2 4 April 2004

News:

The International Olympic Committee(IOC) has taken out a €95 million insurance policy against cancellation of the Athens Olympics. The IOC is also believed to be looking at insurance cover for future events such as the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin and the 2008 Summer games in Beijing.

The release of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) judgment into the, now defunct, agreement between the attheraces consortium and the race course owners, casts further uncertainty into the already complex negotiations about the screening of UK racing.

The PGA Tour, the organiser of professional golf tournaments, has won a significant anti-trust dispute over the use of golf score data. In a March 31 ruling the US Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit, upheld a Florida District Court judgment that the PGA had a valid business justification for refusing to supply to Morris, a US media company, free access to their real time scoring information.

Features:

The global business of sport will be under the spotlight this summer. With the Olympics in Athens and the European Football Championships in Portugal alongside the more traditional national events, it is a summer that is bound to bring excitement, challenges, highs and lows for individuals, nations, spectators and participants alike. Sport, like no other business will dominate the headlines.

In recent years the sports sponsorship market has undergone considerable change. With a key summer of sport ahead, Peter Gandolfi, Head of Sponsorship at Nationwide, explores the essential factors that make for successful sponsorship.

The availability and exploitation of sporting results and information is a highly topical area of law at the moment in the UK as well as elsewhere in the EEA. This article looks at a recent ant-trust decision in the USA which gives an interesting insight as to how the Courts elsewhere in the world might address these issues.

This article considers the impact that the attheraces’ decision, which found the collective selling of rights by the Racecourse Association on behalf of 49 of the UK’s 59 racecourses to breach competition law, might have on sport and broadcasting generally.

A growing number of national sports dispute resolution organisations have begun to emerge around the world. The Sports Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada was established under statute in 2003. In New Zealand, the New Zealand Sports Disputes Tribunal was established by Sport & Recreation New Zealand in the same year while plans are well advanced for the establishment of a National Sports Disputes Tribunal under the auspices of the Australian Sports Commission.

In the United Kingdom, the task of developing a “dispute-free” or at least a “dispute-friendly” zone has fallen to the Sports Dispute Resolution Panel (SDRP). In this article Jon Siddall, Director of the SDRP, explains the logic behind the growth of these organisations, focusing on the development of the SDRP.

The development of commercial rights, their valuation and exploitation within academic institutions in the USA is a mature market when compared with the United Kingdom and Europe. Myles Gallagher of the Superlative Group provides an insight into that arena, one that he believes sets out a path we will soon see followed in Europe.

As university athletics departments face increased challenges, both in quantity and magnitude, regarding the generation of revenues to enable their annual operation, much discussion surrounds the delicate balance of how much commercialization is too much in the academic environment.

Many factors determine a university’s sponsorship outlook in the USA. Let’s take a look at a few of the prevailing circumstances and trends.

With Athens 2004 a matter of three months away, the nation of Iraq is looking forward to its representation at the Olympics

Participation on an international stage will underline how the country is working to rebuild itself. Colin Jelfs, a director of Iraqi Sport, explores further the part being played by sport in the vision of a vibrant future for Iraq and the challenge facing both business and law in establishing the way forward.