The Platforum9 International Arbitration Forum session, moderated by Velimir Zikovic, associate professor at Warwick University, set out to challenge a lazy assumption about “niche” arbitrations, with a keynote contribution from James Clanchy, a London-based maritime arbitrator and full member of the London Maritime Arbitrators Association (LMAA), who used maritime arbitration as a case study to show why supposedly marginal sectors should be understood as central to international commerce – and what mainstream institutional arbitration can learn from them.

Later in the session, institutional perspectives were offered by our moderator Niamh Leinwather (Vienna International Arbitral Centre, VIAC), with audience questions from Nina Jankovic and Rahi, drawing out implications for sports, IP, and security-related disputes.

Maritime arbitration: the “niche” that isn’t

Clanchy’s core message was simple: in practice, maritime arbitration is anything but niche. It has made a niche in the discourse.

He traced how, over the last 20–30 years, maritime arbitration has been quietly pushed out of mainstream arbitration narratives:

• Many university arbitration courses no longer teach maritime arbitration.
• The Chartered Institute’s Oxford Diploma dropped it.
• Leading textbooks and commentaries barely engage with the LMAA, even where their own tables show that more arbitrations are conducted under LMAA terms than any other set of commercial rules.
• Industry publications and blogs devote far more space to institutional and investment arbitration than to shipping and commodities.

From a London perspective, this is a striking disconnect. London remains the leading global seat for international commercial arbitration, and maritime disputes – alongside commodities – are its most prolific source of cases. Yet the sectors that generate the bulk of day-to-day arbitrations are largely absent from academic and institutional conversations.

Clanchy argued that this narrative gap has material consequences: it skews debates on diversity, green arbitration, third-party funding, and procedure away from systems that have quietly “just worked” for decades.

The numbers behind the myth

To demonstrate how misplaced the “niche” label is, Clanchy contrasted institutional caseloads with ad hoc maritime practice:

• In 2024, the ICC registered around 841 new arbitrations worldwide, with just 96 seated in London – roughly 3% of commercial arbitrations seated there.
• The LCIA recorded 356 new cases.
• By contrast, a survey of LMAA members and other arbitrators showed 1,753 new references under LMAA terms in 2024 – more than double the ICC’s caseload.

His estimate: institutions collectively administer only about 15% of international commercial arbitrations seated or administered in London. Institutional arbitration at the world’s most popular seat is itself “niche” compared to the volume of ad hoc work.

Maritime arbitration is similarly vibrant beyond London:

• The Society of Maritime Arbitrators (SMA) in New York publishes its awards, giving maritime cases a high profile on databases like Jus Mundi.
• The Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration (SCMA) continues to grow, particularly for Asia-focused disputes.

Yet even there, Clanchy suggested, much of the intellectual and policy conversation is captured by institutional and investment arbitration.

Why London’s maritime model works

Clanchy then unpacked what makes the London maritime ecosystem distinctive – and attractive to commercial parties:

• Legal framework: English shipping law and the English Arbitration Act provide a familiar, reliable structure. Crucially, the right of appeal on a point of law is seen by users as a feature, not a bug, and a competitive advantage for London as a seat.
• Ecosystem of expertise: Judges in the Commercial Court and Supreme Court often practised in maritime law and arbitration as barristers. This deep sectoral literacy feeds back into the quality and predictability of decisions.
• The LMAA’s structure: The LMAA is an association, not an institution. It has one employee, no marketing department and no PR agency. Its full members are full-time arbitrators who must demonstrate a substantial caseload; repeat appointments are viewed positively as a sign of market trust and practical experience, in contrast to some institutional unease about repeat appointments.
• Rules built for speed and cost:
  • The English Arbitration Act’s default is that a three-member tribunal should be constituted in around two and a half weeks.
  • Under LMAA terms, two party-appointed arbitrators can proceed without appointing a chair unless and until they disagree or a hearing is required.
  • Standardised procedural timetables reduce the need for long lists of procedural orders and terms of reference. Hearings are comparatively rare; many matters are resolved on the papers.

On costs and case size, Clanchy and the later Q&A debunked any idea that maritime arbitration is only for low-value claims. Current LMAA cases run from around USD 17,000 under the Small Claims Procedure to shipbuilding and charterparty disputes worth hundreds of millions, with some claims reported in excess of a billion.

Third-party funding, too, is far from novel in this world: mutual insurers and P&I clubs have funded maritime claims for over a century, without the doctrinal anxiety seen in some institutional debates.

Beyond shipping: sports and other “ignored” sectors

Moderator Valer drew a parallel with sports arbitration, particularly basketball disputes before the Basketball Arbitral Tribunal (BAT). Despite:

• Around 2,500 awards (roughly half of them reasoned),
• Default decision-making ex aequo et bono, and
• A rich body of jurisprudence on transnational sporting regulations,

BAT remains largely unknown even to seasoned arbitration practitioners. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is better recognised, but still often treated as a specialist niche.

The discussion suggested that similar dynamics may be at play in IP, media and other sectoral arbitrations: busy, highly specialised regimes generating large volumes of decisions, which rarely make it into mainstream teaching materials or surveys.

What institutions can learn

Leinwather, speaking from the VIAC perspective, welcomed the provocation. From an institutional standpoint, she highlighted:

• Users’ desire to “get back to doing business” makes delays in constituting tribunals particularly frustrating.
• Internal conversations at VIAC about whether 30-day appointment periods are still justifiable or whether more ambitious timelines are possible.
• The importance of looking beyond other commercial institutions for inspiration and taking seriously models – like the LMAA – that demonstrably deliver speed and cost-efficiency.

Clanchy encouraged institutions to see ad hoc arbitration (especially in London) as their real competition. He gave the example of two pending institutional cases in which, after three months, tribunal appointments had still not been finalised – a timeline that would be unthinkable in an LMAA reference, where a functioning tribunal is typically in place within weeks.

Audience questions: money, security, and geopolitics

In the Q&A, Nina Jankovic asked whether lower amounts in dispute might explain why maritime arbitration is sidelined. Clanchy’s answer was clear: the caseload spans everything from sub-100k claims to nine-figure ship construction disputes. If anything, the invisibility of large-value maritime cases reflects institutional blind spots, not a lack of economic significance.

Rahi asked about maritime arbitration’s role in security-related disputes – for example, contracts for armed guards and navigating “geopolitically choppy waters”. Clanchy noted that, while he had not personally seen many stand-alone security-contract arbitrations, these issues now arise frequently in charterparty disputes, particularly around:

• The allocation of costs for armed security,
• Safe routing decisions in high-risk regions, and
• Escalating war-risk insurance premiums, including disputes over whether premiums claimed are reasonable and properly incurred.

These questions underscore how maritime arbitration sits at the intersection of commercial risk, geopolitics, and public policy – hardly a niche intersection in today’s world.

Takeaways for the wider arbitration community

Across maritime, sports, and other specialised fields, the session suggested that:

• “Niche” is often a label applied by those who do not work in a sector, not by reference to volume, value, or impact.
• Ad hoc regimes like the LMAA offer concrete lessons on speed, cost management, repeat appointments, and funding that deserve far more attention.
• Academic programmes and surveys that overlook maritime, sports, and other sectoral arbitrations risk misdescribing the real landscape of international dispute resolution.
• Institutions and practitioners who want to stay relevant to commercial parties need to engage with these systems not as curiosities, but as central pillars of the arbitration ecosystem.

The invitation from this session was clear: if we want a realistic picture of international arbitration – and better practice across the board – we need to look far more closely at so-called “niche” arbitrations.