*Shubham Jain

The National Sports Governance Act 2025 marks a major reform in India’s sports regulation, introducing new institutions and athlete representation. However, it overlooks vital global best practices on human rights, sustainability, equity, and safeguarding. This piece argues for embedding integrated, people-centred “Good Governance Frameworks” to modernise India’s sports governance and hosting ambitions.

India’s sports governance landscape experienced a transformative moment in the summer of 2025 with the passage of the National Sports Governance Act 2025 (‘NSGA’), alongside the National Sports Policy and the Online Gaming Act. These reforms represent an ambitious attempt to modernise sports governance, with a clear goal to secure hosting rights for the 2036 Summer Olympics and Paralympics and other mega-sporting events including the Commonwealth Games 2030. The NSGA introduces commendable structural innovations such as the National Sports Board (‘NSB’) for regulatory oversight, the National Sports Tribunal for dispute resolution, Sports Election Panel to oversee free and fair elections to the sport bodies, and enhanced athlete representation through the Athletes Committee (discussed here, here, here and here). However, it simultaneously represents a missed opportunity to incorporate vital rights-based considerations that define global best practice in sports governance.

NSGA’s failure to embed meaningful stakeholder ecosystem approaches, comprehensive human rights protections, sustainability and environmental justice considerations, equity and inclusion provisions, and robust safeguarding measures (collectively, ‘Good Governance Frameworks’) risks positioning India’s sports governance framework as outdated even before it has been implemented. This omission is particularly striking given India’s hosting ambitions and the international sports community’s increasingly stringent Good Governance requirements for major event hosts. In this piece, I will discuss why it is vital for Indian sports law and policy to embed these Good Governance Frameworks. Now that the NSGA is in operation, it is incumbent upon the NSB (as the regulator) to address these shortcomings through its residuary powers under section 6 of the NSGA.

Ecosystem Engagement Approach: Considering Interests and Voices of all Stakeholders

Contemporary sports governance literature recognises that effective regulation extends beyond athletes and administrators to encompass a comprehensive ecosystem of stakeholders whose rights, interests and voices must be considered in decision-making processes. The United Nations (‘UN’) Secretary-General’s recent report on sport and sustainable development identifies a people-focused definition of stakeholders in the sports ecosystem that includes athletes, fans, journalists, public and community members, volunteers, coaches and administrators, workers, officials, and marginalised communities. Likewise, the International Olympic Committee’s (‘IOC’) Strategic Framework on Human Rights explicitly acknowledges the need to consider the interests of workers, local communities, and other stakeholders beyond athletes.

While the NSGA commendably prioritises athletes through inclusion of athlete voices in governance and makes provisions for considering athlete welfare, this vision fails to reflect the evolution of global sports governance debates over the past decade. The human rights-focused, people-centred perspective of the sport ecosystem reveals the large number and diversity of organisations and people that contribute to it in their different roles and capacities. Understanding these interconnected relationships is crucial for identifying where risks can arise and who needs protection under the law.

The NSGA’s oversight in failing to account for fan interests and rights is particularly troublesome, given that fans represent the primary consumers of professional sport whose engagement ultimately sustains the entire ecosystem. Indian sports fans have historically been treated abysmally with inadequate stadium facilities, deficient crowd management and poor event information being a common part of the experience. The legislation should have imposed obligations on sports bodies and decision-makers to undertake meaningful fan engagement processes, recognising that sports governance affects not only the athletes and support staff but also millions of people whose emotional and financial support runs these sporting competitions.

It is imperative that Indian sports governance adopt this wider stakeholder ecosystem engagement approach that recognises the interests, rights and voices of the diverse individuals and communities connected to sports and simultaneously embed duties on decision-makers including governments at various levels, sport bodies, federations, manufacturers, suppliers and event organisers.

Human Rights-Based Approach: Of, by and for the People

Despite containing some rights-based provisions, particularly regarding athlete rights and welfare (sections 6(i), 9 and 12(4)), the NSGA fundamentally fails to adopt a comprehensive human rights-based approach that has become standard across international sports governing bodies. Such an approach emphasises the obligations of institutional actors as ‘duty-bearers’ and the capacity of ‘rights-holders’ (in this case, athletes, coaches, fans, workers) to claim their human rights through participatory, accountable, non-discriminatory, equitable, empowering, and legitimate processes.

