Trust, Good Governance and the Future of European Sport – Interview with Alessandra Priante, Co-Chair of the SIGA EUROPE Advisory Board

– As Co-Chair of the SIGA EUROPE Advisory Board, how do you see SIGA EUROPE’s role in advancing Sport Integrity across the continent, particularly at a time when trust, accountability and good governance are becoming increasingly central to the future of sport?

Europe is home to some of the world’s most powerful and commercially significant sport organisations — and also to some of its most complex governance challenges. SIGA EUROPE’s role is precisely to bridge that gap: to bring together institutions, federations, governments and civil society around a shared commitment to standards that are not aspirational, but operational.

What makes this moment particularly significant is that the political and public appetite for accountability in sport has never been greater. Citizens, fans, sponsors and investors are asking harder questions — and they deserve credible answers. SIGA EUROPE’s role is to provide the framework, the tools and the community of practice that make those answers possible. Not through declarations, but through verifiable action.

– Your career has been shaped by international cooperation, public policy, tourism and the promotion of countries and institutions on the global stage. In your view, why has trust become such a decisive asset for sport, and what role can Sport Integrity play in protecting it?

Throughout my career — in tourism governance, in international institutions, in public policy — I have seen one constant: the organisations that survive in the long term are those that invest in trust before they need it. Trust is not a crisis management tool. It is a governance standard.

Sport has an extraordinary social power — the ability to unite communities, inspire generations, and transcend political and cultural divides. But that power is not guaranteed. It is earned, through consistent behaviour aligned with stated values. The moment sport loses that alignment — when what it says and what it does diverge — it begins to lose the very thing that makes it matter.

Sport Integrity is the discipline that keeps sport honest with itself. And in a world where institutional trust is fragile and scrutiny is constant, that discipline is not optional. It is existential.

– Major sporting events generate visibility, investment, tourism and national prestige. What should governments, host cities and sport organisations do to ensure that this impact is matched by transparency, accountability, sustainability and long-term public value?

Major events are extraordinary accelerators — of visibility, of investment, of territorial development. But acceleration without direction is just speed. And speed without accountability leaves communities behind.

From my experience in tourism governance, I have seen too many events that generated spectacular short-term impact and left little lasting value for the communities that hosted them. The legacy question — what remains when the cameras leave — must be built into the architecture of the event from day one, not added as an afterthought.

This means three things concretely: first, independent impact assessment — not self-reported, not promotional, but genuinely independent evaluation of social, environmental and economic outcomes. Second, community inclusion — the people who live in host territories must be stakeholders, not just spectators. Third, governance transparency — procurement, financial management and decision-making processes must be open to scrutiny before, during and after the event. SIGA’s Universal Standards provide exactly the framework to make this happen in a structured, verifiable way.

–  SIGA’s Universal Standards on Sport Integrity provide a common framework for good governance, financial integrity, sports betting integrity, and youth development and protection. Why is it important for the global sport industry to move from general declarations of intent to measurable and independently verifiable standards?

Declarations are easy. Implementation is where integrity is actually tested.

The sport industry has a long and well-documented history of producing beautiful language about values — fairness, transparency, inclusion, sustainability — and then struggling to translate those words into consistent institutional behaviour. The gap between declaration and practice is precisely where trust is lost.

What SIGA’s Universal Standards do — and what SIRVS makes possible — is close that gap with rigour. Not through self-assessment or voluntary reporting, but through independent verification against clear, graduated criteria. The Bronze, Silver and Gold progression is important because it acknowledges that organisations start from different places and move at different paces — but it insists that movement must be real, documented and externally validated.

If we don’t change what we measure, we won’t change what we do. Independent standards are the measurement system that sport has been missing.

– You have held senior international leadership roles in sectors where women remain underrepresented at the highest levels. What practical steps are needed to accelerate female leadership in sport and across the wider ecosystem of public institutions, business and international organisations, and how can initiatives such as SIGAWomen help drive that change?

The first thing I would say is that female underrepresentation at the highest levels of leadership is not a talent problem. It is a system problem. The talent exists — in abundance. What is missing are the structures, the sponsorship networks, the cultural permission and the institutional accountability that allow that talent to reach its full potential.

From my own experience, the most decisive factor in career advancement has rarely been formal opportunity — it has been access to the right networks, the right mentors, and the courage to claim spaces that were not explicitly offered. These are things that male leaders often take for granted, because the system was designed with them in mind.

SIGAWomen’s Global Female Mentorship Programme matters because it addresses this at the structural level — creating intentional pathways, building networks across institutions and sectors, and generating the kind of visibility that changes what the next generation believes is possible for them. Representation is not the end goal. But it is the most powerful signal we can send about what leadership looks like.

Practical steps must include mandatory gender targets in governance bodies with genuine accountability for their implementation, transparent reporting on female progression within organisations, and active sponsorship — not just mentorship — by existing leaders. And they must apply equally to sport organisations and to the broader ecosystem of public institutions, business and international bodies that shape the world sport operates in.

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