Sports Lawyers

Our specialist sports lawyers and financial experts have a detailed understanding of how the high pressure and fast paced sport environment works. This means we can advise you and your business to proactively identify risks and help you avoid them, take advantage of opportunities, or both. 

We’ll build a long-term relationship with you to develop our understanding of what makes you or your business unique. When legal issues or opportunities arise, we can guide you through with straightforward, pragmatic and sector-specific advice. We'll always aim to achieve an effective and efficient resolution, saving you time, money, and stress.

With our lawyers and experts behind you, you’ll be free to focus on achieving your goals throughout the various stages of your professional, business or personal journey.

We can help if you’re:

  • An individual athlete (elite or grassroots level)
  • A sports club
  • An operator of a community or leisure group
  • A national or international governing body
  • An online platform or sports tech business
  • A sports agency or sports agent
  • A rights holder (for sporting events and individual athletes).

Some of our expert sports lawyers have also worked in-house for football clubs and other sport organisations. Our team have a detailed understanding of your sector, its risks and its possible opportunities.

We’ll be your single point of contact for all your legal and tax queries. As a full service law firm, you’ll get comprehensive and specialist advice across all legal areas, and financial experts who’ll work hard to protect your interests. If we can’t help, we’ll put you in touch with the right professionals from our worldwide network that can advise and support you further.

Watch the highlights from our recent sports networking event, Beyond the Pitch: Athlete Welfare Developments in Elite Sport, to learn more about how we support our clients in the sports sector.

Our Services

We can advise on:

  • Tax Issues
    Completing tax returns, dealing with HMRC enquiries, advising on Image Rights structures
  • Dispute resolution and disciplinary action
    Protecting you from disputes altogether, and fighting your corner where they cannot be avoided including dealing with any disciplinary issues discretely
  • Commercial transactions
    Making sure you’re protected in arrangements with your supply chains, sponsors, partners, broadcasters, governing bodies and customers
  • Data protection and privacy compliance
    Protecting your business in a highly regulated environment and dealing with GDPR and cyber security issues
  • Corporate, governance, finance and restructuring
    Advising on appropriate governance, restructuring, disposals, acquisitions joint ventures, raising capital and related issues
  • Property and real estate
    Advising on developing and managing your property portfolio for long-term sustainability and profitability
  • Employment and immigration
    Advising on how you can employ and keep the best talent, ensure legal compliance and resolve employment issues before they threaten your reputation or business
  • Intellectual property (IP) and reputation or brand management
    Advising on protecting your image, brand and IP globally and enforcing your rights when anyone threatens that image or brand
  • Personal legal services
    Advising you on Wills, family law (like pre or post-nuptial agreements), buying or selling property, tax and estate planning
  • Personal injury and rehabilitation support
    Support while you can’t play sports and helping you get the right rehabilitation
  • Charity projects
    Advising you on making charitable contributions that are tax efficient or helping you set up your own charity or foundation
  • Restructuring
    Helping sport clubs and businesses identify and manage risks, navigate volatility, and preserve value in difficult times.

Why Choose Us

Our firm is actively involved in the sports industry and ranked number one for sports law in the independent Legal 500 rankings.

We’re actively involved in supporting our communities through sport too. As the official legal partner of Rugby Football Union (RFU), our role is to promote the game and help community clubs with their own legal issues.

Our firm also promotes disability sports with our Don’t Quit Do It campaign that encourages people (including our own clients) to get involved in sport. Through our personal injury work, we’ve seen how sport can build confidence and help people with disabilities live an active, independent life . Sport also plays a huge role in improving mental health and well-being which is something we actively promote both in and outside our firm.

Contact Us Today

With offices across the UK, we can help you no matter where you’re based. To speak to one of our sports lawyers, contact us online or call 0370 1500 100.

In Focus

The Importance Of Sport To Local Economies

Our latest report takes a look at the impact sport has on towns and cities throughout the UK.

Read our report

Case Study – Advising England Cricketer on Image Rights Structure

We advised an England cricketer on an HMRC tax enquiry about their image rights structure, which needs to follow complex tax regulations.

Our tax specialists, led by Michael Taylor, found his former accountant and agent had set up the original image rights scheme incorrectly.

We successfully dealt with the tax enquiry while our commercial litigation team made a claim against the agents and accountants responsible. We successfully recovered substantial damages for our client.

To avoid issues in future, our commercial team fixed the problematic image rights structure and we took over the tax compliance work for both the client and his image rights company.

Our client was pleased with the result and considers Michael Taylor’s team as one of his ‘trusted advisors’. He has also referred other cricketers to us who had similar issues.

Image Rights structures for high-profile individuals need to be carefully drafted. Failure to do so can result in them failing and incurring unnecessary tax charges and HMRC penalties.

The breadth of expertise across IM meant we were able to deal with and resolve all of the issues for this client. This case is a prime example of the benefit to clients of having the necessary legal, tax and accountancy knowledge in house."

Michael Taylor - Partner

We Work Nationally

We have offices in major cities throughout the UK and our lawyers can arrange to visit you or your business in person if necessary. We also have international capability, with global links to other legal specialists.

See our latest health and safety updates before visiting our offices