33. Availability of judicial review for sporting decisions.

Challenges to sports governing bodies must be brought by way of private law action, or arbitration and not (hitherto) by way of judicial review. Absent a statutory basis or underpinning for such bodies, their relationship with participants in the sport is contractual¹ and is therefore not amenable to the Administrative Courts' supervisory 'jurisdiction'².

The contrary view, that judicial review is available, has some judicial support³: furthermore where the relationship is not contractual (for example, where a putative participator in a sport applies unsuccessfully for a required licence), judicial review might lie