What Does National Sports Tribunal Mean for Sports Arbitration in India?

India recently enacted the National Sports Governance Act, 2025 (“Act”), which seeks to bring about institutional reforms to address systemic gaps in sports administration in the country. Among other reforms, the Act envisions the establishment of a National Sports Tribunal (“NST”), with the intended objective to provide “speedy, effective, and cost-efficient disposal of sports related disputes.” Section 23 of the Act provides exclusive jurisdiction to the NST to adjudicate sports disputes in India. With this development, India has decided to adopt a centralised statutory adjudicatory tribunal as opposed to institutional arbitration for sports disputes, which has been an internationally preferred mechanism for resolution of such disputes. This post analyses the jurisdiction of the NST, its impact on the arbitrability of sports disputes in India, and its drawbacks when compared with institutional arbitration.

Subject-Matter Jurisdiction of the NST

The Act establishes NST as a specialised statutory forum enjoying exclusive jurisdiction over sports disputes arising out of the Act. Unfortunately, the Act does not clearly delineate the jurisdiction of the NST or provide the scope of disputes that are to be adjudicated before the NST. The preamble and section 17(1) of the Act vaguely note the NST’s objective of providing “independent, speedy, effective and cost-efficient disposal of sports-related disputes” and “resolution of grievances and disputes relating to sports.” The Act does not define “sports grievance” or “sports dispute”, creating uncertainty over the scope of the NST’s jurisdiction. It is unclear if all disputes involving national sports bodies/federations, including disputes arising out of contractual arrangements such as sponsorship, broadcasting, leases, or employment agreements, fall within the NST’s jurisdiction. It is unlikely that the legislature would have envisioned the NST’s jurisdiction to be broad enough to cover disputes that do not strictly concern the statutory functions of national sports bodies/federations under the Act. However, section 22(1) of the Act, requires all pending disputes in which national sports bodies are impleaded as parties, regardless of the nature of the dispute, to be immediately transferred to the NST. This suggests the contrary. Another indication of NST’s broad jurisdiction is section 12 read with section 6(e), which requires each national sports body to formulate minimum standards for the ethical and appropriate conduct for “members of its executive committee and other committees, employees, staff, sponsors, coaches, athletes, officials, members, affiliates and such other relevant persons.” Evidently, a broad range of actors would be bound by such a code of ethics, and its breach, if actionable, would enlarge NST’s jurisdiction to a vast number of diverse disputes.

NST’s Implication on Arbitrability of Sports Disputes

A necessary consequence of the NST’s wide jurisdiction is that these disputes may no longer be arbitrable in India. Indian law on arbitrability has evolved over the years, with the most authoritative statement being the Supreme Court of India’s (“Supreme Court”) four-fold test formulated in Vidya Drolia v Durga Trading (“Vidya Drolia”) (previously discussed here). As per this test, a dispute is not arbitrable in India when inter alia the subject-matter of the dispute is expressly or by necessary implication non-arbitrable as per mandatory statute(s).

As NST is a specialised statutory forum enjoying exclusive jurisdiction over sports disputes arising out of the Act, it follows that such disputes will be rendered non-arbitrable in India. The absence of a clear demarcation of NST’s jurisdiction also risks “dressed-up” petitions, where parties may implead a national sports body or mischaracterise contractual disputes as statutory disputes under the Act with the sole intention to avoid arbitration.  The motivations for filing such dressed-up petitions may include, inter alia, seeking broader remedies than those available in arbitration or leveraging the public nature of NST proceedings to trigger media attention and politicise the dispute.

A reference may be drawn to similar practices before the Indian National Company Law Tribunal (“NCLT”), where shareholder disputes are often dressed up as statutory oppression and mismanagement claims under the Companies Act, 2013 to challenge arbitration proceedings. Indian courts have regularly held that a dispute which purports to be a claim of oppression and mismanagement, but is actually a dressed up contractual claim, ought to be referred to arbitration if there is a valid arbitration agreement in such contractual arrangement (see Rakesh Malhotra v. Rajinder Malhotra, at paras 86-91). The NST must adopt a similar approach, where it reads and scrutinises the petition as a whole, including its grounds and the reliefs sought, to determine whether the dispute genuinely involves statutory obligations or governance issues under the Act. Only such narrow disputes should fall within the NST’s exclusive jurisdiction and be treated as non-arbitrable.

