A growing prominence of social dialogue in professional sport has recently become visible both in academic publications and in practical governance arrangements and debates. Recent scholarship by Fiege and Seltmann1, O’Leary,2 and Cattaneo3 points to a revived academic interest in social dialogue as a governance instrument that strengthens accountability, enhances stakeholder involvement and supports athletes’ rights. Empirically, social dialogue in sport is widely established in North America where collective bargaining has long shaped labour relations in professional leagues.4 As Fiege and Seltmann show for professional sports in Europe, processes of social dialogue remain a rather underused instrument to govern sport in an equitable fashion, despite a steady increase in collective outcomes.5 Notwithstanding this finding, the European Parliament, in its resolutions of 20216 and 2025, has identified social dialogue as an important mechanism to govern sport in the European Sport Model, by proposing “that the Commission consult with relevant stakeholders on the establishment of an EU Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee for Professional Sport.”7 In professional football, the only sport in which a Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee exists at the EU level, momentum has increased following the Diarra case8 which exposed structural weaknesses in FIFA’s transfer regulations. In response to the judgement, the Committee adopted a Joint Resolution on Key Principles of the Football Transfer System and its Reform in November 2025.9 FIFA’s consultations on its Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players10 and its introduction of maternity protection provisions for female players – inspired by proposals of the global football players’ union FIFPRO11 – demonstrate, first, that the regulation of sport is a global matter, and second, how social protection issues and social dialogue mechanisms may be intertwined. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has also highlighted the increasing importance of the potential use of social dialogue to advance athletes’ social protection rights, not least through the first Global Dialogue Forum on Decent Work in the World of Sport held in 2020.12 The Points of Consensus, jointly adopted by employers’ and workers’ organisations in sport, stipulate, among other things, that:

Against this backdrop, the SOPROS project was launched under the EU’s Erasmus+ Sport Programme (Call 2022) and is receiving funding from January 2023 to December 2025. The project brings together an interdisciplinary consortium that combines academic expertise with policy experience at national and international levels. Academic partners include the German Sport University Cologne (Germany), Edge Hill University (UK), the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law (Croatia), the Institute for Sport Governance (Poland), and the Sport Evolution Alliance (Portugal). Over the past three years, these institutions were responsible not only for research activities but also for outreach and policy contacts within their respective national settings. Their work is complemented by policy partners representing key stakeholder groups in the field. The European Athletes and Players Association (EAPA, formerly known as EU Athletes) gives voice to national athletes’ and players’ unions. The European Association of Sport Employers (EASE) represents organisations in their role as employers. The European Olympic Academies (EOA) contribute a perspective rooted in Olympic education and maintain direct links to central stakeholders of the Olympic movement. Although the project focuses on Europe, it acknowledges the global character of sport by involving the ILO as an associated partner. The ILO provides technical expertise on labour standards and social protection that helped situate the project within international frameworks and debates on decent work in sport.

The project is structured around three substantive and one process-oriented objective: The substantive goals include, first, an assessment of athletes’ social protection through the development of practical self-assessment instruments for stakeholders and especially for athletes (“Assessing”).14 Second, the consortium conducted an academic evaluation of current structures based on empirical evidence (“Evaluating”).15 And, third, it produced an implementation-oriented Manual for the Improved Implementation of Athletes’ Social Protection (“Implementing”).16 The latter is accompanied by a Declaration on Athletes’ Social Protection in which project partners outline their individual and shared commitments for future action and summarise the main calls to action detailed in the Manual.17 The process-oriented goal (“Negotiating”) focuses on piloting a negotiation process that resembles social dialogue in professional sport. Representatives from employers and workers met alongside network organisations and academic partners, while the ILO supported the overall conceptual design. The project organised a variety of consultations with a broader stakeholder community through workshops and meetings with national and transnational actors, as well as through a dedicated written consultation, to ensure that the development of substantive outputs was rooted in a participatory approach (see further Chapter 3).

The present paper aims to reflect on the three-year process of internal project work and stakeholder consultation in order to derive lessons for strengthening social dialogue and structured negotiation in sport governance. We posit that, while narrow in scope and reach, the project and its main learnings may add to the current momentum towards a more equitable governance of sport based on processes of co-determination and social dialogue. The analysis draws on the authors’ experience coordinating the project, organising and conducting consultation activities, as well as on empirical data generated through surveys and ten in-depth interviews, both conducted in the framework of the workshops and public conferences.18 We begin by elucidating the background that led to the establishment of the project and shaped its focus on matters of athletes’ social protection. Then, we summarise the main empirical findings of the project to provide important substantive context of the issue to the reader. Chapter 3 outlines the main deliverables and outputs of the project and explains which participatory formats were used to design, create, adopt, and promote the outputs. We then establish a three-dimensional model to assess preconditions to strengthen processes of social dialogue and structured negotiations in sport. The model builds, in its conceptualisation, on academic literature and is validated by the experiences made throughout the project as well as the data generated to evaluate the negotiation-related processes carried out in the project. A fifth chapter discusses the possibilities and limitations of using the specific policy issue of social protection as a common denominator or point of departure for re-initiating social dialogue in professional sports in Europe. We conclude with a final chapter that summarises the findings and offers an outlook.

