Ethics and the Art of Sport Governance

The Australian Football League (AFL) is the premier sporting competition in Australia in terms of capital outlay, breadth of industry associations, public consumption, and arguably cultural significance. The AFL competition is now a domain of specialisations and interests, which provides vast opportunity for both sporting and non-sporting institutions seeking to utilise the game to capitalise on a society of consumption, entertainment and risk. AFL officials expect high standards of their players both on and off the field. These standards are expressed in various forms of Codes and Policies. Off field player misconduct is an ongoing concern not escaping media attention, which is a resounding indication more needs to be done by the AFL to improve responsible player character development. Whether the current education programmes are sufficient to meet the AFL’s own expectations is the central issue addressed in this chapter. As it stands AFL governance is deficient on several counts. In this chapter I will focus on three governance deficiencies: firstly, the AFL Illicit Drug Policy (IDP) contains unnecessary inconsistencies relative to its primary purpose; secondly, the present measures undertaken to ensure players have appropriate education to achieve the expected character development are far from efficacious and so arguably can be vastly improved; and thirdly, the promotion of live-odds gambling during televised games is culturally problematic and inconsistent with its own demands. The ethical grounds central to this investigation are ‘fairness’ and ‘cultural influence’. In order to resolve some of its governance concerns I will explain why the AFL should be characterised as a practice-community and as such should adopt a comprehensive virtue and value-based compliance ethical education programme consistent with its own vision and conduct expectation of its players and officials. I will argue that the AFL as a practice community is much more than simply a game, given its cultural influence, commercial associations and community programmes.