The Strategic Importance of IP in the Global Sports Industry

This article focuses on IP protection strategies for; 1) governing bodies, 2) leagues and clubs, 3) athletes, 4) broadcasters and 5) tech suppliers to the sports industry. Ultimately, rightsholders must implement strategies that enable effective enforcement whilst also maximising their IP’s commercial value.

Governing Bodies

Governing bodies own broad trade mark portfolios which underpin their wide range of commercial interests. These can include hosting sporting events, monetising digital content, managing commercial partnerships and maintaining their competitive and reputational value on the world stage.

Event and brand protection can be established by registering trade marks for event and competition names, logos and slogans. Owning registered trade marks is a valuable way to enforce against counterfeit merchandising and unauthorised use of an organisation’s brand, as well as key to facilitating sponsor exclusivity and controlling ambush marketing.

Governing bodies may also wish to register for design rights in certain assets, such as trophies and merchandise designs. Registered design rights are often used as an extra layer of protection alongside trade marks to prevent the production and sale of unauthorised replicas and protect the reputation of the organisation.

Governing bodies also often own the copyright in match footage of the events they sanction and organise. The “Broadcasters” section below addresses broadcasting matters in more detail.

Leagues/Clubs

Sports leagues and clubs have a similarly broad range of business interests that should also be protected via IP rights. For them, league and team names and logos are the primary identifiers through which fans, sponsors and broadcasters recognise and interact with their brand. Registering names and logos as trade marks is crucial to upholding the commercial value of the club or league, as they underpin all merchandising, sponsorship and licensing deals.

Another increasingly important area of IP that leagues and clubs in the UK and EU will want to protect is database rights. These can be used to help prevent third parties from data scraping or reusing data such as player statistics, match schedules and historic performance data sets without authorisation. They are also becoming increasingly important in the context of AI data scraping and can strengthen rightsholders’ claims against the unauthorised use of large data sets in the training of AI models. Alongside this, database rights are an important consideration in the betting, fantasy sports and analytics industries, and represent a useful asset to leagues and clubs wanting to capitalise.

Leagues and clubs will also want to protect broadcast footage using copyright law and through broadcasting and media rights deals, which are discussed below.

Broadcasters

Broadcasting rights have been recognised as the most valuable IP class in sport. In the 2024/25 football season, broadcasting revenue accounted for 38% of the total revenue generated by the 20 highest grossing clubs, equating to €4.7bn of the total €12.4bn.

Broadcasting rights encompass live coverage of the sporting event itself as well as highlights and archive streams, digital clips and social media content. In the UK, broadcasters enjoy protection of their broadcasts under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), which defines a broadcast as a copyright work subsisting of the broadcast signal, audio-visual footage, and commentary, graphics and production elements. The key point here is that while the live sporting event itself is not capable of copyright protection, the recording and transmission is.

Copyright ownership helps provide the rightsholder with protection against unauthorised activities by third parties such as rebroadcasting, the reproduction of streamed content and display of matches without the appropriate licensing terms being in place (i.e. breach of contract). The Premier League has had success in obtaining both civil and criminal remedies relying on breach of copyright and related claims. These have included the granting of blocking orders from the High Court to block servers hosting illegal streams, and the prosecution of some of those involved in unlicensed streaming for a variety of offences, most notably conspiracy to defraud. Therefore, not only do broadcasting rights carry immense commercial value and represent a lucrative division of the sports industry, they also serve to secure exclusive control for rightsholders and mitigate against the exploitation of sporting events.

The rightsholder for the event will usually want to ensure that when they appoint the broadcaster that they get an assignment of the copyright created in the match footage and in the broadcast, including a waiver of any moral rights in e.g. the commentary. This will allow the rightsholder to utilise the broadcast for clips, new stories and to create an archive of footage for ongoing exploitation.

Athletes

For athletes, IP protection is central to protecting their image and reputation, and thus their sponsorship appeal, both during their career and after retirement. Whilst the UK does not recognise a ‘personality right’ as in other US and EU jurisdictions, athletes can rely on ‘image rights’ as a collection of proprietary rights in their individual persona. Image rights typically cover names, nicknames, likeness, signatures and voice, among others, through a combination of trade marks, contractual controls and copyright in any original works. This allows the athlete to ensure autonomy over their endorsement agreements and prevent exploitation of their reputation.

In circumstances where the athlete owns their own performance-related data, such as physiological data generated through wearable tech, data protection law offers an additional layer of security where image rights cannot. Under the UK’s GDPR, physiological data can attract enhanced protection against unauthorised access or data misuse. While not strictly speaking IP, this is a closely related area of legal rights that is essential to protect given the growth of AI and predictive technologies in sport, both as a safeguarding measure and commercial opportunity for players.

Suppliers to the sports industry

Companies and organisations who have developed technologies such as VAR systems, training performance equipment and “wearables” can protect their inventions using patents. In the UK, the invention must be new, involve an inventive step, and be capable of being made or used in any kind of industry in order to be patentable. Patents grant the right to take legal action against others who use their invention without permission.

Conclusion

This World IP Day highlights the strategic importance of IP protection in the global sports industry. Rightsholders must optimise their IP strategies, both to capitalise on their current sports-focused activities and protect their brands and long-term reputation. In an industry where commercial value is created almost entirely through intangible assets, proactive IP protection is no longer optional, but fundamental.

As a leading sports and media firm with a specialist IP team, headed by trade mark expert Nick White, Level is on hand to assist with any aspect of IP protection or strategy advice discussed in this article.