2026 will be a year of reform in Maltese sports, as the Authority for Integrity in Maltese Sport embarks on a process to introduce the licensing of sports facilities, a new sports tribunal, and to reduce bureaucracy, the authority's CEO told The Malta Independent.

Speaking in an interview with this newspaper the CEO of AIMS Kevin Azzopardi, a veteran referee who also served as the Secretary General for the Malta Olympic Committee, said that AIMS is committed to bringing about the changes and obligations which are required by law.

Chief among the changes to the sporting landscape in 2026 will be the licensing of sports facilities, which is a part of the law that AIMS is duty-bound to carry out, but thus far did not form part of the authority's work on the ground.

"Since my engagement I have made it a point that, because the law prescribes so, we must do it," Azzopardi said.

He said that a new unit to handle such licensing will be set up "in the next few weeks," and new personnel will be engaged with the authority towards this end.

"We must ensure that our sporting facilities are safe in every sense of the word," he said.

Azzopardi lamented that sometimes people take certain things for granted: "Just because some things never happened before, we think that they won't happen - if only that was the case for the Heysel Stadium disaster, for example."

"We have to ensure that facilities have a set of criteria wherein we need to tick a box to ensure they are compliant," he continued.

He said that if facilities are found to be non-compliant, there will be a process. "We won't just close down a place unless there is imminent danger, but we will give reasonable time to make sure people can upgrade the standard of their facilities, and then ultimately take a decision," he said.

"This is very important... unfortunately we still have certain venues where a number of basic elements, like access to sanitary facilities, are not at the level they should be," he said.

New Malta Tribunal of Sport set to launch in 2026

Another big change coming in 2026, Azzopardi said, is the setting up of the Malta Tribunal of Sport.

Asked what this entails, Azzopardi explained that there is a gap in the Maltese sporting system from a legal perspective.

He used an example: if an athlete has been disciplined at association level and they then appeal that decision within the structures of the association, and the sentence is confirmed, athletes have no national sporting legal entity to turn to for recourse if they feel that they have suffered an injustice.

The Malta Tribunal of Sport will fill that gap, Azzopardi said. Those then still aggrieved after going through the Tribunal may choose to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) as football club Hamrun Spartans had done, for instance, to try and plead their case against being banned from the UEFA Champions League in the 2021/22 season.

"The draft text for this tribunal is at the legislation unit for feedback, and it will definitely be launched in 2026," Azzopardi said.

"It is another milestone which the authority will be working on to ensure that an athlete has all the reasonable possibilities locally to fight off any injustices he or she may feel," Azzopardi said.

Making life easier: AIMS working with OCVO and MBR to unify compliance process

Bureaucracy is an intrinsic, and not particularly enjoyed, part of life as a sports administrator - and the initial reaction for many such administrators when AIMS was set up was to sigh at the prospect of having yet an authority that they had to be answerable to.

This is because as things stand, sports organisations must file yearly submissions with both the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations (OCVO) and the Malta Business Registry (MBR). New obligations mean that annual filings must also now be made with AIMS.

Faced with the argument that this is adding more red tape to sports when in reality the lives of these volunteer administrators should be made easier, Azzopardi fully agreed with the sentiment, saying that it was a common complaint brought to him while he was the secretary general of the Malta Olympic Committee, which dealt with 43 national federations.

The breakthrough however, he said, lies in bringing the processes together. He said that in the week this interview was held he had a meeting scheduled with the OCVO and MBR in order to make this process easier.

"The outcome will be to streamline the process wherein sports organisations will still have to file documentation annually, but only once. They will then authorise the information being shared with different entities," he said.

This, he said, will definitely be a step forward. "Even sports organisations themselves want to be accountable to a higher authority because that safeguards the interests of the individuals who have taken on these roles and at the same time ensure the sustainability of the sports organisations," he said.

He said he hoped that this idea will be formally announced in the coming weeks

From refereeing football matches to regulating sport

Refereeing is an entirely different role from that of serving as the CEO of the authority that regulates sport, but asked whether his 18 years with a whistle in hand helps in a role like this, Azzopardi noted that refereeing is all about decision-making.

"It's all about personality and it's not just knowing the laws of the game - I'm a firm believer that it all boils down to the relationship that you manage to build individually with different people and, in this case, those representing sports organisations," he said.

The reality of that relationship with sports administrators is one that Azzopardi is acutely aware of: "If, and I continually tell my colleagues here this, we ever underestimate the fact that 95% of the Maltese landscape is made up of volunteers we would have definitely missed the boat."

"There are standards to be maintained and targets to be reached, but we cannot expect a workload of a volunteer to match the workload of a professional who is paid to do that job. We have to assist, be helpful, and make sure that bureaucracy does not in any way diminish the Maltese sporting landscape," he said.

Since being established in 2022, there has been some controversy surrounding those who held the post of CEO of AIMS before Azzopardi. Asked on the notion that such controversies don't necessarily give the best look to an authority which must ultimately police integrity in a sector, Azzopardi said that "it depends on the interpretation of whoever is overseeing such an observation".

"I am a person who, if a glass is half empty, will see it as half full. I can guarantee that the members of staff within the authority have done their best over the past years," he said.

"When you're starting something from scratch it's very challenging, and having only been established for four years AIMS has encountered challenges internally - this is public knowledge - and when it came to exerting its authority in terms of responsibility, registration and so on," he admitted.

"Now that a new page is unfolding, I have always told my colleagues - you described it perfectly - that we are policing Maltese sport. Of course, nobody out there likes to get policed, not least the sporting people whom the vast majority are volunteers, but we are in a position to counter-balance that through the education that we offer. I sincerely believe that if we expect people to align with certain standards, we have to teach them and instruct them. That is AIMS' best selling point," he said.

He continued that he has no doubt that the CEOs before him did try their best to get the authority going and to make sure that it lived up to its expectations, particularly in administering the law.

"But yes, I think we have to look ahead - we can only change tomorrow," he added.

The first part of this interview was carried in yesterday's edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday. The interview was carried out before allegations of match-fixing related to waterpolo emerged last Friday.