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In 2020, baseball and softball will return to the Olympics after a twelve-year absence. Leading the effort to secure reinstatement was the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the international governing body for the two sports established in 2013 upon the merging of the International Baseball Federation and the International Softball Federation. Faced with continual threats of Olympic exclusion, the WBSC offers a unique model of global governance in that one federation is in charge of two very different sports. The history and work of the WBSC is made more complicated by the gendered bifurcation of baseball and softball, and systemic cultural beliefs that mark baseball as male and softball as female. Utilizing this gendered tension as a guiding framework, this article traces the emergence of the WBSC and suggests that the global governance of two sports under the single banner of the WBSC risks reproducing long-standing gender stereotypes and assumptions.

This paper examines the governing body of international gymnastics, the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) and its relationship with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It outlines the nature of the relationship between the two bodies and how that relationship has historically impacted the resulting policy of both organizations. In particular, this research focuses on three main areas of policy. The first is economics and the shift from amateur to professional and commercial gymnastics. When the IOC began to develop commercial interests, the FIG feared losing its purity if it was to follow suit. Second, it explores policy surrounding gender. This is particularly relevant in a sport where each discipline is not only categorized by gender, but also contested on the basis of performance-gendered ideals. And finally, this research examines athlete welfare. Gymnastics is known for its young, docile participant base and, more recently, cases of sexual abuse in the United States. While a range of protective policies have since been created, what existed at an international level before then? I argue that the FIG has had to work within the confines of its Olympic remit in order to retain its relevance to the Olympic behemoth and its inclusion in the Games as gymnastics’ pinnacle event. At the same time, the FIG has mediated Olympic policy and exerted the will of the IOC over stakeholders in gymnastics. Moreover, this relationship is symbiotic: gymnastics is one of the top three most popular Olympic sports, attracting viewership and its attendant commercial benefits to the Games. This research is based on FIG bulletins and IOC correspondence, and it builds on a range of secondary works about the role of International Federations, their policies, and their rules in shaping the sports they govern.

The present paper looks at the different positions two major international sport federations, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS), took with respect to East Germany during the 1950s. Because these positions were greatly influenced by FIFA’s and the FIS’s prior relations with Germany and by the challenges posed by global politics, this study begins by examining these relations during the interwar period. By combining information from the FIFA, FIS, and International Olympic Committee (IOC) archives with documents from the German national archives and articles published in Switzerland’s sporting press, the authors were able to highlight differences between the two federations’ approaches and show the need for studies to go beyond an IOC-centric approach.

One could easily dismiss MGM’s 1954 production of Athena as a light-hearted, romantic, musical romp, devoid of intellectual, artistic, or social value. Although it was scripted by William Ludwig and featured several accomplished stars, it never lived up to box office expectations or critical acclaim. Much fault can be found in this film. The script seems whacky and simplistic, the acting wooden, and the songs unmemorable. Furthermore, Athena does nothing to remove existing stereotypes at a time when bodybuilders were often stigmatized as muscle-bound, narcissistic, and homosexual and health food aficionados viewed as kooks. Its legacy, however, was different. It inspired many other peplum films of the 1950s and early 1960s featuring bodybuilders, laying the groundwork of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pumping Iron, and the fitness craze that swept America and the world in the 1970s.

In 1962, the Board of Broadcast Governors (BBG), an arm of the Canadian federal government responsible for broadcasting, made the unprecedented move to force the national public broadcaster to televise the Grey Cup, the championship game of Canadian football, ostensibly because it was in the national interest. However, research reveals that this decision was not necessarily made because it was in the national interest, but more so to assist the new struggling private television network, CTV. The important content, allegedly linked to cultural citizenship, was not the national championship, but the television commercials. This paper explores why the BBG intervened and how the dispute was settled.

How can Global Sporting Governing Bodies (GSGBs) like the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) take a stand on political issues in places where a sporting event which comes under their aegis is being held without compromising their own position as neutral governing bodies of sport? Drawing upon a historical sociological approach and using the FIA and the Formula 1 world motorsport championship as its key example, this paper argues that one reason why controversy about this is growing is because FIA’s current power structures were established in an era less suited to today’s world of sports and stakeholdership. In order to change, we need to review the historical processes that shaped current power relations between the GSGB and its stakeholders and, through that, identify an alternative view of power which may resolve the dilemma which the relation between sport and politics currently throws up.