Over the past decade, major international sports bodies including the IOC, FIFA, World Athletics, WADA, and Commonwealth Sport have adopted human rights policies (see here for a database of human rights commitments in sports). Event owners such as IOC have made human rights due diligence (see here, page 38) a legal requirement for host countries and cities. The IOC’s Host City Contract, for instance, now includes specific human rights provisions following sustained advocacy from civil society organisations. FIFA has implemented comprehensive human rights due diligence processes for World Cup hosts, requiring detailed risk assessments, mitigations and stakeholder consultations.

India’s hosting ambitions will inevitably require both demonstration and implementation of robust human rights protections. International precedent shows that host countries must conduct meaningful human rights due diligence before, during, and after events, with accessible grievance mechanisms and effective remedy for any harm caused.

A human-rights based approach is not restricted to mega event hosting, it is about a whole-of-systems cultural change that places people at the heart of governance. This means embedding human rights considerations starting from grassroots to professional elite sports. Another specific example is NSGA’s failure to recognise professional athletes as workers in line with the International Labour Organisation’s (‘ILO’) Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work for Athletes. Such a recognition could have enabled meaningful protection of athlete rights including the right to form genuine and independent worker’s unions. It now falls upon the NSB to push for these much-needed transformations around the rights of people in Indian sports.

Sustainability and Environmental Justice: Adapting and Responding to Sport’s existential threat

Sport and climate change have a two-way relationship. Sport requires optimal environmental conditions to function effectively, yet sporting activities and major events also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions through travel, construction, and operations. Many international sport bodies including the IOC have adopted sustainability strategies and require ecological soundness as a core pillar of event hosting.

India is amongst the world’s most climate vulnerable nations  across multiple dimensions such as extreme heat, pollution, monsoon disruption, sea-level rise, and flooding. These directly threaten the viability of sporting activities and infrastructure. The postponement of the Khelo India Winter Games 2025 due to insufficient snowfall in Gulmarg starkly illustrates how climate change is already disrupting India’s sporting calendar. Cricket, often described as a religion in India, is uniquely vulnerable to everyday climate impacts. Recent analysis by The Next Test reveals that 36% of the IPL 2025 matches were played under “Extreme Caution” conditions, with an additional 12% in the “Danger” heat zone. There has been a 125% increase in hazardous heat days in Mumbai since 1970, with Thiruvananthapuram recording over 100 such days in 2024. These conditions pose serious health risks to players, support staff and spectators while disrupting competition schedules.

Concerns about the impacts of the climate crisis are not restricted to elite level stadiums alone The climate crisis is already ending the sporting dreams of India’s young on the streets. Changing climate has the worst impact on the most exposed and vulnerable, including those from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, rural areas, women, and marginalised groups such as disabled people, Dalits, and tribal communities. These groups already face disproportionate barriers to accessing sporting opportunities. Simultaneously, they have the least resources to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change. If grassroots are impacted, it will have cascading impacts for elite talent pathways as well as the goal of increasing sporting participation.

Curiously, despite these vulnerabilities and existential risks, climate and sustainability considerations remain starkly absent in debates on Indian sports governance and policy. No Indian sport body, club or organisation has signed up to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework or the Sports for Nature Framework. While France has published a national plan to adapt sport practices to climate change and the UK has commissioned a report to study the financial and environmental challenges climate change poses to grassroots sport, India lags behind.

It would have been ideal if the NSGA had explicitly included sustainability as a core issue. Given India’s climate vulnerability and the differential impact on people based on their existing exposures, India needs to adopt an environmental justice approach to sports governance and sustainability. It will require consideration of who is worst affected, most exposed, and least able to adapt or mitigate climate impacts.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: Sport for all without discrimination

Access to sport and sporting opportunities constitutes a fundamental human right. Unfortunately, the NSGA fails to make provisions to address systemic barriers, discrimination and the myth of ‘level playing fields’ that prevent disadvantaged, vulnerable, and rural populations from participating in sporting activities. Effective inclusion provisions would require the government, sport federations and NSB to collect comprehensive data on participation patterns, identify those being excluded, understand the reasons for exclusion, and develop targeted policies to address these gaps.

The importance of diversity mainstreaming can be illustrated through two examples. The NSGA in section 4 states that every national sports body executive committee shall have not more than fifteen members of whom at least four shall be women. It is unclear why this proportion (four of fifteen) was chosen as it may prove insufficient to grant meaningful voice to women. This clause also fails to make provisions for adequate representation in governance and decision-making of other historically marginalised groups including disabled persons, Dalits, tribal populations, and queer communities. Unless vulnerable groups have a seat at the table in the rooms where decisions are made, it is difficult to imagine that the specific disadvantages they face can be understood and appropriate participation frameworks that respect dignity can be designed.

