Justifying Exclusion From Public Sport

Graduate Highly Commended paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Edward Lamb.

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the inclusion of Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde generated serious controversy. Van de Velde had previously been sentenced to four years in British jail, convicted of child rape.[1] After his release van de Velde dismissed criticism of his actions, which invited a stern response from the NSPCC: “Van de Velde’s lack of remorse and self-pity is breathtaking, and we can only begin to imagine how distressed his victim must feel if she sees his comments.”[2] In supporting van de Velde’s participation in Paris, however, the Dutch Volleyball Federation and Olympic Committee asserted that their athlete had served his punishment, undergone corrective procedures, and the chance of recidivism was nil.[3]

What could justify the exclusion of athletes with serious criminal convictions from public sport?

By public sport, I refer to competitions facilitated by major sporting institutions which involve mass viewership, whether observation occurs in-person or not.[4] My aim is to provide an account which can explain central cases, like that of van de Velde. Many share the intuition that there is something unsettling about being a spectator of van de Velde but are unable to articulate why. First, I draw on the work of Rae Langton to argue that public sport has an authoritative illocutionary force. Given the harms this generates, I then propose three jointly sufficient conditions for the exclusion of athletes who have committed serious wrongdoing.

The Message of Public Sport

To motivate my analysis, consider the following example:

Rape: Footballer is accused and convicted of rape. After serving their sentence, Footballer returns to play for their club and is observed by millions of fans each game, despite a lack of remorse.

Making sense of spectators’ unease requires considering how they contribute to the message sport sends. In sport, parties have different goals from one another within the game: athletes want to take victory over their opponents, and spectators (if fans) back their side in this task. But part of the value of sport is that, for the game to take place, these opposing parties must put their differences aside at a higher level and agree on the arbitrary rules of the game. Suits famously described this as a shared ‘lusory attitude’.[5]

The necessity of this attitude is most clear amongst those playing the game, but it can be extended to observers in the case of public sport. Public sport becomes the spectacle that it is because of mass viewership, which itself depends on observers understanding the rules of the game. They turn up because they understand the game’s dynamics and appreciate the skills required for its success. Given this shared attitude, one message which sport sends is that there is a sufficient level of mutual respect and understanding between parties for collaboration to occur. Athletes, spectators, and institutions come together with a shared understanding which is necessary for public sport to take place.

Here, one may object that we are politicising sports excessively and forcing athletes to act as moral exemplars.[6] Clearly, we can observe and appreciate the skills of an athlete without considering them a role model.[7] However, I suggest we cannot completely separate athletic achievement from moral character within the phenomenon of public sports.[8] Athletes should meet some kind of basic standard: a minimal sufficiency level for participation, for which degrading wrongs like rape and subsequent lack of remorse are plausibly disqualifying.[9] This notion allows room for the reality that success in public sport often requires characteristics which common-sense morality would spurn, and that part of the value of sport might even be found in this behaviour or the entertainment it provides.[10]

To develop the sense in which public sport sends a message about this minimal sufficiency level and how observers contribute to it, consider Langton’s “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts”.[11] Deploying Austin’s distinction between the way speech can have perlocutionary effects (‘by saying X, Y was legitimated’) and illocutionary force (‘in saying X, Y was legitimated’),[12] Langton argues that pornography is an illocutionary act which subordinates women, asserting their moral inferiority as dehumanized objects.

Langton justifies this in the case of pornography in three ways, all of which apply to public sport. First, that public sport has illocutionary force is a good explanation for its perlocutionary effects. Players and officials shake hands at the end of a game, understanding that they have engaged in a collaborative project. Attitudes of mutual respect are cultivated between observers, athletes, and officials who allow competition to take place under shared rules. Second, sport is taken to have this illocutionary force by participants. When an athlete is excluded for doping or a nation for human rights abuses, this occurs because we believe that sport sends a message. It has a voice about its participants meeting certain thresholds, whether internal or external to the game in question.[13] Third, the speaker must possess authority. Public sport has this authority precisely because it is public. Facilitated by national governing bodies and often influential teams, numerous spectators are not passive observers but actively contribute to the phenomenon of public sport through their shared lusory attitude.[14] This sends the authoritative message that each party endorses the others as having met the minimal sufficiency threshold. Public sport can therefore constitute a message which is wrongful in itself, asserting that an athlete who has committed serious wrongdoing meets the minimal sufficiency level for collaboration.

