A professional athlete’s career is unlike any other profession we know of. Professional athletes, due to the nature of their careers, are exposed to a multitude of risks and have to deal with a number of legal implications pertaining to those risks. Of course, for the most part, professional athletes are not aware of their exposure to the different types of legal risks. The need for a good attorney, who will act as the athlete’s ‘security blanket’ seems to be a must in managing risk exposure, dealing with wealth protection, minimizing tax liability, ensuring brand and image protection, handling reputation and other types of crisis, etc.
This month we deal with the legal issues surrounding professional athletes from taxation to commercial and IP rights exploitation agreements, sports employment contracts, to prenuptial agreements. We address a number of legal issues arising both from contractual and other obligations and we stress the need of having a good team of professionals that can help athletes deal with such issues successfully.
Athena P. Constantinou
E-mail: [email protected]