Court disputes and risk management: seminar for sports agents and lawyers

26.04.2012

A seminar, organized jointly by the European Association of Football Agents (EAFA), the Law Firm "YUST", the Swiss BSI bank and the Aon International company for Russian sports agents, lawyers, representatives of sports clubs and the RFU, was held at the Federal Chamber of Advocates of the Russian Federation on April 26.

Roberto Branco Martins, Managing Director of EFAA; Mikhail Prokopets, Head of sports law group of the Firm; Yury Zaytsev, Deputy Chief of legal section of the Organizing Committee “Russia-2018”, member of the RFU Players Status Committee, member of the RFU Committee on agent activity; Stephen Talboys (Great Britain), Director of Practice on insurance of sports and mass events of Aon company; Alexey Vladimirsky, Director of Practice on insurance of sports and mass events of Aon company in Russia; Fabio Selli (Switzerland), Head of section of management and support of BSI bank spoke at the seminar.

Special guests were present at the event: Jan van Baal (the Netherlands), agent of UEFA games; Georgiy Gradev (Bulgaria), sports lawyer; and Denis Rogachev, Advisor to the RFU President, Legal Issues Advisor to the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation.

Participants of the seminar took the opportunity to openly discuss the problems and perspectives of the activity of agents in the European Union and in the Russian Federation, risk management in the practice of insurance of sports and mass events, key parameters for an international VIP-talent. In particular, main problems related to the reform of agent activity by the FIFA were indicated and ways of their resolution were suggested.

Roberto Branco Martins, Managing Director of EFAA, told about the structure, goals and tasks of EFAA, of its role in the mechanism of self-regulation of agent activity and of the means of regulation of the activity of agents in the case of revocation of licensing of agent activity by FIFA.

Mikhail Prokopets, Head of sports law group of the Firm, delivered a survey of the practice of the Russian Football Union and the Court of Sports Arbitration (Lausanne) (CAS) on cases with the participation of Russian clubs. M.Prokopets gave concrete examples of existing collisions between the Russian national legislation and the CAS practice, and brought to attention the actions by the clubs, which CAS classifies as unilateral violation of employment contracts with players.

Conclusions by court instances on what may be accepted as proof of foundation of termination by a player of a contract with the club were of great interest to the seminar participants.

All speeches were vividly discussed by the guests, and everyone present expressed the hope that such events would be held in the future.

More details on the seminar’s program are available here.

The event materials are available here.