Volume 10, Issue 1

When distributing subsidies to the Olympic sport federations that are members of the DOSB, the competitive sports division (GBL) of the German Olympic Sports Association (DOSB) acts as a common agent of the sport federations on the one hand and of the Federal Minister of the Interior (BMI) on the other. A system of theory-based hypotheses is developed to describe the criteria used by the GBL to allocate the subsidies. Evidence shows that the GBI.’s allocation of subsidies departs from the formal criteria codified in its funding guidelines, “Forderkonzept 2012”, indicating that the GBL makes use of discretionary power when allocating the subsidies. The extent to which the allo­cation of the subsidies is governed by discretionary decisions is then quantified. Using the system of hypotheses, the quantitative results are interpreted, and the question of how to solve the common agency problem is discussed.

This article challenges the broadly accepted assumption that hypercommercialization and hyperme- diatization are responsible for an ongoing gentrification of football in recent decades, and shows that this idea is inconsistent with the evidence of historical social change in football spectatorship in Germany and England since the 1990s. The misunderstanding is rooted in the long-popular notion of football as a working-class sport. From a socio-historical and structural sociological perspective, there is much evidence to the contrary: Over the sport’s history, it has enjoyed continuous popularity among all social classes, and as such could be accurately described as a classless mass phenomenon. The increase in the share of football spectators from higher social strata stems from broader trends in post-industrial societies towards inter- and intra-generational upward mobility. This idea is suppor­ted by the findings from this study, the first long-run analysis of empirical data on the social profile of football spectators in Germany, based on 20 representative stadium samples from 1977 to 2010.

After the end of the Cold War, international initiatives against doping led to the formation, in 1999, of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). It is an international institution, financed and repre­sented by governments and sports organizations, but independent of both. One reason for the increased government involvement in the i|>sue of doping was the failure of anti-doping policies by sports organizations and the IOC. The result was greater political influence on sports. This can be looked upon as a fundamental change in international sports policies. In Germany, the establishment of the WADA led to a change in anti-doping policies. In 2002, Ger­many founded its own National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). The main aim of this new and formally independent organization was the centralization of anti-doping procedures for all German sports. Nevertheless, the federal government maintained its position that efforts to combat doping were the responsibility? of sports organizations, and that its own anti-doping activities would remain limited to the context of international commitments. The German government has therefore rejec­ted numerous calls for a German Anti-Doping law; its only response to these debates has been the introduction of stricter regulations under German pharmaceutical law.