Public sport’s authoritative illocutionary force is also helpful in highlighting the potential for harmful effects, which strengthen the case for exclusion. First, consider the individual victim(s) in Rape. That the perpetrator, despite showing no remorse, is now part of a collaborative project with influential sporting institutions and millions of observers shows the victim that the primary wrongdoing is not being taken seriously. It is, in the eyes of those involved, not sufficiently serious to disqualify Footballer from participation. This compounds the harms of the primary wrongdoing by constituting a further expression of the victim’s moral inferiority. It risks entrenching the victim’s belief that their experience has been dismissed as irrelevant.

Second, the message of Footballer’s renewed participation in Rape risks perpetuating structural injustice. The primary wrongdoing of rape is inextricable from the social context which perpetuates rape myths and misogyny systematically against women. As a speech act, Footballer’s renewed participation in Rape asserts that they have met a minimal sufficiency level for participation, despite the seriousness of their wrongdoing and lack of remorse. This has the perlocutionary effect of cultivating attitudes of subordination against women and normalises the degrading wrong, generating further harms. By contrast, the exclusion of Footballer could send the opposite, positive message: that this primary wrongdoing disqualifies someone from competing in the public arena and will not be tolerated, in solidarity with the victim.

Viewed through this lens, exclusion from public sport has the capacity to act as an example of public shaming. In their paper on the topic, Billingham and Parr raise proportionality as an important constraint.[15] Although public shaming can have positive effects in reinforcing social norms, these must be proportional to the harms imposed on the perpetrator. In the case of Rape, my account highlights why exclusion does not violate this proportionality constraint. It certainly imposes significant harms upon Footballer: they lose a career to which they have dedicated their life and which is tied to their identity. However, their primary wrongdoing has likely imposed comparably significant and lasting harms on the victim, and renewed participation would exacerbate harms in the two dimensions just set out. Thus, the reply that a sentence has already been served is insufficient. It overlooks the significant harms which can be generated and compounded by renewed participation in public sport, even if the perpetrator does not reoffend.

Conditions for Exclusion

We are now able to articulate three jointly sufficient conditions for exclusion. The first has been emerging already: sport must be significantly public, facilitated by influential institutions and involving mass viewership. Consider the following case:

Amateur: An amateur Footballer is accused and convicted of rape. After serving their sentence, Footballer returns to play for their local team which attracts a few fans, despite a lack of remorse.

Exclusion in the case of Amateur would lead to disproportionate harms, unlike in Rape. Because there is an absence of mass viewership and influential institutions in Amateur, the message constituted by Footballer’s inclusion lacks authority and so the capacity to subordinate. Although the victim might feel distress that some people are collaborating with Footballer, it is likely to be significantly less than in Rape. Additionally, the lack of authority blunts the perpetuation of structural injustice. Whereas public sports have numerous spectators who are influenced by athletes’ behaviour, Footballer’s team in Amateur does not have this power, reducing the harmful perlocutionary effects of its message.[16]

On the other hand, excluding Footballer in Amateur would be tantamount to suggesting that, on account of their primary wrongdoing and lack of remorse, they should be excluded from any project requiring the mutual respect of a shared lusory attitude. This would impose serious harms, preventing engagement in social activities we regard as essential for a rich human life and limiting the possibility of wider moral reintegration, which Billingham and Parr stipulate as a separate constraint on public shaming.[17] Exclusion in Rape, however, is justified because it prevents the capacity of public sport to compound the harms of primary wrongdoing. Exclusion here, though harmful to Footballer, does not necessitate exclusion from all collaborative sport or wider moral reintegration.

