Sport

At Teacher Stern we have a dedicated team of expert sports lawyers who can advise you on a wealth of legal issues and challenges unique to the sporting industry.

We advise a broad spectrum of those involved in sport, both in the UK and internationally, including clubs, sports bodies and sports agents as well as Premiership footballers, Olympic athletes and other international sports men and women. We are widely recognised in the legal press as a leading member of the sports law sector, and have been consistently recommended in Chambers, Legal 500 and other guides to the legal profession for our expertise and leadership in all areas of sports and sports regulatory work.

We have in-depth experience in handling the specific legal needs of our sporting clients and pride ourselves in being able to offer commercial and pragmatic advice. The types of instructions we regularly accept include:

Drafting and providing advice in relation to the various different types of sporting agreements.
Corporate restructuring, with a specific focus on the sale and purchase of football clubs.
Disputes relating to contractual, regulatory, employment or disciplinary matters.
Media related issues such as defamation and breach of privacy claims.
Anti-doping issues.
Advising on the regulatory framework of individual sports.
Employment related issues and immigration.

Our team is passionate about sport and we take the time to ensure that we fully understand our clients’ sport specific needs so that we can provide hands-on, focused and solution driven advice. As a group of innovative, creative minded individuals, we are committed to building long-term client relationships and our fundamental aim is to achieve success for our clients.

What We Do

The areas covered by our Sport practice include:

Talent Representation

Representative Sport Work

Examples of our sport related work include:

Advised in connection with the high profile transfers of Paulhino (Tottenham), Willian (Chelsea) and Oscar (Chelsea).
Advised third party rights holders in relation to economic rights and recovery of transfer proceedings and disputes relating to Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano in claims against West Ham United.
Advised a third party rights holders in the transfer of Carlos Tevez to Manchester United and subsequently to Manchester City FC; advising Carlos Tevez on his disciplinary issues with Manchester City and in his subsequent transfer to Juventus.
Advised the owners of Charlton Athletic Football Club in the sale of the club to Roland Duchatelet.
Advised third party rights holders in the transfer of Javier Mascherano to Liverpool.
Advised third party rights holders in disputes over football player Carlos Alberto, Gonza Higuain, Luis Fabiano and others.
Advised Manchester City FC regarding corporate and IP matters and also reputational management issues.
Advised Ashley Cole in two High Court privacy actions.
Advised on many high profile transfers between football clubs, specifically acting on behalf of the clubs, players, economic rights holders, banks or agents. Amongst many others, these include Robinho from Real Madrid to Manchester City, Jo from CSKA Moscow to Manchester City, Ramires from Benfica to Chelsea, Nigel de Jong from Hamburg FC to Manchester City, Craig Bellamy from West Ham United to Manchester City , Manuel Fernandes from Benfica to Valencia, Carl Jenkinson from Charlton Athletic to Arsenal and Rob Elliot from Charlton Athletic to Newcastle United.
Advised the purchasers of Charlton Athletic, a potential purchaser of West Ham United and a potential bidder for Southampton.
Advised Mark Hughes in relation to his managerial appointment at Manchester City.
Advised leading Great Britain athletes in respect of the selection policy of their respective governing bodies in the lead up to London 2012 and Commonwealth Games 2014.
Advised a Football Agent and his client in respect of highly sensitive issues relating to Twitter.
Advised on the departure of a Chief Scout from a Championship club and a Sports Scientist from a Premier League club.
Advised on contractual issues for Heurlho Gomes (Tottenham).