Lex Sportiva

01/11/2024

On 25 September 2024, WADA released its revised 2025 Prohibited List which takes effect from 1 January 2025. Key changes include allowing blood donation by athletes under specific conditions, classifying Hydrafinil as a non-specified stimulant and confirming Guanfacine as non-prohibited. Athletes must review the list to ensure compliance....

On 25 September 2024, WADA released its revised 2025 Prohibited List which takes effect from 1 January 2025. Key changes include allowing blood donation by athletes under specific conditions, class…

28/01/2021

With an increasingly global audience we have decided to launch a Spanish language section to Lex Sportiva, called Lex Sportiva Castellano! Our hope is that this will expand Lex Sportiva to a new audience with new contributors.

With thanks to Patricia García Antón, Sports Lawyer at Schweele Law Office and Business Consultant at Berlin Sports Consulting, for making this possible.

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Ahora, más que nunca, queremos dar la bienvenida a todos nuestros lectores hispano-hablantes, presentándoles la nueva versión de Lex Sportiva Castellano.

A partir de hoy, y si quieres comenzar a formar parte de nuestro equipo ¡Esperamos recibir tu artículo, ahora también en español!

23/12/2020

The novel coronavirus pandemic has had a negative impact on the entire sporting industry. For football, it has meant the loss of revenue for several months and resultant salary cuts and austerity measures imposed by different sporting bodies. The biggest sufferers include those Clubs whose main source of revenue is the selling of matchday tickets. Hence, lower league teams of England, Spain and Italy, where clubs largely depend on matchday revenue were on the verge of bankruptcy....

While the 50+1 Rule somewhat limits the Bundesliga teams’ financial capabilities, it ensures that football remains associated to its fans and enshrines the mantra: “Football first, business second”…

03/12/2020

The FA, the Premier League and EFL have come together to agree a plan for entry requirements for overseas players post Brexit. The latest Episode of On The Ball deals with sports immigration and touches on the previous system. In the next episode, we will be speaking to Stephen O'Flaherty, Managing Associate at Lewis Silkin, about his experience in sports immigration and the new rules in force as of 1 January 2021.

If you haven't listened to our first episode on this topic, click on the link below and let us know any questions you have and we'll try to cover them in future.

Click here to see the new FA rules - https://www.thefa.com/news/2020/dec/01/gbe-points-based-system-launched-011220

https://lexsportiva.blog/podcasts/sports-immigration/

On The Ball: Episode 3 Our third episode is entitled “Sports Immigration: A to B isn’t always so simple”. Part 1 looks at the mechanics of sports immigration including internation…

02/12/2020

Introduction: Loan transfers and football Temporary transfers, or “loans”, are very common in modern football. Normally, they allow small clubs to sign better players without paying big sums of money and are a way for clubs to place their youngsters in a competitive team where they will get first team football regularly. Some are a success (like Philip Lahm), others not so much, but there are also many other reasons for loaning players, especially as the clubs find new ways to use such mechanisms to their advantage (loans with mandatory purchase are a good example, allowing clubs to effectively “buy now, pay later”[1])....

Loan transfers usually pose a great opportunity for small football clubs to boost their squads with better players at a lower cost, however, these players are often forbidden to play against their …

21/11/2020

We have barely completed one-tenth of the English Premier League (“Premier League”) season and it has already created a vast array of talking points; none more contentious than the interpretation and excessive implementation of the new handball rule by the English Football Association (“FA”) and the Premier League. Before heading into the highly congested 2020/21 season of world football, particularly in Europe, the International Football Association Board (“IFAB”), which is a registered independent association and the only authorised body appointed by FIFA to make the Laws of the Game for football, made certain amendments and modifications on a variety of laws more particularly in relation to Law 12 (“Law”) which pertains to ‘Fouls & Misconducts’....

New season, new rules. The handball law has changed again, purportedly for the better, but has the English Premier League got it horribly wrong? Arjun Khanna looks at the changes made to the law an…

14/10/2020

This article was first published on the Linklaters SportingLinks blog and can be found here. Linklaters LLP is a multinational law firm with a global, cross-practice sports sector team. Sign up to SportingLinks for more dedicated legal opinion on topical issues in the sports sector. The UK Government’s pending review (the Review) of the Gambling Act 2005 (the [ 1,506 more word ]

The Government’s review of the UK’s gambling legal framework is reportedly opening imminently and will come in the wake of a series of recommendations to increase regulatory scrutiny of the sports …

07/10/2020

The 2020/2021 Premier League season is just four games in, and already players, managers fans, and pundits have been left bemused by the change in wording and interpretation of the handball law, effected this season by The International Football Association Board (IFAB). This change in interpretation of one of the laws of the game has already resulted in six penalties being awarded for the offence of accidental handball. [ 1,556 more word ]

The Premier League season’s first major controversy… In this article we look at the changes to the accidental handball rule implemented by IFAB and why its revised interpretation is wre…

23/09/2020

Unless you were an avid fan of marble racing or Belarusian hockey for whatever reason, the average sports fan struggled to find something to watch on television at the initial stages of the pandemic. With spectator sports like the Olympics, Premier League, IPL, NBA, Formula One, Wimbledon and the PGA Tour just to name a few either initially cancelled or postponed indefinitely, fans and organisers were in for a world of disappointment (and mounting losses). [ 4,201 more words ]

Coronavirus effectively brought the world to a standstill in its inception, leaving sporting fans high and dry. Esports sought to fill that void and in the process of doing so, reached record engag…

10/09/2020

Lionel Messi the 33 year old football megastar, has been in the headlines for the past couple of weeks. Messi, who has spent almost his entire career at FC Barcelona, told the club recently that he had decided to leave after spending nearly two decades there, leaving most football fans across the globe in shell-shock and emotional mayhem. It was a lose-lose situation for Barcelona. [ 2,196 more words ]

So Lionel Messi has decided to stay put at FC Barcelona…for now. In this article we look at the options that were open to him and the legal and financial pressures that were placed on footbal…

02/09/2020

Lex Sportiva are proud to share our new Podcast “On The Ball” hosted by Justin Humphries and Vishakh Ranjit. This podcast is a part of our new multimedia initiative and we are hoping to break down sports law issues that are currently in the news and give some deeper insights through interviews with experts from the industry. We will be providing links to relevant reading material on the issues covered in each episode which should act as a starting point for anyone interested in a particular topic.

Our first episode is entitled “Is Financial Fair Play Dead?” and looks at the operation of FFP rules, their history, application, legal challenges and examples of cases, looking specifically at the recent case of Manchester City v UEFA.

For the full episode click on the link in our bio and go to “One The Ball Podcast Episode 1: Is Financial Fair Play Dead?”