that the EU has devised a distinct legal approach to applying the law to sporting situations in order to reconcile differences within the EU sports policy subsystem. Whilst some actors see sport primarily in economic terms, others wish to see the socio-cultural characteristics of sport protected from EU law. In the absence of a legally rooted common sports policy, the EU has used law to construct the separate territories of sporting autonomy and judicial intervention. Whilst the findings of this research are limited to the EU experience, this article nevertheless empirically and theoretically strengthens the emerging sports law thesis within legal studies.