Another example is NSGA’s omission of equal pay provisions which represents a significant missed opportunity for global leadership. It is often claimed that men’s sport ‘deserves’ more money because it makes more money. This ignores how women were barred for decades from equal facilities, funding, media coverage and leadership, which kept women’s sport less visible and less profitable. Treating sport only as a product to sell, rather than as a public good with social value, locks in those inequalities. Equal pay is not just about fairness; it reflects basic principles of non-discrimination and equal opportunity embedded in the Indian Constitution. Without deliberate action from governments, sponsors and governing bodies, sport will keep reproducing gender hierarchies under the false cover of market neutrality. While the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has commendably implemented equal pay (at least in terms of match fees), the legislation could have gone further and mandated equality to include all aspects of compensation such as contractual benefits, facilities and other compensation for all athletes representing India regardless of gender or sport. The United States’ Equal Pay for Team USA Act 2022 provides a legislative model that India could have followed.

Safe Sports: Creating safe and inclusive sporting environments

The NSGA mandates that the NSB will be responsible for the formulation of a safe sport policy (sections 6(f) and 13). It is no secret that this specific mention of safe sport in the NSGA (unlike the other considerations mentioned above) is likely a response to the long-standing protests by Indian wrestlers against sexual harassment and violence. While necessary, ‘safe sport’ seems to have been conceptualised narrowly in the NSGA, to primarily focus on the ‘safety of women and minor athletes’. While the physical safety of vulnerable groups demands specific protections and the safe sport policy must incorporate that, ‘safe sport’ is a much broader concept. As recognised by the IOC, Commonwealth Sport and other international organisations, safe sport is about creating environments that are respectful, inclusive, equitable and free from violence, abuse, harassment, and neglect for all participants.

Global safeguarding best practices from Africa, Europe, and the UK recognise that abuse and harm can affect any participant regardless of age or gender, requiring holistic protection mechanisms. To illustrate the broader holistic understanding of ‘safe sport’, consider the events after Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s victory in IPL 2025. When the celebrations turned tragic and eleven people lost their lives, it was a failure of sport to be ‘safe’ for the fans. A meaningful ‘safe sport’ approach would have considered safety and well-being of all sporting participants including athletes, workers and fans, before, during and after the sporting event. Similarly, stray dogs biting international coaches at the venue of the World Para Athletics Championships in Delhi is again a failure of ‘safe sport’.

It is vital that safe sport policies and the associated grievance redressal mechanisms embed safeguarding as an ongoing process that allows for independent oversight, accessible reporting mechanisms, whistle-blower protections, trauma-informed investigation procedures, transparent decision-making and meaningful consequences for violations. This is important so that safe sport can move beyond a mere public relations exercise to create genuine cultural change.

Conclusion: Building a People-Centred Sports Governance Framework

As India pursues its hosting ambitions for the 2036 Olympics and Paralympic Games and other major events, international scrutiny will inevitably focus on whether the country’s sports governance framework meets contemporary standards of human rights protection, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and safety. NSGA, while progressive in some respects, falls short of the comprehensive approach required to demonstrate genuine commitment to the values that increasingly define international sports governance.

It is noteworthy that the governance considerations highlighted here must be seen together as part of a single comprehensive and integrated framework rather than different fragmented initiatives. Consider the existential threat posed by the climate crisis. It needs a multi-stakeholder approach as it impacts all stakeholders in varying degrees. It needs a human rights-based approach as different rights such as life, health, education, work etc are impacted due to the impacts of the crisis. As climate change compounds existing inequalities, disproportionately affecting access to sport for vulnerable communities, an equity and justice lens is vital. Simultaneously, it is a safe sport issue as extreme heat make it unsafe for play to go on as usual.

Therefore, a truly transformative Good Governance approach requires recognising the interconnected nature of human rights, sustainability, equity, and safeguarding that acknowledges the complex social, economic, political, and environmental factors that shape sporting experiences. Fundamentally, it is a recognition that responsible sports governance is about people—athletes, fans, communities, and all those whose lives are touched by sporting activities. A people-centred, intersectional, integrated approach offers the potential to transform not just the laws and institutions that govern sport, but the broader culture, architecture, and norms that shape sporting experiences across India. The National Sports Board now has the opportunity to address these gaps through its regulatory powers and policy development functions.

*Shubham Jain is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge and Co-Editor of the Routledge Book Series on “Sports and Human Rights”. He researches, writes, and speaks at the intersection of sports law, governance, human rights, and environmental justice. He has provided expert advice on these matters to international sport bodies, broadcasters, civil society actors, and UN organisations.