Of ‘Bringing Sport into disrepute’: One of sports most abused concepts

This week and the one before has been awash with Ivan Magomu’s standoff with the Uganda Rugby Union (URU). 

The mercurial fly-half appeared before the Disciplinary Committee of URU over charges of abusing a match official and bringing the sport of rugby into disrepute when he gloated on his X account over a letter from the Secretary to the Treasury to the Chairperson of the National Council of Sports (NCS) where the former requested the latter to appoint a new General Secretary of the NCS due to unsatisfactory accountability of monies by the current holder of that office, Patrick Ogwel.

The first charge from the recording that has gone viral of the Disciplinary Committee’s ruling seems to have failed as it was brought out of time. It is the second charge that seems to have stuck and is the subject of this piece.

It is now cliché that sports is a multi-billion dollar industry. As sports became highly commercialized, sportsmen and women especially those at the peak of their powers were no longer ordinary mortals. 

They became role models and beacons of excellence in society, they most importantly became a product, a commercial one that is attractive to and must always remain attractive to the general public. 

Not just the general public, it must be seen as commercially viable or even profitable to the guys who bring in the money, the sponsors.

It is from this commercialization of sports that the term “bringing sport into disrepute” was developed.

The said term is one thrown around with reckless abandon by sports administrators and sports governing bodies. Often copied and pasted into sports laws. 

The controversial term is barely ever defined-what conduct amounts to it, whose reputation must be damaged by the conduct or even to what degree disreputable conduct should be before it passes. 

It is perhaps done deliberately as a tool for reining in dissent or voices of accountability and good governance in sports. 

Better drafted sports clauses from elsewhere will have examples under disreputable conduct like robbery, match-fixing and drug abuse among others.

This lack of certainty on what exactly is “bringing sport into disrepute” as seen in the Magomu case is a recipe for all kinds of unnecessary and avoidable problems.

The standard for “bringing the sport into disrepute” as per the Court of Arbitration (CAS) for Sport is high. 

The standard of proof at CAS is termed as “Comfortable Satisfaction”. So for a sports governing body to allege that its sports discipline has been brought into disrepute, it must actually prove so-it must be “actual”, not “potential”. 

In Zubkov Vs FINA [2007] CAS 2007 /A/1291 CAS set this standard and added that by an individual bringing themselves into disrepute, that does not make it sufficient to establish that the sport was also brought into disrepute.

Can’t Magomu, a lawyer, a Ugandan citizen who plays rugby part-time commenting on a trendy subject that affects him in one way or the other as a rugby player? Do the same standards in an amateur sports setting apply when it comes to this sticky subject as they do professionally?

As per the Zubkov decision (supra), the public opinion of the sport must have diminished as a result of the impugned conduct. 

In this particular case it seems that it is instead the conduct of URU that has brought the sport into disrepute especially going by what is going on X especially going by the “actual proof” test laid out in Zubkov (supra).

It is still early days in this Ivan Magomu-URU dispute, but I dare say, here is an opportunity to once and for all set the record straight on what amounts to “bringing sport into disrepute”.

Ojakol is a Sports Lawyer, Partner at Matrix Advocates and Law Lecturer at IUEA

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