The chairman of the ABC, James Spigelman, and a Belgium-based barrister will hear the World Anti-Doping Agency's appeal in the Essendon case at the Court of Arbritration for Sport.

Spigelman, a former chief justice in NSW who is midway through his term as chairman of the ABC, was nominated by the 34 current and former Essendon players to sit on the upcoming case at CAS. WADA has nominated Romano Subiotto, a Swiss-born British barrister and QC who practises in Brussels and London and is experienced in anti-doping cases, as its representative.

This leaves the CAS to make its appointment and complete the three-member panel that will hear the case – expected to be heard in either Lausanne, Switzerland, or in Sydney. It is up the panel to decide where the case is heard, subject to the court's approval.

Under the rules, those nominated by each party to judge the case can determine the third panel member, but the president of CAS's appeals division, Corinne Schmidhauser of Switzerland – a former downhill skiing (slalom) champion – can step in and appoint the third person if agreement is not reached.

Spigelman has been chairman of the ABC since April 2012 – having served as chief justice of the NSW Supreme Court and held numerous public offices (Lieutenant-Governor of NSW). Appointed by the Gillard government to chair the ABC, Spigelman has had to deal with the long-standing complaints from conversatives about bias at the ABC, as well as significant cuts to the national broadcaster.

The 34 players, who were cleared at the AFL Tribunal before WADA decided to appeal the verdict, had limited options to nominate an Australian to hear the appeal, due to a number of conflicts of interest. David Grace, QC, for instance, is a CAS abitrator but led the defence of the Essendon players at the tribunal and could not be involved, while his ASADA counterpart Malcolm Holmes, QC, also had an involvement in the case, and Brian Collis, QC, sits on the AFL Appeals Tribunal and would not be acceptable to WADA.

Essendon and the 34 players remain hopeful that the case will be heard in Australia, though this question has not been settled and may be influenced by whoever is appointed as the CAS-nominated panelist. WADA has applied for the case to be heard in Lausanne, where CAS is based. If the case was heard in Australia, it is expected that it would be in Sydney, not Melbourne, since the court has a branch office in Sydney.

Subiotto has chaired past doping cases, including a 2011 appeal against a guilty finding by an Italian cyclist. The appeal was unsuccessful and the cyclist suspended for two years.

Essendon officials remain concerned about the impact of the appeal and on the mindset of the playing group, particularly the 17 of the 34 facing the appeal who are still at the club. The Bombers performed well – running Sydney close and then upsetting Hawthorn – in the opening rounds after they were cleared by the AFL's anti-doping tribunal, but have slumped badly to 4-7 following the WADA appeal.

The AFL Tribunal was not comfortably satisfied that the players were administered with banned peptide thymosin beta 4, but found the architect of the program, Stephen Dank, guilty on several separate violations of the AFL doping code, although the tribunal was not satisfied that Dank had given the players TB4.