Tragic accidents of elite athletes, like the cases of Austrian ski jumper Lukas Müller or the Austrian synchronized swimmer Vanessa Sahinovic, have not only raised sport and legal scholars’ attention of many elite athletes’ precarious social protection situation,19 but have also contributed to an increasing awareness of athletes’ poor level of protection in the wider public sphere and among EU sport politicians, as the above-mentioned Parliament Resolution of 2025 illustrates.20 In addition to court cases following these tragic accidents, topics like minimum income, pension rights, or maternity protection have also entered the sphere of Olympic elite sport governance in many European countries.21 Moreover, the social protection of elite athletes today constitutes a core negotiation matter of existing processes of social dialogue in professional sports in Europe.22 In this sense, athletes have also claimed greater involvement in the design and implementation of social protection measures to ensure a safe working environment and a secure after-career transition, as recently witnessed in Germany.23

Notwithstanding the efforts of the different stakeholders involved in securing athletes’ social welfare during and after their careers, data from the Erasmus+ EMPLOYS Project indicate that many Olympic elite athletes in Europe are confronted with an insufficient social protection coverage.24 While many different ways and modes of implementation prevail across the European continent, most athlete-centred social protection systems rely on close cooperation and coordination between SGBs and public authorities.25 The social protection of athletes in Olympic sports has a private element, particularly in terms of measures provided by the NOCs and National Federations of a country. Yet, it can be argued that statutory (state) provisions may best serve the general aims of social protection by providing a suitable socio-political and legal framework for addressing the still prevailing inadequacies. These inadequacies become particularly visible when comparing the current situations across countries and types of sports. While ad-hoc interaction and exchange between the involved stakeholders is predominant, their actual roles and responsibilities as regards to the practical implementation of athletes’ social protection in Olympic sport have not yet been precisely defined.26

Meanwhile, policy actions at the transnational and European levels acknowledge the need to increase social protection standards for athletes: In its 2021 European Sports Charter, the Council of Europe states that: “People engaging professionally in sport should have appropriate social status, ethical safeguards against all forms of exploitation and the enjoyment of economic and social rights.”27 (Article 14)

Furthermore, the Points of Consensus of the ILO’s 2020 Global Dialogue Forum on Decent Work in the World of Sport call on:

“30.  Governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations and other relevant stakeholders, each within their own responsibilities, should create an enabling environment to promote decent work in the world of sport, including by: […]

e.  enforcing, and where necessary reviewing, existing law and practice and taking steps to ensure access to comprehensive and sustainable social protection coverage for athletes, particularly in relation to workplace injury benefits and maternity protection;”28

The public discourse and sports-political debates on recent legal decisions, along with joint policy-making initiatives aimed at developing new practical instruments for the social protection of Olympic athletes at the national level (e.g., pension/retirement scheme by the German Sport Aid Foundation and Federal Ministry of the Interior), underline the need for further elaboration and exchange within the broader stakeholder community.

Against this backdrop, the SOPROS project set out to systematically collect data on the legal and policy frameworks that shape athletes’ access to social protection coverage in six European countries: Croatia, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Athletes’ social protection is conceptualised as a combination of statutory measures provided by relevant social and sport laws of a country, as well as athlete-specific measures developed by various actors to account for the specific social situation and risks associated with a career in elite sport. Based on an analysis of relevant international social protection frameworks of the ILO, the European Union and the Council of Europe, the following ten statutory provisions and five athlete-specific measures were identified as “measures which shall be guaranteed to any elite athletes in Olympic sports.”29

Table 1: Components of Athletes’ Social Protection, adapted from Mittag et al. 2025

The SOPROS Evaluation Report, which was published in July 2025,30 has a research-centred and analytical character. It outlines:

Since improvements in athletes’ social protection and any underlying policy or governance reform processes were at the core of project partners’ negotiations, in this article we illustrate where key challenges for these overarching objectives lie. Overall, five key challenges for improving elite athletes’ social protection coverage have come to the forefront in the empirical evaluation. Firstly, social protection measures for elite athletes in Europe are currently underpinned by a high degree of conditionality. The current paradigm of existing social protection measures resembles privileges for the best rather than adequate protections for the weakest and most vulnerable. An example are dedicated pension funds for Olympic/Paralympic medallists, such as in Croatia and Poland. This means that the specific systems that combine elements of the welfare state with athlete-specific measures are not inclusive for all athletes in the elite spectrum of a given country. It can, thus, be interpreted that there is a strong cleavage between aspirations towards greater inclusiveness and equality of opportunities for athletes on one side, and the current reality of a largely performance and success-based, meritocratic protection system on the other side.

