Sarah Attwood and Vyara Yordanova are joined by Pete Hackleton, partner and head of sports and entertainment at Saffery, to discuss UK image rights in sport, specifically football, from legal and tax perspectives.

They explain image rights as monetisable personal characteristics and how clubs and athletes use image rights companies, requiring proper assignment documents, valuation, audit trails and clear contracting sequence.

They cover the Premier League’s historical 80/20 approach and HMRC scrutiny, the distinction between club-capacity and personal-capacity use, carve-outs for existing endorsements, and trends like club-player revenue-share “joint venture” style deals, trademarking and equity endorsements. 

Sports score shorts is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Join us over on YouTube to watch the video recording. If you have any questions, please get in touch with the team: www.mills-reeve.com.

Welcome to Sports score shorts, the Mills & Reeve new sports law podcast.

In episode two, employment partner Richard Santy and principal associate Jameel Mann explore how the Employment Rights Act 2025 could reshape disputes in football.

They break down key changes to unfair dismissal rights, uncapped compensation and tribunal access, and what this means for managers’, players’ and coaching staff contracts. The discussion also looks at negotiation strategy, dispute resolution routes and whether the balance of power is shifting across the game.  

Sports score shorts is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Join us over on YouTube to watch the video recording. If you have any questions, please get in touch with the team: www.mills-reeve.com.

Welcome to "Sports score shorts", a new podcast from Mills & Reeve.  

We address live industry issues and shine a light on the legal and regulatory reality behind the headlines. We'll be covering a range of commercial, corporate, regulatory, and contentious topics across a range of sports in our podcast series.   

In this first episode, we thought we'd kick off with something really topical – football transfers and contracts.   

Carol Couse, head of the sports, entertainment and media sector, is joined by Phil Hutchinson and John Shea, sports, regulatory and dispute experts, to discuss impact of the Diarra case on the football transfer system and transfer negotiation strategies.

We then take a deeper dive into transfer provisions like release clauses, buy out and buy backs, dissect sell-ons, signing on fees, loyalty and other bonuses.   

Sports score shorts is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Join us over on YouTube to watch the video recording. If you have any questions, please get in touch with the team: www.mills-reeve.com.