Second, we should limit grounds for exclusion to ‘degrading wrongs’ because of their special relation to harms at both the individual and societal level. This notion is taken from Frowe and Parry’s paper “Wrongful Observation”:[18] degrading wrongs, which include “sexual assault and harassment, bullying, slavery, and racially motivated harms”, are those which express the victim as lacking equal moral status whether because of a morally irrelevant group or individual characteristic, often engaging a “humiliatory dimension”.[19] Again, consider a case which adjusts this feature to affect our intuitions:

Fraud: Footballer is accused and convicted of fraud. After serving their sentence, Footballer returns to play for their club and is observed by millions of fans each game, despite a lack of remorse.

Fraud is not typically understood as a degrading wrong and can have no intended victim. Where this is the case,[20] Footballer’s renewed participation does not risk compounding the primary wrongdoing by increasing harms. There is no individual victim who could feel their experience had been dismissed because of Footballer’s participation, and if there was, distress would be unlikely to take the humiliatory dimension associated with degrading wrongs. Harms are also blunted at the societal level: we worry that rape is damagingly encultured and an example of structural injustice in a way that fraud is not. Exclusion in Fraud would therefore impose a disproportionate cost on Footballer, unlike in Rape.

Third, we must consider efforts to change character. In Rape, Footballer’s lack of remorse increases their capacity to compound harms when involved in public sport.[21] However, the victim in Rape might feel significantly less distress and humiliation at Footballer’s participation if they knew they were genuinely remorseful about the wrongdoing and took its damage seriously. When we turn to the message of Footballer’s inclusion, this could involve a positive dimension: that wrongdoing does not prevent positive change if serious and sincere work is done.[22] However, I am not committed to the stronger claim that lack of sincere remorse is a necessary condition for exclusion. An athlete could commit sufficiently degrading wrongs, in an egregious manner, many times over, and with no mitigating factors, such that no remorse and change in character could swing the balance of harms in favour of renewed participation in public sport.

Conclusion

Understanding the authoritative illocutionary power of public sport demonstrates why inclusion of athletes like van de Velde is problematic. Inclusion constitutes a wrongful message, compounds harms to victims, and perpetuates structural injustice. This also explains why the conditions of public sport, degrading wrongs, and lack of remorse are jointly sufficient to ground exclusion. Institutional principles should be revised to reflect this and prevent harms ex-ante.[23]

Bibliography

Archer, A. and Wojtowicz, J. (2024). Why it’s OK to Be a Sports Fan. New York, NY: Routledge.

Austin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. London: Oxford University Press.

BBC News (2016). “Dutch volleyball player jailed for raping girl, 12, he met on Facebook”. Accessed 08/01/25.

BBC News (2017). “Lionel Messi tax fraud prison sentence reduced to fine”. Accessed 09/01/25.

Belcastro, F. (2023). “A Game of Politics? International Sport Organisations and the Role of Sport in International Politics”. The International Spectator, 58(2), 107–122. 

Billingham, P. and Parr, T. (2020). “Enforcing social norms: The morality of public shaming”. European Journal of Philosophy, 28: 997-1016.

Brown, O. (2024). “Dutch volleyball player who raped 12-year-old British girl qualifies for Paris Olympics”. The Telegraph. Accessed 08/01/25.

Feezell, R. (2005). “Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects”. The Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 32 (1): 20–35.

Frowe, H. and Parry, J. (2019). “Wrongful Observation”. Philosophy and Public Affairs 47(1): 104-137.

Fruh, K., Archer, A., & Wojtowicz, J. (2022). “Sportswashing: Complicity and Corruption”. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 17(1): 101–118.

Gendreau, M.S. (2022). “Why we care about who athletes are: on the peculiar nature of athletic achievement”. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 49(2): 278-291.

Hust, S.J.T., Kang, S., Couto, L., Li, J., Rodgers, K.B. (2023). “Explaining College Men’s Rape Myth Acceptance: The Role of Sports Media, Masculine Norms & Fraternity Membership”. Journal of Health Communication, 28(8): 477-486.

International Olympic Committee [IOC] (2024). IOC Code of Ethics. Published by the IOC, Switzerland.