Secondly, when comparing different countries, we conclude that there is an ambiguous state role. On one hand, there are direct public provisions for top-level athletes in centralised state systems – with basic pension contributions paid by the state, also for non-employed athletes (e.g., in France and Poland). On the other hand, we observe strategies of systematic outsourcing and delegation in terms of the promotion of public-private partnerships, which are reflective of a neoliberal ordering of elite sports (e.g., in Germany and the UK). The latter commonly rely on two delegation chains: a) from the state to private (insurance) companies (e.g., in terms of a public subsidy for athletes who sign a private pension insurance, as seen in Germany); and b) from the state to private SGBs (e.g., in relation to accident insurance during sport events).

Thirdly, we hold that athletes’ social protection is often not considered as a holistic policy issue – fragmentation prevails. Conceptually, we find a lack of integrated rights-based approaches to social protection, with almost no explicit mention in applicable athlete rights frameworks.31 Where mentioned, only single dimensions are referred to. Additionally, empirically, we can see considerable progress in some dimensions – for instance in terms of maternity protection – whereas others remain sidelined, especially minimum income, unemployment benefits, or parental leave provisions.

Fourthly, there are limited participation opportunities for elite athletes in Olympic sports. Evidently, the social protection of athletes is not something that is widely negotiated with athlete representatives. Hence, in the present context, conventional athletes’ commissions have proven to be ineffective, taking, at best, the character of internal works councils rather than independent representative bodies involved in collective and meaningful negotiations. Yet, other forms of democratic co-determination like social dialogue and collective bargaining remain largely absent in most Olympic elite sports. This could be a major shortcoming, since in other industries and economic sectors, and also in many professional team sports, these are widely recognised deliberative tools to negotiate enhanced social protection standards for workers, including players.32

And, fifthly, current social protection frameworks for elite athletes suffer from poor transparency and education. Our report shows that athletes and stakeholders are not sufficiently aware of athletes’ social protection rights and entitlements. Their access to information is constrained; and holistic comparative data on the complex architecture of applicable social protection measures are still missing. Many indicate difficulties in navigating through complex national systems. Moreover, long-established narratives of amateurism and non-employment – coupled with a circumvention of athletes’ human right to social protection and related labour standards – are upheld, at the expense of athletes’ welfare and likely also their performance.

The project’s main outcomes were underpinned by a dedicated process of collective negotiation, in which the project partners took different roles and responsibilities. As part of the project events, different external stakeholders were, furthermore, invited to share their critical remarks and viewpoints on the project’s interim outcomes (see Table 2).

Table 2. Negotiation Matters Addressed by the Project Partners

In addition, the project’s main events, including multi-stakeholder workshops and conferences at both the domestic and EU levels, were used to reach a mutual consensus on specific policy and governance issues which were deemed relevant for the completion of the project outcomes (see Table 3).

Table 3. Specific Policy and Governance Issues Addressed by the main Events of the SOPROS-Project.

In the following analytical part of this paper, we combine observations and experiences from coordinating the project with enabling factors of social dialogue established in broader academic literature. The three-dimensional model introduced further below reflects some of the elements of the conceptual model of defining social dialogue in professional sports, which we developed previously (see Figure 1). However, this model is of different analytical quality. While the model in Figure 1 defines the criteria that must be met in order for governance processes to qualify as social dialogue in sport, the model we develop here elaborates more specifically on the preconditions needed to effectively engage in social dialogue and collective negotiations in sport.

The project as such constituted a piloting approach to re-initiating a sectoral social dialogue process in professional sports at the EU level. Its final outcomes – the SOPROS-Manual and Declaration – show that collective negotiations on matters of athletes’ social protection may lead to clearly formulated commitments to implementing statutory provisions and specific measures for athletes by the involved parties. Hence, among the many different dimensions of athletes’ employment and social relations, we postulate that athletes’ social protection may serve as a common denominator for developing further sport-specific social dialogue at the EU level and, potentially, in different national contexts. In so doing, it addresses one of the most salient policy areas of a values-based and welfare-centred European Sport Model that aspires to be coherent with fundamental social rights.58 However, a number of critical questions and issues in relation to the three preconditions specified above, which must be addressed and resolved by future endeavours and related research work remain. Two examples shall be referred to here in particular.

