EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Dear readers, welcome to the second issue of the third volume of the Sports Law, Policy & Diplomacy Journal. We are extremely pleased to once again see the numerous submissions that have been sent from all around the world for this edition. Some of the submissions are of exceptional quality and have successfully passed external double-blinded reviews, and they are featured in this issue.
This issue is an excellent representation of the Journal’s potential. We present five papers. The first paper focuses on the always interesting topic of whistleblower protection in cases of manipulation of sports competitions from a French legal perspective. The second paper is on the dual mandate of sports agents with a comparative analysis. It was presented at the 2025 Sport&EU annual conference. The third paper, also presented at the 2025 Sport&EU annual conference, discusses the issue of regulating sport after the Superleague case, with an emphasis on competition, governance, and the societal dimension of media rights in the EU and Italy. Furthermore, the fourth paper explores Saudi Arabia's strategic use of sport in forging a new national identity, while the final paper in this issue addresses the status of female athletes regarding their maternity and parental rights, along with the rights of their children.
Once again, the Sport&EU association, as a partner of the SLPD Journal, is of paramount importance due to its not only European but worldwide network of academics and practitioners, especially young scholars who are just starting their academic careers. The SLPD Journal will always welcome high-quality papers presented at the annual Sport&EU Conferences.
In the end, we must highlight that thanks to the quality work of the editorial board and the editors, as well as the overall quality of the papers, the Journal has been indexed in several databases. These databases include SURF (German Federal Institute of Sport Science- Bundesinstitut fur Sportwissenschaft), Idrottsforum.org (Malmö University, Sweden), HRČAK (Portal of Croatian Scientific and Professional Journals), HeinOnline, and ERIHPLUS (an index containing bibliographic information on academic journals in the humanities and social sciences-SSH). Our goal is to continue on this path and have the Journal indexed in other relevant databases.
The second issue of the 2025 Journal showcases the richness of sports-related scholarship both within and outside the EU. We invite all those who would like to publish with us to please submit an article, especially young academics. We look forward to receiving your submissions and being the starting point of your brilliant future career.
Vanja Smokvina, Richard Parrish & Borja Garcia Garcia
Editors-in-Chief