1 3 November 2003

News:

The FA Premier League, along with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), has launched a crackdown on pubs showing live FA Premier League matches during the closed period between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday.

Lawyers have been angered and surprised by the EU Commission probe announced on November 11 into the “Salva Calcio” law in Italy which was designed to help Italian football clubs through their current financial crisis.

Leading betting exchanges Betfair and Betdaq are taking different approaches to the controversial issue of providing sporting organisations with information about their clients and unusual betting on sporting events.

Features:

The ability and willingness of sport to respond to ethical issues has been a slow and difficult process. Hampered by denial, ignorance and traditionalism, sport has been marked by a reluctance to change and an unwillingness to challenge damaging practices. When changes have occurred within sport they have been reactive to particular crises or scandals rather than being proactive or preventative. This article looks at the development of child protection policies in the world of sport.

The 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia currently playing on TV screens across the Rugby watching world is just the most recent example of a host of international sports events which guarantee huge captive audiences for advertisers. For this reason, these events are high profile potentially big money spinner occasions which can generate large volumes of income for event owners, participants, broadcasters and sponsors alike. As with all aspects of sport these days, methods of ambush marketing are becoming increasingly sophisticated and countering that threat is a key element of organising an event. This article looks at the legal armoury available to provide protection from such ambushes.

One by-product of the FIFA transfer window system, effectively banning transfers for more than seven months of the year, has been a reduction in the amount of headline- grabbing incidents involving football ‘agents’. With the transfer window due to open again in January 2004 there will no doubt be further column inches devoted to reporting on dealings that illustrate the close relationship between some players and their agents. This article will look at what regulates, or fails to regulate, the relationship between a player and his agent under English law. Given that the number of agents involved in football in England vastly exceeds the number of agents involved in other sports, football agents will inevitably feature prominently.

In light of the recent controversies involving the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Dwain Chambers, the role of the sports governing bodies has come into sharp focus. The huge financial implications of their decisions inevitably lead to intense scrutiny of their decision and powers.

For example, Manchester United paid a £29.3 million transfer fee for Rio Ferdinand1 (not to mention his reported wages of £100,000 per week2). Any business would rightly take a keen interest in the decisions of a body that could potentially deprive them of the use of that asset (and ultimately depreciate its value) for two years, and it is against this backdrop that Manchester United are reportedly considering a legal challenge against the Football Association should the decision be unfavourable to them and their player3. In this article we seek to examine the legal constraints sports bodies are under and the grounds for challenging their decisions.

The integrity of sport depends upon each competitor giving his or her best possible performance in each event. Spectator interest is unlikely to remain high where a sport becomes tarnished by fixed events where it is established that a contestant has not given his or her best possible performance. This article looks at the impact of betting exchanges on sport and whether there is a need for statutory powers to obtain information on unusual betting patters.

Image rights have become increasingly linked with tax planning for sports players since last year’s Irvine case. Eddie Irvine obtained a judgment in the UK against TalkSport for passing off following the unauthorised use of his altered image in promotional material.

Image rights are made up of a collection of intellectual property, contractual and statutory rights.

On-shore, a player’s right to commercially exploit his or her own name and image may not be entirely clear-cut. So would the legal status of image rights be recognised in offshore jurisdictions such as Jersey?