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Place of federations in these new practices

Like most systems and institutions, federations are experiencing cycles and seeking to renew themselves. The current society is getting tired quickly, and we now see it as a society of "overconsumption". Thus, sports federations must now adapt to this fact to stabilize their activity and the number of licensees, or even increase it.

However, it is not always easy for a federation to diversify with a new practice. It sometimes comes up against the mentalities of practitioners, or even the private sector which has sometimes taken a step ahead and therefore has a lot of power. But sometimes, she manages to "surf" on these "mentalities"; in the review # 534 "Sport strategies[1] Historian Paul Dietschy puts forward the fact that " In our increasingly individualistic societies, it's easier to find five teammates than eleven ". Thus, certain practices are easier to adopt than others for certain federations. For example, futsal and indoor football benefit greatly from this change in mentality and from this “individualism” of today's society.

Finally, sometimes the practice is too big for the federation. We can take as an example the squash that was taken in hand by the French Tennis Federation in 1975. The site of the Squash Federation[2] explains to us that 5 years later, the federation of "Squash-rackets" was created to give rise to the "French Squash Federation" in 1989. Before 1980, the Tennis Federation had received delegation of power to " organize the sports competitions at the end of which are issued the international, national, regional and departmental titles " and of " make the corresponding selections and propose the inclusion of athletes on the lists of high level athletes ". Finally, a squash-specific federation was created and regained power over these competitions and selections of high-level athletes. Thus, we can understand that a practice is not fixed in time and evolves.

[1] RIDEAU Frederic, Art. quoted, page 2

7http://www.ffsquash.com/fr/ff-squash/la-federation/presentation/presentation-generale-federation-francaise-squash.html, the 12 / 06 / 2018

Published by
Pierre Lemonnier