Staying on top of your game

We advised the Rugby Football Union (RFU) on its technical partnership agreement with Umbro, replacing Canterbury as the kit supplier for all England Rugby representative teams. We advised (including drafting the agreement) the RFU on this transaction, including the kit supply arrangements, the grant of sponsorship rights to Umbro and the grant of merchandising rights for mono and dual branded products.

We advise The FA on their media rights licensing programmes for all FA properties, including The FA Cup and the FA Community Shield. Recent work has included advising on The FA's domestic broadcast deals with the BBC and ITV and its international deals with Pitch and IMG. We also advised The FA on establishing its ground-breaking OTT service - FA Player – which will revolutionise the coverage of the women's game in the UK.

We advised the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) on a range of ground-breaking regulatory changes to the Sporting, Technical and Financial Regulations for the 2021 season of the FIA Formula One World Championship. The changes are aimed at improving the competitiveness of racing while simultaneously preserving the unique technology and engineering challenge of Formula One. In particular, we drafted the 2021 Formula One Financial Regulations, a landmark set of regulations that introduce a cap on the amount that each team may spend during a calendar year. The Financial Regulations are designed to promote the competitive balance and sporting fairness of the Championship, and to ensure the long-term financial stability and sustainability of the F1 teams. The sanctions for non-compliance can be severe, ranging from high financial penalties to driver and/or team points deductions and/or outright exclusion from the FIA Formula One World Championship. This work has involved a detailed consultation exercise lasting over a year and involving all current teams as well as the commercial rights holder of the FIA Formula One World Championship.

We successfully represented the International Association of Athletics Federations (the IAAF, now known as World Athletics) in the proceedings brought by Caster Semenya and Athletics South Africa before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, challenging the legality and validity of the IAAF's eligibility regulations that require athletes with differences of sex development and a female gender identity to reduce their naturally high levels of testosterone to the normal female range in order to compete in the female classification of elite athletics. We conducted all of the advocacy at the five-day trial in February 2019, presenting the IAAF’s evidence, and cross-examining the fact and expert witnesses put forward by the Claimants.

We have been engaged by the English Football League (EFL) to undertake a review of the EFL's governance systems and structures, in order to identify and implement any improvements that are required to ensure that the EFL is governed effectively and efficiently, in accordance with best practice, and to the satisfaction of all its stakeholders, in particular member clubs. This work has involved a detailed consultation exercise, involving key current and former members of the EFL's Board and Executive, member clubs, and wider stakeholders in football, including The FA, Premier League, National League, Professional Footballers' Association, the Football Supporters' Association, and the EFL's key commercial partners. We will be producing a report to the EFL Board containing our recommendations in respect of a number of governance issues, before proposing any necessary amendments to the EFL's constitutional documents and regulations for adoption by Member Clubs at the EFL's 2020 AGM. We have also been engaged by the EFL to conduct a separate review of the circumstances leading to the high profile withdrawal of Bury FC's membership of the EFL.

We advise The FA on their media rights licensing programmes for all FA properties, including The FA Cup and the FA Community Shield. Recent work has included advising on The FA's domestic broadcast deals with the BBC and ITV and its international deals with Pitch and IMG. We also advised The FA on establishing its ground-breaking OTT service - FA Player – which will revolutionise the coverage of the women's game in the UK.

We advised Intergalactic Gaming on their innovative esports platform – the Intergalactic Gaming Galaxy. This platform required the creation and implementation of a novel legal structure, because it fuses two fast-developing, highly technical and legally complex phenomena - esports on one hand, and blockchain on the other (the latter because the platform operates a fully-integrated 'token-based' economy). With both esports and blockchain in their infancy, the project required us to devise creative solutions to a diverse range of issues, including: the optimum sporting regulatory model to follow where a game publisher effectively owns the underlying copyright in each 'sport'; how to implement an effective safeguarding regime when so much of the sporting action takes place online; and how to take advantage of the novel revenue streams that the esports ecosystem facilitates, such as team and player streaming. Similarly, the development of an in-platform economy that relies on blockchain and 'tokenisation' presents a range of unique challenges. Our core sports team lead the project but pulled together expertise from across the firm – ranging from contract and employment law through to data protection, IP and sports regulation – to map out how to document the client's plans, and how we should advise them on the implementation and enforcement of the structure that we designed. In this we drew on our extensive experience in traditional sport, as well as our work to date in esports, and combined that with technical expertise on the tokenisation element of the platform - to devise a solution appropriate to the client's needs, and which would be scalable and adaptable as the platform develops.

