Sports Marketing and Media Law (LAWS70275)

Sponsorship announcements and media rights deals in sport can attract publicity like gold medals. The ingenuity of an ambush marketer may rival the game plan for an upset victory. This subject surveys the legal underpinnings of modern sports marketing and the role of the media, especially the new media, from the perspectives of key stakeholders: sports bodies, athletes, sponsors, the media and venue owners. Conflict between rights holders and those who claim commercial free speech at the fringe of official rights is analysed. This subject covers how specific new laws and increasingly intricate contractual allocation of rights aim to contain the ambusher. It will be of interest to lawyers, sports, marketing and media executives, and player agents. One lecturer is a barrister who has studied and written in the area, and the other is a lawyer who has served as in-house counsel for a public broadcaster for many years.

This subject considers the legal aspects of sports marketing and associated media in Australia. Attention is paid to the different legal needs of key stakeholders in sport. It involves assessing the impact on the legal environment of sports marketing and media rights in an era of increased commercialism and professionalism in sport, and of significant change in the technology of communication and marketing.

Principal topics include:

• The commercial environment of sports marketing
• Intellectual property and related legal principles as they apply to sports marketing: passing-off, copyright, designs, misleading or deceptive conduct, trade marks, trade names and internet domain names
• Laws promoting competition as they apply to sports marketing and the sale of media rights: restraint of trade at common law and restrictive trade practices under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)
• Olympic marketing arrangements and protection of Olympic insignia
• Athlete marketing rights, including personality rights, misleading or deceptive conduct and defamation
• Event, facility and organisation marketing, including rights to a spectacle
• Television and electronic media, including broadcast agreements, anti-siphoning laws, virtual advertising and regulation of alcoholic beverage advertising
• Regulation of tobacco advertising
• Principles of sponsorship agreements
• Ticketing.