Once upon a time, the most important aspect of sporting competition was winning; during the Ancient Greek Olympic Games, people would fight and people would die in pursuit of victory. A couple of hundred years ago, when mediocrity reigned supreme, taking part became the most important part of sport; losing was to be done gracefully and winning was to be magnanimously. Nowadays, with everything from fan club membership to players’ salaries in the tens of millions, sport is a very different world from anything we have known before. In this new sporting world, it is neither the winning, nor the taking part that is most important; it’s making a living that really counts.
Now we have entered the era of professional sports, people literally play sports for a living. Although winning might very well bolster their pay checks, nothing is more important to these people than being able to continue playing their sport day in and day out. After all, if they get injured and can’t play, they’re out of a job. For lots of professional sportspeople, for whom sport has made up the majority of their working lives, this can be devastating.
What’s more, as talented as many sports people are, the simple truth behind professional sports is that it’s not the skill of the players that keeps the money coming in; it’s the advertising and merchandising opportunities that spectator sports offer which brings in the real money. Ticketing, branding, broadcasting and advertising are all major earners in the sporting world, just as they are in the business world. It’s surprising then that many sportspeople don’t realise how important it is to make sure all these elements are handled by a professional sports lawyer.
In exactly the same way you wouldn’t put a lawyer on a football pitch and hope to win the World Cup, you shouldn’t expect a footballer to handle the intricacies of sports law, contract rights and personal injury claims. Nowadays, with billions of pounds invested in sports, making money is the true name of the game and people will do anything to get one over on each other. The sorry truth for the players, therefore, is that it doesn’t matter how passionate they are about their sport if they don’t have the legal support required to handle the ever-more complicated world of professional sports.
Everybody from major celebrity sports personalities to small club players can very easily find themselves on the wrong side of a legal battle. Whether it’s the rights to a multi-million pound advertising campaign, or seeking compensation for an unfair challenge that has left them unable to work, there is no longer anything simple about making a claim in a sporting context. These days, even the third referee isn’t enough to ensure a fair call; with so many livelihoods at stake, professional sport has become the setting for some complicated and high profile legal cases.
Luckily, the legal world has kept up with the ever-changing sporting environment and sports law is now a whole area of expertise in its own right. For this reason, there really is no alternative than to seek out a qualified sports lawyer if you ever run into problems of a sporting nature. From injuries to commercial disputes, legal representation is a necessity if justice is to be served.