Klein, S. (2017). “An Argument Against Athletes as Political Role Models”. Fair Play: Journal of Philosophy, Ethics and Sports Law, 11: 26-44.

Langton, R. (1993). “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts”. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 22 (4): 293–330.

Rawls, J. [1993] (2005). Political Liberalism. Columbia Classics in Philosophy, Columbia: Columbia University Press.

Rovira, M. (2023). “Invisible Stripes? A Field Experiment on the Disclosure of a Criminal Record in the British Labour Market and the Potential Effects of Introducing Ban-The-Box Policies”. The British Journal of Criminology, 64(4): 827-845.

Statement on Volleybal.nl (2024). “Support for Steven van de Velde, who realizes past cannot be erased”. Accessed 08/01/25.

Suits, B. [1978] (2014). The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. Boston: D.R. Godine; reprinted, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2014.

Williams, B. A. O. and Nagel, T. (1976) “Moral Luck”. Supplementary volume – Aristotelian Society, 50 (1): 115–151.

Wolf, S. (1982). “Moral Saints”. The Journal of Philosophy, 79(8): 419-439.

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[1] BBC News 2016.

[2] Brown 2024.

[3] Statement on Volleybal.nl (2024).

[4] I withhold judgement on the specific threshold required for sport to count as public.

[5] See Suits [1978] (2014).

[6] For an argument against athletes as political role models: Klein 2017.

[7] The IOC’s (2024) Code of Ethics signed by athletes stipulates that they should act as role models, which makes defending van de Velde’s inclusion even more difficult.

[8] This aligns with Gendreau 2022, who argues athletes have responsibility for a “basic standard of decency in all aspects of their lives”, contra Feezel 2005.

[9] What could justify this? Though I have no space to defend the claim, we could move towards an understanding of sport as a vehicle for political liberalism. Athletes can be excluded based on preventing harms which denigrate epistemic justice understood as a political virtue, independent of any comprehensive doctrine; cf. Rawls [1993] 2005, 194-5.

[10] We often idealise athletes who commit to sport at the expense ‘moral sainthood’: Wolf 1982, 422-3. One might draw analogies with Williams’ Gauguin: Williams and Nagel 1976.

[11] Langton 1993.

[12] Austin (1962) coined the terms.

[13] Indeed, people consider sport as capable of advancing positive messages with its political power—the Premier League’s No Room for Racism campaign would be an example. Despite claims to neutrality, sporting institutions frequently act as important political actors: Belcastro 2023.

[14] The question of how much responsibility spectators have in withdrawing their contribution in problematic cases is beyond my scope. However, institutions may plausibly be seen as wronging observers by placing them in this predicament. On sportswashing, Fruh, Archer, and Wojtowicz 2022 argue that the sportswasher makes participants (including fans) complicit in the sportswasher’s wrongdoing.

[15] Billingham and Parr 2020, 1001.

[16] The lack of authority eliminates the subordinating force of the speech act: “There are imaginable circumstances where material just like pornography in other respects would have no authority, and in such circumstances such speech would not subordinate” (Langton 1993, 313).

[17] Billingham and Parr 2020, 1005.

[18] Frowe and Parry 2019, 105-7.

[19] Frowe and Parry 2019, 119.

[20] For example, Lionel Messi’s fraud conviction: BBC News 2017. Messi’s renewed participation in public sport after conviction was not controversial.

[21] Precisely what kind of change would be required to justify renewed participation is difficult to say without attending to the particulars of an individual case. However, my account shows that it does make a difference because it affects the harms involved.

[22] Discrimination against ex-convicts is a common bias; see Rovira 2023.

[23] A positive example of this responsibility being institutionalised is the 2017 foundation of the US Center for SafeSport, which has exclusive jurisdiction to review allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct within US Olympic and Paralympic teams and impose lifetime bans. Placing primary responsibility with institutions is still compatible with the view that spectators of public sport cannot consider themselves mere bystanders; cf. Archer and Wojtowicz’s notion of the ‘critical fan’ (2024, especially 158-160).