Sport integrity needs a common architecture: Connecting clean, fair and safe sport through Good Governance

Rufat Efendiyev, Founder and Director, International Platform for Sport Ethics & Integrity (IPSEI), sheds light on how sport integrity needs a common architecture, specifically connecting clean, fair and safe sport through Good Governance

Sport has developed sophisticated systems to address doping, competition manipulation, harassment and abuse, corruption and conflicts of interest. These have strengthened specialist expertise and institutions, but also produced fragmentation.

Anti-doping is discussed within one regulatory community, safeguarding within another, competition manipulation within another, and Good Governance through yet another set of standards. Yet for athletes, sport organisations and the public, these are not separate worlds. They are dimensions of the same fundamental question: Can sport be trusted?

Sport integrity has expanded faster than the architecture used to understand it. A common architecture should not replace specialised systems or merge different risks into a single compliance regime. It should explain howthe principal integrity domains relate to one another, what each protects, and what enables them to function.

A useful way to do this is to distinguish three substantive domains – Clean Sport, Fair Sport and Safe Sport – and to understand Good Governance as the cross-cutting foundation that connects and enables them.

Clean Sport: Protecting the authenticity of performance

Clean Sport protects the authenticity and credibility of sporting performance. It is supported by a well-established global regulatory architecture. The World Anti-Doping Code, developed and maintained by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), provides the central harmonised framework, alongside instruments including UNESCO’s International Convention against Doping in Sport and the Council of Europe’s Anti-Doping Convention.

Clean Sport extends beyond testing and detection. It also reflects commitments to athlete health, consistent rules and confidence that performance has not been improperly altered. As medicine, biotechnology, human enhancement and artificial intelligence advance, questions around treatment, optimisation and enhancement will require careful ethical and regulatory consideration.

Fair Sport: Protecting the integrity of competition

Fair Sport protects confidence in the competitive process. It addresses competition manipulation, match-fixing, betting-related integrity risks, bribery and other improper interference with sporting outcomes. Its central principle is that competition should remain genuine and results should emerge from sporting performance rather than concealed influence.

The Council of Europe’s Macolin Convention provides a dedicated international legal framework for addressing the manipulation of sports competitions. Its cooperative approach brings together public authorities, sport organisations, betting operators and competition organisers. Fair Sport therefore depends not only on rules, but also on coordination across institutional boundaries.

Safe Sport: Protecting people

Safe Sport protects the dignity, rights, welfare and wellbeing of people in sport. It addresses harassment, abuse, exploitation, discrimination and other forms of harm, while promoting environments in which participants can take part with respect and security.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has helped shape the international safeguarding agenda through consensus statements, policy guidance, educational resources and Games-time safeguarding mechanisms. This has widened the integrity lens: sport cannot be fully trusted simply because competition is clean and fair; the people who make sport possible must also be protected.

These three domains protect different dimensions of sport, but their effectiveness depends on many of the same institutional conditions. This is where Good Governance becomes central.

Good Governance: The foundation, not a fourth pillar

Good Governance should not be treated simply as a fourth category beside Clean, Fair and Safe Sport. Its role is different: it concerns institutions’ capacity and legitimacy to make integrity systems work.

Transparency, accountability, independence, clear responsibilities, management of conflicts of interest, participation, procedural fairness, credible reporting and investigation, protection of rights and responsible data governance are relevant across all three domains. Good Governance provides the conditions for consistent implementation, cooperation and fair decision-making.

The distinction can therefore be expressed simply:

• Clean Sport protects performance.
• Fair Sport protects competition.
• Safe Sport protects people.
• Good Governance enables the system to protect all three.

From separate silos to an integrity system

This distinction separates integrity domains from integrity capabilities. Clean, Fair and Safe Sport identify what the system seeks to protect; Good Governance identifies the capabilities required to protect them.

Emerging technologies make integration increasingly necessary. Artificial intelligence may support anti-doping intelligence, identify suspicious competition patterns or
assist safeguarding systems, while raising questions about privacy, bias and accountability. Human enhancement may similarly affect performance authenticity, competitive equality, health and autonomy. These developments are stress tests for sport integrity because they cross traditional institutional boundaries.

The ultimate objective of that architecture is not compliance alone, but trust. Sport integrity can, therefore, be understood as the condition in which sporting performance is authentic, competition is fair, participants are protected from harm, and sporting institutions exercise their authority transparently, accountably and ethically.

The international sport system does not necessarily need another silo. It needs a clearer understanding of how the existing ones connect. The next generation of sport integrity should move beyond managing individual threats towards governing integrity as an interconnected system.

Clean. Fair. Safe. Governed. Trusted.