Sports Law Essay Example
Sports Law Essay Example

Sports Law Essay Example

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  • Pages: 3 (732 words)
  • Published: May 8, 2017
  • Type: Case Study
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The rule of law in sports is as essential for civilization as the rule of law in society generally. Without it generally anarchy reigns. Without it in sport, chaos exists.

Sports Law encompasses a multitude areas of law brought together in unique ways. Issues such as antitrust, contracts, and torts are quite common. Sports Law can be roughly divided into the areas of amateur, professional, and international sports. The distinction between a professional and amateur athlete is somewhat tenuous.

So called "amateur" student-athletes at universities often receive scholarships and other forms of compensation.Also, keep in mind that even though an athlete may be defined as an amateur by one organization, he or she may not be an amateur according to another. Of course, this leads to even more confusion. A simplistic, yet useful definition is that amateur athletes participate in sports as an avocation

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while professional athletes are involved in sports as a vocation. The concept of amateur sports includes a range of activities from an individual casual weekend athlete to high school athletics to extensively organized intercollegiate or international competitions.

Athletic activities are often organized and managed by individual groups that establish rules for eligibility and competition, and courts are often unwilling to interfere with the actions of these groups as long as their rules are reasonably applied. Perhaps the most important of these organizations is the National Collegiate Athletic Association ("NCAA"). The NCAA is the governing body for intercollegiate sports and has over 1000 member colleges and universities. Perhaps the most important relationship in the area of professional sports is that between the individual player and the team owner.

This contractual relationship is governed by

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basic contract principles. Most sports leagues now have a Standard Player's Contract which serves as a model employment contract between players and owners. The model contract can be modified to accommodate the special needs and talents of individual players. With the increase in salaries in professional sports, most players are now represented by agents. Typically, this relationship is governed by a Standard Representation Contract which defines the duties and compensation of the agent.In an attempt to regulate agent activities, many state legislatures now require agents to register with some type of administrative agency.

The two major international sports competitions are the Olympics, sponsored by the International Olympic Committee, and the World Cup, sponsored by FIFA. The United States chartered the United States Olympic Committee ("USOC") in 1950. The USOC has charge over Olympic and other related competitions (Pan Am games, etc. ) to which the United States sends a team.

There is the international association for sports law which is being made to regulate all the sports laws.Sport Law is made up of an intricate set of laws that apply to athletes and the sports they play. Sports law consists of a variety of matters, including contract, tort, agency, antitrust, constitutional, labor, trademark, sex discrimination, criminal, and tax issues. Some laws depend on the status of the athlete, some laws differ according to the sport and some laws vary for other reasons. Sports law is no longer an applied law or an amalgam of laws in some jurisdictions, which have taken the lead and enacted separate legislation concerning sports.

For instance, in India sports figures in the Concurrent list of the Seventh Schedule (entry 33) of

the Constitution on which both the union and state legislatures are competent to make laws. In the field of sports, the club is the basic unit at the grass root level. At the top of the hierarchy are the international sports bodies for each sports made up of national bodies of different countries. The national sports bodies again consist of the provincial or state bodies of different countries. The provincial state bodies comprise the different districts or clubs.Sports have developed from a mere source of personal entertainment to a global industry comprising more than 3% of world trade.

In the UK, sports provide employment to more than 420,000 people. It is one of the largest revenue generating industries of the world and with the proliferation of the Internet and other forms of media, the sports industry is set to grow even at a faster pace in the future. Thus to regulate the sports, players, business models, media, telecasting, advertisements, law has to be made to take control of all such things, and now we have online sports gambling laws also.

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