A blessing and a curse: federated sport’s governance test

A national sports body may set the game plan, but it does not control every play.

It may set strategy, receive funding, manage high-performance pathways and deal with sponsors or government agencies. Clubs and regions often deliver the sport. Members may control the constitution. Athletes, parents, funders, volunteers and former players all have views about what should happen next.

Formal authority and practical influence are not always the same thing. Tennis New Zealand operates in a federated model, with independent regional organisations delivering much of the sport.

“In sport, you’re not governing through control, you’re governing through influence – and that changes everything,” says chief executive Julie Paterson MInstD.

She says the national body cannot simply enforce outcomes: “You’re influencing, encouraging and supporting – and strong relationships are critical to making changes of significance.”

The structure keeps clubs close to their members and gives regions a voice in decisions that affect them. It can also mean change is slow, contested and personal.  

Liz Dawson MNZM, President of the New Zealand Olympic Committee, says the model contains a central tension: “The federated model is both a blessing and a curse.”  

“It’s built on clubs, provinces and national bodies, with a strong sense of ownership at every level and a huge reliance on volunteers. New Zealand has a strong volunteer culture, and sport relies heavily on it. It gives you a deep connection to community.

“But it also means you are dealing with multiple interests, all of them strongly held and not always aligned. Local priorities, personal views and strong opinions all come with it. That makes change harder.”  

Julie Paterson MInstD (L), Liz Dawson MNZM (R)

Local voice, national duty

A director may understand their duty to act in the best interests of the organisation, but still feel pressure from the region, code, club or group that helped put them at the table.

Alan Isaac CNZM, DistFInstD, former chair of New Zealand Cricket and former president of the International Cricket Council, has seen that pressure play out.

“We would meet and make decisions, then come back the next month and re-debate them because board members had gone back and been beaten up by their stakeholders.”  

Repeated lobbying and reopened decisions raise an uncomfortable question: whose interests are directors serving?

Jackie Barron MNZM, MInstD, a New Zealand Football Executive Committee member and former Sport New Zealand board member, says many sport structures were built for a different time.

In many cases, she says, the model “worked really well in about 1952”.

“That system hasn’t really changed, but everything around it has.”  

Barron says national bodies, federations and clubs depend on one another: “They need us and we need them.”

That interdependence can make reform difficult when a national body sees the need for change while regions or clubs worry about losing voice, funding or influence.  

Barron says there is often a trust issue at regional level: if “our person” is not on the board, people worry their voice will not be heard.  

Boards need ways for stakeholder voice to be heard without turning directors into delegates. Consultation, member forums, advisory groups and clear reporting channels can all help. Once a decision reaches the board table, the duty has to be to the organisation as a whole.

“Boards can look strong on paper, but that is not enough,” Barron says. “You need people who know the sport. Otherwise, you lose connection with your grassroots.”

Alan Isaac CNZM, DistFInstD (L), Jackie Barron MNZM, MInstD (R)

A model under pressure

Don Mackinnon CNZM, MInstD

Don Mackinnon CNZM, MInstD, chair of the Blues and former chair of Netball New Zealand and the Sport Integrity Commission, recognises the model’s strengths.

“The federated model has served New Zealand sport really well for probably 100 years. It’s built on that hierarchy – clubs, provinces and national bodies – with real interdependency between each level.”

He says that model is now under pressure. Young people engage with sport differently. They follow global athletes and teams. They consume sport through phones and social media. They do not necessarily join one club and stay there for years.

“That is a very different environment to the one most boards are governing for.”  

Mackinnon says stakeholders often look at issues through a local lens while boards are trying to make national decisions. Those local concerns may be legitimate. Boards still need to do more than announce decisions.

“The absolute prerequisite for effective governance in sport is stakeholder management. That is not just communication. It is understanding how stakeholders see the world and making sure they feel heard, even when you are taking decisions they may not agree with.

“My view is simple: do the right thing and explain it well.”

Mackinnon says sport is full of “sacred cows”.

“You will hear, ‘we would love to do that, but it will never get through the members’.”

