Sports law

The contract an athlete signs at nineteen

Image rights, agency commission and termination are where Nigerian playing contracts do their damage.

Playing contracts are signed young, quickly, and usually without advice. The clauses that cause difficulty later are rarely the salary: they are image rights assigned in perpetuity, agency commission expressed as a percentage of everything, and termination provisions that run one way only.

An athlete's image rights are a separate asset from their playing services and should be documented separately, with a term, a territory and a reversion. Agency arrangements should be time-limited and specific to a transaction rather than to a career.

Clubs and rights holders benefit from the same discipline. Contracts that a tribunal can read and enforce are worth more to both sides than contracts that merely favour one of them.

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