Every year we draft the respective Participation Agreements for the Six Nations Championship and the Guinness PRO14 Championship. The Participation Agreement is the document that binds the clubs or unions (depending on the competition) and sets out their respective obligations in terms of commercial and media requirements, disciplinary rules and anti-doping rules, among other things. Also included in this task is drafting the Head Injury Assessment Protocol and Anti-Corruption Protocol. The Participation Agreements require the interpretation and inclusion of World Rugby law and regulatory updates. We also frequently advise each competition in relation to any breaches of the rules and have, in many cases, represented the competitions in disciplinary hearings before the relevant tribunals. We also advise both organisations on all of their commercial contracts – for example, Six Nations' broadcast deals with (among others) the BBC, ITV, TV3, France Télévisions, NBCUniversal and Pitch, its sponsorship agreements with Guinness, Tissot, Amazon Web Services and Dove, and its merchandising programme and online retail arrangements; and the PRO14's media rights agreements with Premier Sport, Eir, TG4 and S4C, its title sponsorship with Guinness, and a range of other sponsorship, marketing, website and app development, and data agreements. We have given both organisations advice on their data protection compliance, including advice on privacy notices, data sharing and the legality of their rules.

We're advising the British and Irish Lions on aspects of their forthcoming tour to South Africa, including an agreement between the Lions and the South African Rugby Union (SARU) setting out the terms for the tour and how it will be commercialised; the tendering of international media rights to the tour; the kit deal with Canterbury; the operation of Lions Rugby Travel, the official Lions travel company; the appointment of CSM to act as lead agent for appointment of sponsors and management of commercial delivery for the tour; and the agreement setting out the rugby and operational aspects of the tour.

We act for the Premier League on a number of academy transfer investigations. When a player from a Category One club academy applies to register with another Category One club academy, a five-step registration process is in place to help ensure that there have been no breaches of the youth development rules in respect of early approaches or inducements. This involves, in part, an investigation into the circumstances of the transfer. When instructed, we conduct the relevant investigation, and produce a detailed report and recommendation to the Premier League board. In cases where we have found that there has been a breach of the rules in relation to early approaches or inducements, we have advised the Premier League as to the relevant next steps.

Advising The Football Association on the tender and sale of the media rights to its sporting properties, including England senior team and FA Cup matches, both domestically and abroad. We have also advised The FA on its new England kit and ball supply/sponsorship agreement with Nike.

Helping Six Nations Rugby with its organisation of the RBS 6 Nations Championship, European Rugby Cup with its organisation of the Heineken Cup and the Amlin Challenge Cup, and Celtic Rugby with its organisation of the RaboDirect Pro 12, which included drafting detailed participation agreements for the teams involved, drafting venue agreements for the staging of the matches, and drafting the broadcasting, sponsorship and supplier contracts underpinning the commercial programmes for those events.

Appointment to an independent External Review Commission in November 2018, established by the International Biathlon Union (IBU) to investigate allegations of past wrongdoing within the organisation and to ensure that the IBU operates to the highest standards of integrity and transparency going forward in order to protect the integrity of biathlon and to ensure public confidence in the governance of the sport.

Regularly advising on the drafting and implementation of competition, disciplinary, technical, eligibility, anti-corruption and anti-doping rules, including for (among others) the International Tennis Federation, the International Association of Athletics Federations and International Cricket Council.

Advising on the enforcement of such rules and the disputes that arise. Members of our team appear regularly as advocates on behalf of our clients before disciplinary and anti-doping tribunals of various international federations and event organisers and before international arbitral bodies, including the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland. In particular, we have acted in some of the biggest doping cases domestically and internationally in tennis, boxing, football and motor-racing.

Representing the International Cricket Council (ICC) in respect of the appeals filed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport by Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif against the 10 and 7 year bans (respectively) that Bird & Bird secured against those players before the ICC Anti-Corruption Tribunal in 2011, arising out of their conspiracy to fix aspects of the 2010 Lord’s Test match between England and Pakistan.

Successfully defending the International Association of Athletics Federation's Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification (Athletes with Differences of Sex Development) before CAS against a challenge brought by Caster Semenya and Athletics South Africa. The regulations were found to be a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of maintaining fair and meaningful competition in elite female athletics.