IP and sports in a year of global competitions: legal, strategic and commercial considerations for rightsholders and market participants

Luiza Tângari Coelho
Madrona Advogados, São Paulo
luiza.tangari@madronaadvogados.com.br

Introduction

As the global sports industry enters a defining year marked by the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, intellectual property (IP) has assumed a central strategic role in the industry. Rightsholders and commercial partners rely on complex IP ecosystems to generate revenue and protect assets. At the same time, an expanding universe of third-party businesses seeks to leverage the unprecedented visibility generated by these competitions within carefully enforced legal boundaries.

Within this landscape, IP can no longer be viewed as a specialist legal concern alone: it has become a foundational business capability for organisations participating in, or seeking to engage with, global sporting events.

Athlete image rights and brand protection

Athletes increasingly operate as global commercial brands whose value extends well beyond their on-field performance. Image rights, encompassing a person’s name, likeness, voice, signature, social media personas and digital representations, including artificial intelligence (AI)-generated avatars, form the cornerstone of the commercial strategy for modern sports. These assets underpin endorsement agreements, content monetisation, non-fungible token (NFT) programmes and influencer campaigns that generate significant revenue independently of event results.

Rightsholders must manage these assets within a complex contractual and regulatory framework. Major sporting events impose event-specific restrictions, including blackout periods during which athletes may be prohibited from engaging in third-party commercial activities, even on their personal social media channels. The FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games apply strict clean-venue and blackout-period regimes that restrict athlete-level advertising, requiring careful pre-event planning by athletes, agencies and sponsors alike.

Jurisdictional fragmentation adds a further layer of complexity: image rights lack harmonised international protection and are governed by distinct instruments in each market. Businesses seeking to leverage athlete association must conduct market-specific due diligence to avoid liability under unfair competition or tortious misappropriation doctrines.

For third-party brands, the key challenge lies in distinguishing permissible editorial or informational uses from commercial exploitation and in understanding the contractual perimeter within which an athlete can validly consent to association. The unauthorised commercial use of an athlete’s likeness, even when associatively implied rather than expressly stated, may constitute an actionable infringement and lead to significant reputational and financial consequences.

AI-generated representations add a further layer of risk: deepfake technology enables the simulation of an athlete’s likeness without consent, yet no harmonised international instrument governs this area. Contractual provisions expressly prohibiting synthetic media and addressing the ownership of digital replicas have become an essential component of modern image rights agreements.

Licensing, merchandising and event-related branding

Licensing structures form the commercial architecture underpinning major sporting events. Official emblems, mascots, slogans, host-city identifiers and event-specific marks are protected through layered IP frameworks, typically combining trademark registrations, copyright assertions and, in some jurisdictions, bespoke legislative protections enacted specifically for major events.

Rightsholders, such as FIFA^[1] and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), operate structured licensing programmes that regulate the use of protected assets by official partners and third-party manufacturers. These programmes define the categories of licensable products, quality standards, royalty rates, distribution channels and territorial scope. Authorised licensees benefit from the commercial halo of association that comes with high-visibility events, while accepting ongoing obligations regarding brand usage and product integrity.

For third-party market participants, the regulatory perimeter is strict. The use of official event marks, even in modified or stylised form, without authorisation constitutes trademark infringement in most jurisdictions. More broadly, creating commercial messaging that implies an official affiliation or sponsorship relationship where one does not exist may give rise to unfair competition liability or enforcement to combat ambush marketing.

Broadcasting rights and anti-piracy enforcement

Broadcasting rights remain among the most commercially valuable assets in global sport, with rights fees for major tournaments regularly reaching billions of dollars across multi-platform packages. The continued expansion of digital streaming has fundamentally altered both the distribution landscape and the enforcement environment for rightsholders.

Unauthorised retransmission, live streaming of match footage and the rapid dissemination of clips via social media platforms constitute the primary infringement vectors. Rightsholders employ a range of technical and legal countermeasures, including real-time content identification systems, platform-level takedown mechanisms and pre-event injunctions targeting known piracy networks.

