Sport Mediation: Mediating High‐Performance Sports Disputes

Conflicts in high‐performance sports (HPS) are typically tense and emotionally charged experiences for the athletes, coaches, and sports organizations involved. Such disputes raise intriguing challenges for the mediators handling them. These disputes typically involve multiple parties who often have intensely competitive personalities negotiating a volatile mix of high‐stakes win/lose issues. Mediators typically confront numerous process challenges and must operate within the rigid policy parameters of the various governing organizations involved. Mediation can successfully manage and resolve these challenging disputes, often in creative ways that repair and preserve the parties’ relationships. To be successful in this environment, however, mediators must adapt to and confront the unique dynamics of sports disputes described here. In this article, I examine multiple case studies of mediations conducted through the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC) with the goal of identifying successful mediation strategies for HPS disputes. The centre, which has made mediation mandatory for almost all cases, had an overall settlement rate over a twelve‐year period of 46 percent, with rates as high as 94 percent for mediations voluntarily requested by the parties. Mediation has been used only sparingly elsewhere in the world for resolving HPS disputes to date, although, I argue, it is a successful tool that should be increasingly used both nationally and internationally. In recognition of mediation's potential role, the Court of Arbitration for Sport introduced updated mediation rules in 2016 and is moving to increase the use of mediation in international sports disputes.