Firm principal Richard Barratt has been advising on sport related commercial matters for over 20 years. He has handled a variety of sports sponsorship and sports rights acquisition agreements across diverse sports ranging from surfing to rugby. In 1999 he played a central role in the establishment and structuring of ATP Media, the entity created to pool and exploit the media rights of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and ATP World Tour Finals, the top men’s professional tennis events after the Grand Slams. The firm continues to advise ATP Media on a wide range of contracts and transactions.

We have experience throughout the production/broadcast chain. At the production end we handle the telecommunications, infrastructure and outside broadcast facilities contracts required for broadcast, such as network agreements, satellite services arrangements, agreements for supply of production equipment and associated production services. We have acted on agreements for the provision of broadcast enhancing technologies including specialist cameras, ball/athlete tracking, scores and statistical graphics and data collection and streaming services.

We regularly advise on media rights exploitation agreements, including provision of content via internet platforms, TV and other broadcast licence arrangements for sports events including clips/news access, hosting and exploitation of archive material, and commercialisation of data and content for a variety of uses, including betting.

The sports industry has many “middle men”. We advise on agency, consultancy and representation agreements. Broadcast or other content may have a number of contributors. We can advise on agreements with freelancers and others involved in the creative process to ensure that valuable intellectual property rights are properly captured and that for those who attend on site at events appropriate conduct rules are imposed. We are able to bring our corporate skills to bear on joint ventures or other collaborations for the exploitation of rights.
Our work is not confined to the UK. We are English lawyers but the global nature of the broadcast industry and the variety of sports event locations around the world means that much of what we do has an international dimension.

Below are some of the agreements that we typically handle. New methods of distribution and reception of sports content are constantly evolving. The ability to craft contracts and define rights in a way that is sensitive to differing technologies and with regard to future proofing is key to ensuring a coherent and non conflicting rights exploitation strategy. We work closely with our clients to understand their commercial drivers and the sophistication behind the slicing up of content rights, both geographically and by reference to means of transmission and reception.

• Broadcast agreements
• Betting rights agreements
• New media agreements
• Archive rights agreements and archive digitisation agreements
• Rights tender documents
• Production services agreements
• Data collection agreements
• Scores and statistical graphics agreements
• Satellite use services, satellite up-linking, fibre distribution, streaming and camera services agreements
• Collective selling/pooling agreements
• Sponsorship and endorsement agreements
• Events and hospitality agreements