The Court of Arbitration for Sport -CAS- does not govern global sport by approving calendars, regulations or competition formats. Its power works in another way: it has become the place where those rules are interpreted, validated, corrected or limited. In a system increasingly shaped by litigation, its decisions are helping define who can compete, under which flag, which clubs enter Europe, how much room owners have, how anti-doping rules are applied and who can stand in federation elections.
The scale of that role can be seen in its own workload. In 2024, CAS registered 917 procedures, including 642 appeals, 200 ordinary procedures, 41 Anti-Doping Division cases and 13 mediations. Appeals remain the core of its activity, a sign that many decisions taken by federations and sports bodies end up being reviewed in Lausanne. In 2025, football also accounted for 77% of the cases registered before CAS, according to the CAS & Football Annual Report published by FIFA.
A court built into the architecture of sport
CAS was created as a specialised route for resolving sports disputes, but its current weight comes from the architecture of the system itself. Many federations include arbitration clauses that require athletes, clubs and national federations to first exhaust internal remedies and then go to the tribunal. In practice, access to international sport often comes with an arbitration clause that turns CAS into the final sporting instance.
That design provides speed, expertise and a degree of consistency in a global ecosystem, but it also raises questions about independence, access to justice and external oversight. The International Council of Arbitration for Sport -ICAS- administers and finances CAS and is responsible for safeguarding its independence, although the system remains linked to the institutional structure of international sport. The more decisive its rulings become, the more relevant one underlying question becomes: who reviews the reviewer?
Geopolitics and Olympic neutrality
The participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus in international competitions has placed CAS on the boundary between geopolitical sanction, Olympic neutrality, federation autonomy and the individual rights of athletes. In December 2025, the tribunal partially upheld appeals against the International Ski and Snowboard Federation -FIS- and ruled that Russian and Belarusian athletes who met the International Olympic Committee -IOC- criteria to compete as Individual Neutral Athletes -AIN- should be allowed to take part in qualifying events for Milano Cortina 2026 and in the Games. The case set practical limits on the ability of an international federation to exclude even athletes who met the neutrality criteria defined by the IOC. CAS did not write Olympic policy, but it intervened in its real application.
Another recent case in Milano Cortina involved Vladyslav Heraskevych. The Ukrainian appealed to CAS after being removed for trying to compete with a helmet commemorating Ukrainian athletes killed in the war. On that occasion, the tribunal dismissed the appeal and upheld the Olympic line.
The same logic appears in cases affecting athletes’ identity, bodies and reputations. In the case of Caster Semenya, CAS’s power was seen in its validation of World Athletics’ ability to apply eligibility rules. The decision in effect upheld the possibility for a federation to condition an athlete’s access to her competitive category on biological criteria set by regulation, despite the direct impact on her career, sporting identity and individual rights. In the case of Kamila Valieva, CAS exercised that power on another level: by resolving the anti-doping procedure arising from Beijing 2022, its decision ended up determining the official consequences of an Olympic event already held, with effects on the team figure skating standings, the reallocation of medals and the reputation of athletes, coaches, Olympic committees and the anti-doping system itself.
Investment football is also decided in Lausanne
The growth of CAS is also tied to the new economy of football. Multi-club ownership has moved beyond a corporate issue to become a matter of competitive integrity. Crystal Palace, DAC 1904 and Drogheda United have taken disputes to the tribunal over UEFA rules on control, influence and access to European competitions. In the Crystal Palace case, UEFA rejected the club’s admission to the 2025/26 Europa League and accepted its participation in the Conference League because of a breach of multi-club ownership rules, a decision appealed before CAS.
These disputes show how CAS is entering the heart of contemporary football: investment funds, club networks, control structures, shared interests and the risk of competitive conflict. As football is organised into increasingly complex business ecosystems, Lausanne becomes the place where the legal limits of that concentration of power are interpreted.
Another example came with Samuel Eto’o. In March 2025, CAS upheld his appeal and that of the Cameroonian Football Federation -FECAFOOT- against the Confederation of African Football -CAF-, and ordered that he be included on the list of candidates for the Executive Committee. The effect was direct on the electoral field of a continental confederation. This was not about a match, a sporting sanction or a player registration, but about who could aspire to govern within the structure of African football.
The court that is also starting to be judged
The growth of CAS has not removed external oversight. The RFC Seraing v FIFA case before the Court of Justice of the European Union marked a relevant counterpoint by establishing that CAS decisions must be open to review by national courts in the European Union when European public policy or rights guaranteed under EU law are at stake. The decision does not remove the role of the Lausanne tribunal, but it does limit the idea that its rulings are absolutely final in Europe.
CAS does not replace FIFA, UEFA, the IOC or World Athletics as sporting lawmakers, but it increasingly decides what their rules mean in practice. CAS has become a forum where disputes that might once have remained contained within federations are resolved. When an electoral, disciplinary or statutory conflict reaches Lausanne, the decision no longer belongs only to the sports body that issued the original rule. It becomes part of an arbitration system that can validate, correct or limit federation power.
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