Sports Regulation, Governance, and Integrity

Rule and regulation compliance

The rules and regulations of sports continue to grow. Keeping on top of the latest developments and ensuring your commercial agreements and business operations are compliant is no easy task.

We have sports regulatory expertise throughout the firm, and can act for athletes and clubs where they are faced with enforcement action for alleged breaches.

Integrity: doping, betting, and match-fixing

Integrity in sport is vital, and therefore resulting sanctions for breaches are severe.

We can support clubs and athletes with education on the rules and the importance of compliance, all the way through to handling an athlete’s case from initial investigation to its conclusion, whether that be in relation to doping (including social drugs use and WADA prohibited substances), match-fixing, spot-fixing, bribes or similar, or betting.

Such issues will also impact the employment relationship and may attract disciplinary sanctions or termination for cause, which we can advise on as appropriate.

Safeguarding

Safeguarding in sport continues to be of paramount importance, particularly in the wake of various abuse scandals amongst a variety of sports. It’s also an area that does not necessarily have consistent regulation (with obligations being pulled from a host of different laws), which can make navigating investigations and reporting requirements difficult.

We can support clubs in respect of recruitment and pre-employment checks, best practice and policies. We can advise and assist clubs and athletes when it comes to suspension and reporting obligations on receipt of a concern, investigations, sanctions, appeals, and the impact of a safeguarding outcome on the employment relationship.

Agents

Standard-form representation agreements are too simplistic, particularly for an agreement that usually governs the whole relationship between an agent and the athlete or club (or both).

We prepare robust representation agreements for clubs, athletes and agents.

We advise agents, athletes and clubs on HMRC record-keeping requirements.

Transfers and loans

We advise on transfer agreements between clubs, including contingency payments, sell-on clauses and buy-back and first-refusal clauses.

If you’re sending a player out on loan, or looking to bring one in, the relational nature of the deal needs to be properly considered. For example, if the player gets injured while on loan, do they return to the parent club for treatment, and who pays for it? If the player isn’t getting adequate minutes, what rights does the parent club have?

Data protection and regulatory

In addition to advising on all day-to-day data protection matters, we advise on sport-specific issues, such as the collection of fan data for club and partner use and player data, including special category data such as medical and health tracking etc.

We also advise on other regulatory matters such as consumer credit (such as permitting payment for season tickets by instalment, staff loans or introducing supporters to a third-party finance providers) and health and safety best practice and investigations.

Find out more about how we support sports organisations, and our wider Sports Law team, by visiting our dedicated page here.