International Centre for Sports Arbitration & Mediation (ICSAM)
Objectives & Mission
- Give sports disputes a forum with genuine knowledge of the sport
- Keep arbitration and mediation fast enough to be useful; a ruling six months late often decides nothing
- Build a panel of arbitrators with real experience of sport
- Produce awards that hold up: enforceable, well-reasoned and difficult to challenge on procedure
- Publish enough reasoning for a body of sports jurisprudence to develop
- Maintain independence from the Executive Board in practice as well as in the statutes
Areas of Activity
- Administering arbitration and mediation cases under ICSAM’s procedural rules
- Maintaining and evaluating the panel of accredited international arbitrators and mediators
- Drafting and updating arbitration and mediation rules and procedure
- Publishing redacted awards and building a searchable record of past decisions
- Training and certifying sports arbitrators and mediators internationally
- Issuing provisional measures and interim relief while a case is still being heard
Committee Overview
Arbitration & Mediation
Most sports disputes are poorly suited to a national court. The judge is unlikely to know the sport, the case will take years, and the ruling may not be enforceable where it matters. ICSAM is the alternative: a tribunal with genuine knowledge of sport, working at a pace the sport can live with.
It operates under its own procedural rules, maintains a panel of specialist arbitrators, and publishes enough of its reasoning for patterns to emerge, which is how something resembling precedent develops in a field that needs it. On the substance of a case it answers to no one, and that is the whole design.
