Regulating Sports Data
If you are a sports fan like me then you will no doubt have noticed that in recent years there has been a much greater use of data to analyse what is happening.
The main sport I follow, baseball, now has more acronyms than you could shake a stick at while in football, statistics like expected goals (xG) have entered the mainstream.
This is, for the most part, a really good thing. Data helps to analyse and improve performances while for the layperson they can aid understanding of what their team is and isn’t doing right on the field.
However the way that this data has been used has also attracted controversy. For example, sports betting companies make extensive use of this information but athletes might object to their data being used in this way for religious or ethical reasons. Or, quite simply, many players may not like that they are not benefiting financially from the use of their data.
Now, as reported by David Ornstein in The Athletic, a fightback is underway led by former Leyton Orient manager, Russell Slade, and Global Sports Data and Technology Group Limited. They have issued pre-action litigation letters to a number of companies involved in the gambling sector, arguing that they have breached data protection law.
Whether that is true or not will be interesting to see as the claim progresses. Obviously there is certain information that is pretty clearly in the public domain. The fact that Harry Kane scored a brace against Nottingham Forest yesterday is clear for all to see but information about the health of players and their fitness levels is much more personal.
There will also be questions about consent as well. Have the players given their consent for their data to be used in this way by virtue of the contracts they have with their respective clubs? Beyond that, how meaningful is that consent when we are talking about an employer/employee relationship?
It is clearly too early to speculate on the outcome of these proceedings right now but the fact that there are more than a thousand athletes on board, the fact it has got to this stage, and the fact they are seeking more than £400 million in damages suggests a certain amount of seriousness.
In the end this might be settled outside of court but as the use of sports data grows and the UK continues to reform its own data protection regime, this should serve as a shot across the bow for many in the industry.
This week on the podcast a man gets into serious trouble after it is found that he lied on his CV.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2022-uksc-24/
Make a difference today,
Marcus