Transparency has become one of the most repeated words in global sport and, at the same time, one of the hardest to verify. International federations, confederations and Olympic bodies publish ethics codes, governance reports, integrity committees and public statements, but many key decisions are still made in spaces that are difficult to scrutinise: internal elections, commercial contracts, political readmissions, disciplinary proceedings, funding for national federations and regulatory changes that directly affect athletes.
The myth is not the absence of rules, but the limited ability of those rules to make power uncomfortable. In fencing, almost 3,000 athletes and coaches have called for an independent review of the International Fencing Federation -FIE- over alleged governance failures; in boxing, the International Boxing Association -IBA- lost Olympic recognition after years of concerns over governance, finance and integrity; in swimming, the case of the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine before Tokyo 2020 forced World Aquatics and the World Anti-Doping Agency -WADA- to defend their procedures; and in African football, the Confederation of African Football -CAF- has faced accusations linked to internal pressure on audit and compliance members.
Electoral opacity: when voting does not mean accountability
The first grey area lies in elections. Much of global sport operates with statutes, electoral calendars, commissions and votes, but the formal existence of a process does not guarantee that power is genuinely contested. Single-candidate races, internal networks, national federations dependent on international funding, unclear regulatory changes and votes shaped by political balances turn many sports elections into administrative processes rather than competitive ones.
The FIE is a particularly representative case because the criticism comes from athletes and coaches who have requested an independent review. Their complaints include alleged lack of transparency, rule changes, rising financial burdens, cancellations or postponements of competitions and doubts over the screening of neutral athletes. The IBA offers the extreme case: the International Olympic Committee -IOC- withdrew its recognition and the Court of Arbitration for Sport -CAS- rejected its appeal after finding that it had not met conditions linked to financial transparency, sustainability and integrity processes. Its financial problems were also part of the crisis that ended with the loss of Olympic recognition, while World Boxing, the international federation created to govern Olympic boxing, is now trying to earn the IOC’s trust.
In CAF, the accusations against Véron Mosengo-Omba over alleged intimidation of audit and compliance committee members add another layer: an institution cannot present itself as transparent if those who are supposed to scrutinise it from within report pressure or interference.
The money that cannot always be followed
FIFA is the central case of financial opacity because it combines reform rhetoric, development programmes, extraordinary revenues and a political structure in which the distribution of funds also reinforces power relationships. Play the Game reported in 2025 criticism of the 1.6 billion dollars allocated by FIFA to development between 2023 and 2026, with doubts over the traceability of that money in national federations with transparency problems. The question is not only how much FIFA invests, but what real capacity exists to know where that money ends up, who audits it and whether the federations that depend on those funds can freely challenge the body that distributes them. Transparency, in this case, does not mean announcing investment. It means making it verifiable.
Transparency becomes even more fragile when sporting power shifts towards actors that are not federations, but still shape their decisions: sovereign wealth funds, state-owned companies, global sponsors and governments with their own sports strategies. The case of Saudi Arabia, Aramco and the Public Investment Fund -PIF- shows that grey area: FIFA has brought major Saudi actors into its commercial ecosystem while the country strengthens its weight in the global sports calendar and in the organisation of major events. The problem is not only sponsorship, but the chain of responsibility. When a federation partners with a state-owned company or a sovereign wealth fund, accountability can no longer be limited to sports statutes. It must be clear what human rights controls exist, what contractual obligations are imposed, what information is published and what consequences would follow if those commitments were breached.
The fragility of anti-doping
Financial traceability remains one of the weakest points in global sports governance. International federations distribute development funds, support national structures, sign sponsorships, negotiate contracts, organise events and decide which sporting projects survive. The 2025 governance review by the Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations -ARISF- exposed that contradiction: transparency appeared as the strongest area because all participating federations published statutes and sports rules, but only 15 published externally audited accounts.
Anti-doping is perhaps the area where transparency is most delicate, because it combines science, confidentiality, reputation, geopolitics and sporting careers. The case of the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine before Tokyo 2020 exposed that tension: WADA accepted the contamination explanation presented by the Chinese agency, World Aquatics later defended that there had been no mismanagement or cover-up, and several reviews pointed in that direction, but the reputational damage had already been done. When the public only sees the final decision, but cannot clearly understand how the evidence was assessed, who was involved, what doubts existed and why no sanction followed, trust becomes an act of institutional faith.
Consultation is another weak frontier of transparency because many sports organisations present strategic decisions as the result of internal consensus, but rarely allow outsiders to reconstruct how that consensus was formed. The CAF case over the reform of the Africa Cup of Nations -AFCON- shows this clearly: several African officials accused the confederation of failing to fully consult its member federations before moving towards a four-year format from 2028, while CAF defended that the decision had been legally approved by its executive committee. The transparency issue is not only whether the competent body had the authority to decide, but who took part, what information they received, what objections were raised and why a measure affecting revenues, calendars, national teams and the development of African football did not go through a more visible process for its 54 member associations.
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