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  1. Our capabilities
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Sports

Leading organizations in global sports rely on expert counsel for governance, commercial rights and regulatory compliance. Our team helps clients navigate opportunities and challenges on and off the field.

Freshfields

Transforming global sport through high-stakes deals, disputes and regulatory insight.

Our sports lawyers advise investors, teams, leagues and rightsholders across the global sports ecosystem, pairing expert transactional capability with market-leading disputes and regulatory experience.

Our transactional team provides counsel on complex M&A, investments and financing, intellectual property, branding, media and entertainment licensing, employment, tax, real estate, and antitrust, competition and state aid. This breadth allows us to deliver integrated, practical advice on club and league investments, sales, acquisitions, reorganizations, joint ventures and strategic alliances, long-term commercial partnerships, and the full spectrum of rights commercialization in broadcasting, licensing, sponsorship and direct-to-consumer and OTT distribution.

Our disputes team advises on high-stakes litigation, arbitration, investigations, and regulatory strategy across multiple jurisdictions. This team has acted in more than one hundred arbitrations before specialist sports tribunals, including the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and routinely handles key mandates for major sports bodies, sporting organisations and other leading players in the industry.

Our partners bring practical industry perspective to every mandate, including a former Premier League team chairman and arbitrators who have served on numerous sports arbitrations. That experience - combined with our global platform and a broad client base spanning investors, federations, leagues, teams, broadcasters, sponsors and technology companies - gives us a comprehensive view of the issues that matter most, and the judgment to help our clients move forward with clarity and confidence - on and off the field.  

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Employment, incentives and pensions
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Mergers and acquisitions
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Contacts

Meet the team
London

Chris Mort

Global Head of Sports
London

Rhodri Thomas

Partner
London

David Brooks

Partner
Riyadh

Amani Khalifa

Partner, Head of KSA Disputes Practice
Milan

Giancarlo D'Ambrosio

Partner
Paris

Anne-Laure Vincent

Partner
New York

Claire E. James

Head of New York Private Equity
London, Dublin

Deba Das

Partner
Frankfurt am Main

Martina de Lind van Wijngaarden

Partner
Meet the team

Awards & recognition

Chambers UK 2026

Ranked - Sport

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Capital marketsCorporate advisory and governanceData, privacy and cyber securityEmployment, incentives and pensionsIntellectual propertyInvestigationsMedia, entertainment and sportsMergers and acquisitionsRegulatory and compliance advisory
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