Firstly, while the social partners committed, on paper, to improving athletes’ social protection based on their mutual recognition, available resources, and applicable social dialogue formats, it is yet to be seen how their written commitments will translate into concrete, enhanced social protection standards for athletes and how accountability mechanisms are designed to effectively enforce and remedy these welfare gains in practice. Social dialogue must contribute to measurable welfare gains in terms of meaningful outcomes (i.e. mutual agreements). This means, that negotiations, debates and exchange formats must not become an end in themselves, as one interviewee put it:

Secondly, for any related follow-up initiatives and social dialogue formats in the area of athletes’ social protection, the role of governmental and public authorities, including leading EU institutions, in such processes must be clarified and determined more precisely. By virtue of the character of the Erasmus+ Sport Programme, the academic partners – and, first and foremost, the German Sport University Cologne – were responsible for the initiation and coordination of the underlying social dialogue component of this project. Despite their active participation in several project workshops and conference events, public institutions at the national and transnational levels mainly contributed in a one-sided consultative way upon the project team’s invitation. Yet, as part of tripartite social dialogue or collective bargaining processes in other industries, governments and public authorities often take an important steering, enforcing, and extending role.59 The future success and consolidation of social dialogue processes on matters of athletes’ social protection; therefore, depend not only on specific organisational preconditions for the social partners or certain procedural requirements.60 The use of social dialogue in improving social protection standards for athletes also relies on the future involvement of public bodies and the extent to which EU institutions, for example, expand upon social partners’ concluded agreements or commitments based on their available instruments and their mandate enshrined in Articles 154-155 TFEU.61 Proactive support, follow up, and increased horizontal coordination and exchange among EU-level bodies seem paramount in this regard.

The Erasmus+ SOPROS project set out to achieve three ambitious substantive goals and one process-oriented goal. The main aim of the present contribution was to reflect on the efforts undertaken within the project context to achieve the process-related objective, namely to pilot a process of social dialogue and collective negotiations in a salient policy issue of Olympic sports. We argue that the analysis we present offers concrete insights into the inner workings of a three-year collaborative project among academic and policy partners who represent different key actors in the industry. It also provides more general implications for strengthening social dialogue and meaningful negotiations as a key tool to govern elite sport policy. The experiences and data obtained from the project work illustrate high potential but also constraining elements to the success of such processes. Among the dimensions combined in the holistic model detailed in Chapter 4, representativeness stands out as a key factor currently hindering the more effective utilisation of collective negotiations. However, as the circular model suggests, progress in this dimension can be triggered by achieving advances in the dimensions resources and/or recognition (see Figure 3). We concede that the SOPROS project may have been limited in scope, reach and effect, both in contributing to tangible improvements in relation to its substantive objectives of assessing, evaluating and implementing athletes’ social protection, and its process-oriented objective. Nevertheless, we argue that due to the identified logic to strengthen (or weaken) social dialogue in sport, the project has offered important impulses to support progress in both areas – substance and process.

In terms of social dialogue and collective negotiations processes, the project has received financial support from the European Commission. This had led to an increase in financial resources and future background knowledge among the project partners. We hope that this may contribute, as theorised, to also raising the level of representativeness among the social partners. As the knowledge gained through the project is publicly available in the form of the above-explained project outputs – including a public call to endorse the Declaration62– background knowledge may increase for any organisation or individual engaging with the material, thus supporting further advancements necessary for effective negotiations and debates.

As regards the general potential of such processes to constitute an effective tool in the governance of elite sport, we stress that negotiations and debates must always remain what they are meant to be: means to achieve higher ends, namely an instrument to design, adopt, and implement legally robust and socially progressive policies.63 Negotiations must, therefore, never be a self-serving process to merely signal openness and democratic aspiration, while failing to contribute to substantive progress.64

As demonstrated in the above analysis of the project, the representation of several key stakeholders in the participatory formats of the project was uneven. In addition to a lack of representativeness, a lack of incentives to engage in debates, negotiations, and even to work towards substantive progress in athletes’ social protection, may prevail at various governance levels as one interview alluded to:

The quote neatly combines several elements of the model developed to interpret the current resistance to change in the local context of the interview participant. It highlights the need for further advocacy work to promote athletes’ human right to social protection.

Against the backdrop of this resistance, the project took a strategic decision to place a special focus of its dissemination and engagement activities on the transnational level of sport policy and governance. In this endeavour, the support of the project’s approach and objectives by two Members of European Parliament was crucial in providing a platform for wide, but more importantly, politically compelling dissemination of the main findings and outputs. In line with the underlying rationale of the Erasmus+ Sport Programme, the SOPROS project, thus, was not just a research project in the pure sense. It’s ambition and aim have been – and will continue to be – to use rigorous and comparative empirical research, combined with solid normative reasoning, to provide knowledge and arguments to support progress in the area of athletes’ rights. Whether in substantive or procedural terms, we hope that the project – and this article as the last outcome of the same – is, as the Scottish saying goes, adding “a little” to change a discourse and to support momentum in order to “make a mickle” for a more responsible, democratic, and rights-based governance of sport.66