Forum on Comparative Sports Law

The appearance of sport in the courts is a recent phenomenon which has often been interpreted by the general public as having marked the advent of sports law. In fact the law has been in contact with sport for a very long time having been involved in contract law if not from the beginning at least as soon as sport was endowed with a minimum of organization. Today it is the whole of the law that is regularly solicited and this for obvious reasons. The important number of practising sportsmen and women and of members of sports associations contributes to raise the sports phenomenon to the role of an important component of the social and cultural life; without forgetting the development of the commercialization of the shows and the professionalization of the athletes which confer to the sport the dimension of an economic and financial sector of very first order from where the application of all the branches of the law in their great diversity.