Football Players and Their Commercial Rights

Abstract

Football Players and their Commercial Rights To the cynic, English professional football today has become a battleground for competing business interests, with companies jostling for prominence through commercial arrangements with various rights holders. Associations, leagues and teams are all fair game for the sponsor, as are peripheral sponsorship properties such as stadia, grandstands and television broadcasts. Undoubtedly, the most high-profile sponsorship properties in football, and also the most transient, are the players themselves. The ever-intensified media spotlight fixed on players ensures that, for so long as a footballer is at the pinnacle of his game, few celebrities can rival the coverage he enjoys. This fact suits the impact strategy of a number of sponsors, and consequently the top players are in demand for a considerable range of endorsement contracts. An individual rather than a team? The risks to a sponsor of individual endorsement are considerable. A player may lose form or favour, or attract the wrong kind of publicity through all manner of unsavoury incidents. A competition, by contrast, is less susceptible to external influences or self-destructive tendencies. Whilst clauses in contracts can offer the sponsor remedies against a player's unacceptable behaviour (the so-called morality clause), often the damage to the sponsor's reputation may be extensive. Nevertheless, a footballer with an established career and appropriate public persona will always be considered a good corporate endorsement prospect. The obligations on a sponsor in an endorsement contract are straightforward--to provide the player with cash and product. The player's obligations are easy to identify in general terms, namely the advertising and promotion of the sponsor's products and services, though the manner in which such promotion may take place depends heavily on what is available for the sponsor to exploit. What rights does the player have at his disposal for those obligations to be achieved? Image Rights The rights in relation to use of an individual's name, likeness and other distinguishing characteristics can be bundled together under the umbrella term In certain jurisdictions, including the USA and France, an individual will have statutory protection against misuse of his or her image. Supermodel Linda Evangelista, for example, won damages in a French court when a picture of her posing as Joan of Arc was used in election posters for Jean-Marie Le Pen's far right Front National party. In the UK, however, the concept is not so neatly packaged, and the individual must look to a range of other legal protections to establish and defend his/her property rights. Trademarks The advent of the Trademarks Act 1994 seemed to encourage football players and other sportsmen to protect various aspects of their image rights through trademark registration. A trademark registration gives the holder an exclusive right to produce or license the production of goods bearing that trademark within the classes of product covered by the registration. The word marks Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona and Alan Shearer are all protected through trademark registration in relation to classes covering various items of popular football merchandise. Other sportsmen have gone further: racing drivers Jacques Villeneuve and Damon Hill have trademarked distinctive images of themselves. Paul Gascoigne's agent has procured trademark registrations for the nickname Gazza and the player's signature. The benefits of trademark protection are evident: the holder of a registered trademark can act quickly and decisively against any unlicensed third party which uses that mark. This ability will be of considerable benefit to a sponsor licensed to use such properties in an endorsement contract since exclusivity in the relevant brand sector may be preserved, and the market can be cleared of counterfeit products with maximum efficiency. …