Jens Sejer Andersen is a journalist, founder of and senior advisor at Play the Game, an initiative aiming at raising the ethical standards of sport and promoting democracy, transparency, and freedom of expression in world sport.
Through its 13 international conferences since 1997, its website, news production and research initiatives, Play the Game has become a unique platform for raising awareness on challenges to modern sport, such as corruption in organizations, match-fixing, doping, unsustainable mega-events and the need for more active sports participation policies.
Andersen has acted as a coordinator of several international research projects aiming at raising governance standards in sport. The first was the EU-supported ”Action for Good Governance in International Sports Organisations” (2012-2013) which led to a new benchmarking tool for sports governance, the Sports Governance Observer.
This tool was first used in 2015 for the most comprehensive analysis so far on the governance of the 35 international Olympic federations. The SGO tool has later been refined and applied on 11 of the same federations in 2018 and 2019, and it is available for online benchmarking.
He is also coordinated the “National Sports Governance Observer” which enjoyed EU support from 2017-2018 and later evolved to include data from 25 countries around the world. Other projects include “National Anti-Doping Governance Observer” (2019-21) and “Strengthening Athlete Power in Sport” (2020-23).
Within the Council of Europe, Jens Sejer Andersen chaired the Consultative Committee for the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) 2016-2020. He is a member of the Permanent Consultative Committee of UNESCO and regularly attend expert meetings on sports integrity in the European Union.
Moreover, Jens Sejer Andersen is an active sports political commentator, and a frequent speaker at international conferences, having addressed several high-level conferences in the realms of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the European Union.
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Photos by Thomas Søndergaard