From sponsorship and merchandising agreements to personality rights and construction projects, sports law is a fast-evolving environment.
The professional sports industry moves at a fast pace, with deals happening within tight timeframes. Understanding your goals and what you want to achieve is at the very heart of forging a good relationship between a sports law firm and a client, allowing projects to be completed successfully and on time.
Our experienced sports solicitors and lawyers can help you deliver advice for all sports law legal issues that your business may currently be facing.
What do our sports lawyers do?
Our sports lawyers have built a robust reputation for our expertise, handling some of the biggest and most lucrative deals in the industry. Our specialist fields include:
- property and stadia matters (including construction and planning);
- sponsorship agreements;
- athlete agreements;
- brand licensing, brand protection and exploitation;
- commercial contracts (including kit manufacturing and supply agreements, retail agreements and marketing agreements);
- governance issues;
- safeguarding policies;
- data protection;
- competition issues; and
- employment issues.
Our commercial litigation team is extremely well versed in interpreting the rules of sports organisations and has developed niche expertise in the areas of sports litigation and defamation/ reputation management. Working across all sports disciplines, the team advises on disputes involving selection for international competition, injunctions against governing bodies, allegations of misappropriation of transfer fees, rule changes, constitutional changes, and disciplinary issues, and successfully removing defamatory material online.
Gateley ‘has the depth in the team to really support clients’.
Our sports lawyers take a personal approach to deliver exactly what our clients need in a cost-effective and commercial way. From multi-million-pound licensing agreements and player transfer deals to appeal claims and personal disputes, we make contractual negotiations simple.
We’re on the panel to provide legal services to the national governing bodies of sport and recreation organisations, selected by Sport England, Sport Wales and UK Sport. And we’re the exclusive legal services provider for the Sport and Recreation Alliance.
Our sports lawyers are experts in the sector, with experience advising on industry-specific issues across our commercial contracts, commercial litigation, construction, corporate, HR advisory, regulatory and real estate development teams.
Our partnership with SportsAid
What does our support provide?
Our partnership with SportsAid sees athletes receive an annual financial award to contribute towards costs such as travel, accommodation and equipment, as well as access to online workshop support and personal development opportunities.
Who do our sports lawyers help?
Over the years, our sports lawyers have acted for a wide range of clients in the sports sector, including top-flight clubs, agents and athletes, leading sports brands, national and international governing bodies, as well as smaller sporting organisations. Our clients include household names like Manchester City FC, Everton FC, British Amateur Boxing, the International Netball Federation and Lancashire County Cricket Club.