Multiple centres of influence

Rowena Davenport CMInstD, Deputy Chair of Sport New Zealand and a former director of New Zealand Rugby, says informal influence is one of the real tests in sport.

“Boards start responding to stakeholder expectations rather than sticking to what good governance requires. Boards get pulled into operational or political issues.

“Representative interests can start to compete with the duty to act in the best interests of the whole organisation.”  

Davenport says federated models create “multiple centres of influence, tension between local and national priorities, and complex accountability lines”.

“When you layer in funding dependencies, public and media scrutiny, and strong stakeholder identity, it’s easy to see why governance can feel constrained.”

Where authority is distributed across several organisations, people may not always be clear who is ultimately accountable.

“People hesitate because the consequences feel real: reputational, relational or political.”  

Brent Impey, former chair of New Zealand Rugby, has seen directors pulled towards the interests of the people they represent.

“The provinces demanded more, even though the result meant New Zealand Rugby declared a loss – they still pushed for that money to go to them.”

“Those directors were not acting in the interests of the organisation – they were acting in the interests of who they represented.”  

Rowena Davenport CMInstD (L), Brent Impey (R)

Who appoints the board?

Appointment processes make the tension between local representation and board independence particularly visible.

Isaac says boards need sport knowledge, but also independence and objectivity.

“You want some knowledge from within in terms of the chemistry and the dynamics, but you also want independence and objectivity so appointments are made on a skills and experience basis.”  

Tim King, Mayor of Tasman District Council and a director of Tasman Rugby Union, says constituent or stakeholder appointments can bring connection and representation, but also politics.

“The useful discipline is to identify what those appointed members bring, then use independent appointments to fill the gaps.”  

Quinton Hall MInstD, chair of Gymnastics New Zealand, says the organisation uses a board appointments panel and a skills matrix to work out what is missing, including legal, finance and risk skills.

“Our structure is three appointed and four elected directors. The elected side can change your mix quite quickly, and you don’t always know what you’re going to get. So the appointments process becomes really important in balancing that out.”  

Paterson says Tennis New Zealand also has a mix of elected and appointed directors.

“At Tennis New Zealand, we’ve got four elected and four appointed directors. That gives you a mix of connection to the sport and independent capability, but has the potential to create multiple channels of influence if you’re not careful.”

Tennis New Zealand runs elections first, then uses appointments to make sure the board has the right mix, including skills, gender balance and Māori representation. 

Kereyn Smith MNZM, MInstD, former Netball New Zealand chair and former chief executive of the New Zealand Olympic Committee, says boards still need both independence and connection.

“You need people who understand the sport, but you also need independence and objectivity. Whatever the structure, the integrity of the appointment process is critical – having independence, having the right oversight and being clear about the skills and experience you need around the table.” 

(L to R) Tim King, Quinton Hall MInstD, Kereyn Smith MNZM, MInstD

Structure can help or constrain

King says the federated model can both help and constrain.

“It gives consistency. People understand the tiers, roles and responsibilities. But it can also put organisations in a straitjacket.”

Hall offers a useful contrast. Gymnastics New Zealand has a direct club model, with about 95 clubs and no regional layer between the clubs and the national board.

“That’s a much more efficient model. You’re not dealing with duplication, you’re not dealing with multiple layers trying to do the same thing, and you don’t have the same level of competing interests coming through the system.”

Hall says the model is not perfect, but it makes accountability clearer. “You’re closer to your clubs and it’s clearer who’s responsible for what.”  

Andrew Corkill CMInstD

Andrew Corkill CMInstD, former general manager Sport Waikato, says many sport structures have built up over time.

“At times, it feels like there are too many layers for the size of New Zealand and the size of the sport.”

Boards can ask whether similar sports need separate national bodies, whether shared services could work better, or whether some regional structures could be simplified.  

Few sports can simply move to a different structure. Even where reform is needed, history, identity and member rights can make change slow and contested. Boards can still test whether the current structure helps or hinders the decisions the sport needs to make. 

Information and capability thin out

The federated model also affects information, capability and support.