Complications Arising Out of NST’s Jurisdictional Exclusions

While the Act does not clearly stipulate the jurisdiction of the NST, it does provide a list of disputes that are excluded from the NST’s jurisdiction (see section 20). A few instances of these exclusions are explored below.

Disputes arising out of events organised by international federations or falling within the exclusive jurisdiction of Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”) are excluded from NST’s jurisdiction. This creates a bifurcated system where certain international sports disputes are arbitrable, while domestic disputes are non-arbitrable. This distinction may cause jurisdictional and enforcement challenges.

First, overlaps may occur when disputes involve both domestic governance rules and international federation rules, creating uncertainty over authority. Second, the Act allows appeals from NST orders before CAS, leading to an anomaly where a dispute initially considered non-arbitrable is heard in appeal by an arbitral tribunal i.e., CAS. Third, CAS awards seeking enforcement in India under the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958 (“New York Convention”) could face objections under section 48(2) of the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Arbitration Act”) on the grounds that sports disputes are non-arbitrable or affect statutory rights under the Act falling within NST’s exclusive jurisdiction, a potential violation of the public policy of India.

NST v. Arbitration

Over the last decade, substantial judicial and legislative efforts have been taken to strengthen the use of institutional arbitration to resolve disputes in India. It is therefore puzzling that instead of integrating institutional arbitration into the NST, it has been ousted, considering that such disputes are internationally regarded as particularly well-suited for resolution through arbitration. The Indian approach notably diverges from prevailing practices in other jurisdictions. For instance, Australia’s National Sports Tribunal (“ANST”) and Canada’s Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada both rely on arbitration and other forms of ADR to resolve sports disputes efficiently and expeditiously.

The statutory-body model provides a unified forum which would promote consistency in procedure and decision making. However, when compared to arbitration, it may suffer from the following drawbacks.

First, appointments to the NST are to be made by the Indian Central Government. Given the wide perception of sports administration in India as highly politicised, a government appointed tribunal is likely to raise apprehensions about its independence. Arbitration, in contrast, ensures greater institutional and decisional independence.

Second, the NST is designed as a fixed three-member arbitral tribunal, with a chairperson who is or has been a judge and the other two members being persons, inter alia, “with wide knowledge and experience in sports” (see section 17(2)-(3)). Unlike arbitral institutions such as the CAS or ANST, which empanel and appoint arbitrators with sport-specific experience or expertise on an ad-hoc basis, the NST’s static composition means that the same members will hear disputes across all sports, risking lack of specialisation, contextual accuracy, and stakeholder confidence in its decision-making.

Third, over the years, Indian courts have restricted the exercise of their supervisory, review and appellate jurisdiction over arbitration proceedings and awards, finding that they should intervene only in cases of exceptional rarity and strictly within the contours of the Arbitration Act (discussed here). This safeguard is unlikely to be available to the NST, which being a statutory tribunal would be subject to broader judicial review and supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court. This might lead to excessive challenges against the NST’s orders, thereby defeating its stated objective of speedy and effective disposal.

Fourth, procedurally, domestic arbitrations in India are mandated to be completed within 12 months of completion of pleadings (see section 29A of the Arbitration Act). On the other hand, the Act does not fix a statutory timeline for the NST to dispose of matters. Section 17(9) allows the NST to fix its own timelines and decide its own procedures. Further, confidentiality which is one of the core benefits of arbitration (see section 42A of the Arbitration Act), and highly beneficial for athletes who want to keep their disputes confidential, is not expressly protected under the Act.

Conclusion

India’s decision to adopt a statutory adjudicatory tribunal as opposed to institutionalising sports arbitration has both strengths and drawbacks. While it may enhance accountability, it risks reintroducing bureaucratic inefficiencies that institutional arbitration could effectively bypass. For the NST to function effectively, its jurisdiction must be clearly delineated and procedural safeguards must be ensured that guarantee both fairness and expediency, in addition to confidentiality. It must be clarified through legislative amendments to the Act that arbitration should continue to be available for domestic sports disputes outside statutory governance and administrative functions of national sports bodies/federations.