Sports law is plainly described as a fusion of laws that apply to professional sportsperson and the sports they play. It is not just one legal matter with broadly relevant rules. Sports law affects a wide array of topics, including contract law, administrative law, competition law, intellectual property law, defamation law and employment law. The people that are committed to this dispute regarding if sports law can be a true area of law take up one of three points. The first being that sports law does not exist. The second being, they believe that sport law may not be a true field of law as of yet, but that it may develop into one in the future and the final point is that sport law is its own separate field of law. In this essay I will discuss these three points along with the relationship the six law disciplines have with sport to try and conclude whether there is such a thing as sports law. The next section of this essay will be a more in-depth analysis about these three positions and the relationship of sport and the six law disciplines.
The first position of this debate is the more classic notion that sport law does not exist. Instead they believe it is the 'application to sport situations of disciplines such as contract law, administrative law (disciplinary procedures), competition law, intellectual property law, defamation and employment law...' (Woodhouse, 1996). They say that sports law is nothing more than normal law being enforced in the sporting world. Hence the study of sport law does not suggest the study of an exclusively different body rules that are separated from the common legal conceptions. All in all, they maintain that sports law merely just involves the use of legal principles to the sporting world.
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The second position of this debate is the middle ground. Sport law may not be a true field of law as of yet, but that it may develop into one in the future. 'Professor Shropshire concludes that the body of sports-only law has not reached a point of maturation such that a 'unique substantive corpus' exists that can be categorized as sports law' (Timothy Davis, 2001). They deliberate that it is in a transformative process. It is believed by Professor Carter that the growth of sports law will better form the developing field of study and that this will eventually convert sports law to a well-known area of law.
The final position of this debate is that sports law is its own separate field of law. Law is defined as a system of guidelines that give order to human behaviour and provide forcible sanctions. Taking the meaning of law into account we can determine that because sport is a global activity, 'it is in the responsibility of the state and its legal system to provide special norms to govern this issue. In addition, the state's role is to enable and support the realization of the social functions of sport, which are possible only if the system has special pre-defined rules and laws for sports and sporting activities that enjoy protection by the state' (Lazar Nanev,2013).
The first of the six law disciplines I will talk about is contract law 'All sports business deals that require rights and employment can only be effective with the inclusion of contracts and subsequently contract law' (Cox, Schuster and Costello, 2007). In order to defend the rights of sporting bodies, clubs and players contract law must be made use of. It retains tremendous importance and relevance in relation to player and team contracts, media coverage rights, endorsement contracts, scholarship agreements and doping offences (Davis, 2001). Contracts are seen and are certainly legitimate even at the unprofessional level. Therefore, with the purpose of fulfilling their roles all sporting organisations need contracted workers.
The next law discipline I will talk about is the administrative law. Administrative law is applied to sport very frequently, occupying a sizeable position in its legislation. It impacts individuals and teams in sport to a considerable extent through bans, suspensions, and disqualification (Cox, Schuster and Costello, 2007). A couple of the many examples of the involvement of administrative law would be with Mike Tyson and Lance Armstrong. These two athletes stood at the top of their respective sports for a number of years by cheating and acting in corrupt ways. Without the use of Administrative law case like those could not have be corrected in the proper way and a level playing field in sport would probably not exist.
The next law discipline I will talk about is competition law. Without the competition law the quality of sporting organisations and businesses as a whole would not have been able to improve so much over the years. Competition law demands that there is fair, free and effective competition within the sporting marketplace (Cox, Schuster and Costello, 2007). This also affects the economy in a good way and without the competitive nature of sport many fans would become disinterested in it which would also impact the marketplace of sport.
The following law discipline I will discuss is intellectual property law. This is a very important law for a lot of business. In all industries of competition, competitors always seek to gain the higher ground over their rivals even if it means stealing or cheating. Therefore, the patenting, trademarking and safeguarding of exclusive plans, designs, products and concepts are important for all businesses in the sporting industry. An example of this would be when Golf legend Jack Nicklaus has sued PowerPro Sports LLC, alleging that they are unlawfully using his likeness and trademarks without his permission to promote a product (Joseph M. Hanna, 2020). If the intellectual property law is not used as it should, it could lead to fraud and unfair use of someone else's hard work. Intellectual property law also protects the image rights of sportspeople through the tort of passing off as the potential to generate revenue through one's image is realised (Cox, Schuster and Costello, 2007).
The following law discipline I will discuss is the law of defamation. The law of defamation is important because it protects and defends the image and status of a person. This is especially valuable for professional athletes who have become celebrities and influencers in their own right. The media would seek to involve these athletes in their news articles that are more for views and entertainment of the public so they may not always be entirely true. There are a multitude of defamation cases in sport, a prime example of a sports defamation case would be when the west Indies batsman Chris Gale was awarded 300000 Australian dollars in damages because of false allegations made by Australian publisher Fairfax media. They falsely accused him of exposing himself to a female massage therapist and it was found that the publication was motivated by malice. (Amanda Meade/ The Guardian, 2017). The law of defamation saves the reputation of people like that and help prevent any sporting body or the media from making a remark no matter how small as it may still prove to be fatal to a person's life.
The final law discipline I will deliberate is the employment law. This law was made for protection of employees as sadly they can frequently be treated wrongly. Like in contract law, contracts also feature here as employer and employee are bound to contract. Discrimination is frowned upon and considered unacceptable but sadly still happens. A recent example of this would be when twenty-eight members of the world champion United States women's soccer team significantly escalated their long-running fight with the country's soccer federation over pay, equity and working conditions, filing a gender discrimination lawsuit (Andrew Das/ The New York times, 2019). Cases like this one are handled under the employment law and fair treatment has been won many times thanks to the use of this law. Its clear that the employment law is imperative when dealing with sporting bodies. Employment law in sport looks to protect athletes, coaches, and the employees of sports organisations from unfair and unreasonable practices (O'Leary, 2012).
It seems to be quite clear that all law disciplines that I have discussed with examples can be applied to sport. In fact, without these disciplines there would be no legislation in sport. Sport would lose all its justice and fairness that these law disciplines give it. The mixture of these disciplines is what forms sport and law, without them their probably wouldn't be an argument for sports law. Any legal matter seems to come under the shade of already current law, and this seems like it will be the case for the foreseeable future. Out of the three positions of the sports law that was examined earlier in this paper it would look like the traditional view of Mr. Woodhouse saying 'I have often said there is no such thing as sports law. Instead it is the application to sport situations of disciplines such as contract law, administrative law (disciplinary procedures), competition law, intellectual property law, defamation and employment law' is the correct conclusion.
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