Commercial exploitation of protected footage, including use in advertising or sponsored content, will rarely qualify as permissible and may trigger civil and criminal liability. Safe harbour protections for social media platforms are increasingly contested in the context of live sports broadcasting, where real-time dissemination causes immediate and irreversible harm to the value attributed to those rights.

Anti-counterfeiting and supply chain integrity

Major sporting events generate concentrated demand for event-related merchandise, creating fertile conditions for counterfeiting operations. Fake jerseys, replica trophies, unofficial programmes and counterfeit branded accessories flood both physical and digital marketplaces in the weeks and months surrounding high-visibility competitions.

Rightsholders respond with coordinated enforcement strategies: pre-event trademark filings, customs recordal programmes, marketplace monitoring and cooperation with local authorities in order to carry out physical raids. Retailers, distributors and marketplace operators are not protected by the absence of intent. Supply chain due diligence is an increasingly recognised proactive obligation and platforms face expanding scrutiny in this regard.

Advertising, ambush marketing and event-based restrictions

Ambush marketing remains one of the most commercially contested areas of IP enforcement in the context of major sporting events. The practice, whether direct (falsely implying official sponsorship) or indirect (associating a brand with an event’s atmosphere or audience without authorised participation), is subject to increasingly sophisticated regulatory frameworks that are deployed by event organisers.

FIFA’s commercial rights protection regime for the World Cup^[2] and the IOC’s clean venue and advertising restriction policies^[3] illustrate the breadth of regulatory exposure associated with big sporting events. Prohibited conduct may encompass the use of event-specific terminology, colour combinations, imagery or dates in commercial messaging, even in the absence of any explicit reference to official marks. Several host countries have enacted supplementary legislation that creates special IP-adjacent protections for major events, expanding the enforcement options beyond standard trademark law.

Brands operating across digital channels must apply jurisdiction-specific unfair competition standards carefully: the legal threshold for actionable ambush marketing varies considerably across markets and the commercial consequences of enforcement action, including injunction and reputational damage, can be disproportionate to the benefit sought.

Insights from practice: perspectives discussed by the IP and entertainment law community

Many of the issues addressed in this article were also discussed in a webinar promoted by the International Bar Association’s Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law Committee, held on 22 April 2026, to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day. The event was particularly timely: the theme chosen by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)^[4] for this year’s commemoration was IP and sports, reflecting the growing global recognition of the role that intellectual property plays in the sports industry.

The session was moderated by Luiza Tângari Coelho and opened by Jeffrey L Costellia, Co-Chair of the Committee. Speakers represented distinct layers of the sports ecosystem: Josh Escovedo (Wraith Sports Group/Buchalter) addressed athlete branding and the alignment of commercial decisions with event-specific restrictions; Víctor Manuel González Zesatti (Grupo Ollamani) examined brand protection strategies and enforcement challenges faced by World Cup host city operators; and Roxana Penagos Resendiz (Coca-Cola México) highlighted the tensions between global IP activation frameworks and local regulatory environments across Latin American markets. Across all three perspectives, the same conclusion emerged: IP strategy in the context of major sporting events demands coordinated action by rightsholders, proactive compliance by third-party participants and a governance mindset that treats IP as a driver of sustainable commercial value.

IP governance as a strategic imperative: risks, opportunities and forward-looking considerations

Effective IP governance has become a strategic necessity, not a reactive compliance exercise. The convergence of trademarks, copyright, image rights and licensing with emerging challenges around AI-generated content, platform liability and cross-border enforcement demands the adoption of a holistic and forward-looking approach. Rightsholders must build proactive IP portfolios calibrated to the speed of today’s media landscape. Third-party participants must develop compliance frameworks that are legally sound and commercially agile across every jurisdiction involved in global sporting events. The 2026 FIFA World Cup^[5] and Winter Olympic Games offer an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate that IP, when governed well, is a foundation for value creation rather than a barrier to commercial engagement.