Professor Sarah Leberman MNZM, CMInstD, co-founder of Women in Sport Aotearoa and a leading academic in sport leadership and management, says most people experience sport at club and regional level, but most governance attention, funding, policy and scrutiny are concentrated at the high-performance or high-profile end of the system.

What looks like governance failure at the top is often the result of pressure lower down.  

National organisations may have formal systems in place, but Professor Leberman says those systems become less accessible as they move down through regions and clubs.

“Information flow weakens the further down the system you go, and issues persist until they are serious enough to surface publicly.”

Hannah Doney CMInstD, vice-chair of Harness Racing New Zealand and a director of Swimming New Zealand, says governance frameworks weaken as they move down the system.

“At national sport organisation level, the governance frameworks are steady. As you begin to drop down the federated model – often of volunteers who are likely parents of participants – the formal governance training becomes diluted and the frameworks relax.

“We often expect equivalent governance outcomes across the tiers without equipping people with equivalent capability, support or protection.”  

At regional and club level, Doney says skills matrices, appointment panels and recruitment processes may be left to the annual general meeting with little formality.

“This is, fundamentally, because people don’t understand their duties as governors. This is also where conflicts of interest become normalised rather than actively managed, which further undermines independence and decision quality.” 

Professor Sarah Leberman MNZM, CMInstD (L) and Hannah Doney CMInstD (R)

Reform from within

Smith says the federated model has real strengths in community connection, but it can be slow and difficult to shift.

“At the same time, the commercial and broadcasting environment is moving quickly, which creates a tension boards have to navigate.”  

She points to netball’s foresight process in 1999. At that point, governance was based on a fully elected model. The proposal was to move to a largely independent board.

“We knew that proposal in its pure form wouldn’t be accepted, but it shifted the conversation. It created the conditions for change and ultimately led to a more balanced model.”

That brought new capability into the sport and supported its commercialisation and professionalisation.  

Erica Amon CMInstD

Erica Amon CMInstD, deputy chair of Special Olympics New Zealand, says the organisation moved to five appointed members and two elected members, giving the organisation more ability to build board capability. In incorporated societies, change can be slower because member approval is required.

“That can make it harder to shift governance, even when you know change is needed.”  

Doney is more direct about structure: “I think that the federated model is somewhat flawed because of everything above.”

She favours fewer layers: “We need to consider a decrease to the layers, have fewer governors and allow people passionate about their sport to get on with running events in their community without the duties required of an Incorporated Society.”

The national sport organisation could support regions through governance training, management and administration. Clubs could then draw on that support.  

Corkill is less prescriptive. He asks what should be duplicated, what could be shared and what structure sport would choose if it were designing the system now.

“If you were starting from scratch, you’d ask different questions.” 

Factbox 
Questions for boards working in a federated model

Decision-making and authority

• • Are directors clear about who has authority to make which decisions?
  • Are decisions repeatedly revisited after stakeholder objections?
  • Do board papers explain the options and trade-offs

Stakeholder voice

• • Are member and regional voices being heard through agreed channels or through individual directors?  
  • Are directors clear they are not delegates once they enter the boardroom?  
  • Are consultation, member forums, advisory groups or reporting channels working?  
  • Are stakeholders being told how their views influenced decisions, even where the outcome was not what they wanted? 

Board composition

• • Does the appointment process balance connection to the sport with independence and skills? 
  • Are elected directors supported to understand their duty to the whole organisation? 
  • Are appointed positions being used to fill capability gaps?  
    Is the process independent enough to attract the people the board needs?

Structure

• • Are there duplicated functions across clubs, regions and national organisations
  • Could shared services, regional committees or direct club structures reduce the governance load?  
  • Are complaints, safeguarding and integrity processes accessible at club level?  
  • Do regional and club leaders have access to appropriate training and support?
  • If the model were designed today, what would be different?  

Warning signs

• • The same decisions keep coming back to the board
  • Stakeholders say they were not heard
  • Directors are lobbied between meetings and pressured to reopen decisions
  • Local interests dominate whole-of-sport decisions  
  • Consultation happens after the preferred decision has effectively been made
  • Necessary reforms are avoided because the board assumes members will reject them