Sports ecosystems globally comprise of numerous stakeholders such as the athletes, federations, clubs, franchises, and fans, that play an integral role in the way policies are formed. These stakeholders as a diverse group represent a spectrum of political leanings. However, none hold as much influence as the International Sporting Organizations (ISO) who have the ability to transgress borders in implementing their rules and ideas. The general principle for ISOs is to not let sports and politics overlap. This belief is echoed best by the principles of political neutrality that are engrained in their statutes. However, the reality of neutrality and political indulgence are often blurred. Along these lines, the paper aims to analyze the key tenets of political neutrality in sports and the procedural safeguards in place to ensure political neutrality. It also delves briefly into the history to understand the changing role of sports bodies in handling issues attached to political neutrality. Finally, the paper also argues that the structures of sports bodies are so influenced by politics at every level that it becomes impossible to separate the two, with sports at times inevitably reflecting the disputes between nation-states. To this end, the paper would analyze the idea ‘political neutrality’ propagated by ISOs itself, in its effort to argue that these ideas are often challenged owing to a tendency to implement regulations in countries by using national sporting federations through a method similar to legal transplants – often through a trickling down method. On this, the paper will look into the necessity of a broader perspective to these often-related ideas of neutrality, autonomy and universalism by embracing perspectives beyond the first world literature.