Footballers, Brands and the Battle for Image Rights: Lessons from the UK

"I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, and wear Reebok." — Shaquille O'Neal

With over 3.5 billion followers, football is the most popular sport in the world. The FA Premier League — established in 1992 after top-flight clubs broke away to capitalise on a BSkyB television rights deal — is the most watched league globally. And alongside the game itself, a parallel economy has grown up around the image, personality, and commercial brand of individual players.

Image rights — an individual's proprietary right to control the commercial use of their name, image, likeness or style — were once a legal afterthought in football. They are now, in the most commercially active clubs and jurisdictions, a central pillar of player contracting, tax planning, and brand monetisation. This piece examines how that happened in the UK, where there is no codified image rights law, and what it means for sports markets like India.

Real Madrid and the Commercialisation of Football Personalities

The club that introduced image rights to global football was not British. Real Madrid's signing of David Beckham in 2003 was built explicitly around his commercial image — the shirt sales, the global sponsorships, the brand equity that transcended football itself. Real Madrid separated Beckham's playing contract from an image rights agreement, with different tax treatment and different commercial logic applying to each. This structure — the bifurcated contract — became the template for elite player contracting across Europe.

The commercial logic is straightforward. A footballer like Beckham, Ronaldo, or Messi is simultaneously an athlete and a brand. The athlete earns playing fees through employment. The brand earns licensing income through intellectual property — the authorised use of the name, likeness, number, signature, or associated imagery. These are fundamentally different income streams and have historically attracted different legal and tax treatment.

The UK Without a Codified Law

The UK's approach to image rights is a patchwork of intellectual property law, passing off, trade mark registration, data protection, and privacy rights — none of which was designed with sports personality commercialisation in mind, but all of which are pressed into service. A footballer can register their name as a trade mark. They can establish an image rights company to hold their commercial interests. They can enforce against unauthorised use through passing off or trade mark infringement.

What the UK cannot do — unlike France or Germany — is offer a standalone personality rights statute. The absence of codified law creates both uncertainty and opportunity: uncertainty because the legal protection available is always patchwork, and opportunity because sophisticated commercial structures can be built in the gaps that a rigid statute would close.

Financial Fair Play and the Image Rights Grey Area

The introduction of UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) Rules created a new complication. FFP caps what clubs can spend relative to their revenue, with player salaries forming a major component of expenditure. Image rights payments, which are made from commercial accounts to a player's image rights company rather than as employment salary, sat in a regulatory grey area — were they player costs for FFP purposes, or commercial arrangements that sat outside the salary cap?

HMRC in the UK took a close interest in this question from a tax perspective, ultimately prevailing in the Sports Club case that image rights payments structured to avoid employment tax treatment would be recharacterised. The lesson is that image rights structures must be commercially genuine — the commercial value of the rights must be real and demonstrable — or they will be unwound by regulators and tax authorities.

Implications for India

India's sports market is at an earlier stage of image rights development. The IPL has created genuine commercial values for individual cricketers — Virat Kohli's brand is among the most commercially potent in Asian sport. But the legal infrastructure to protect and monetise those values remains underdeveloped. India has no personality rights statute. Trade mark registration of player names is used but inconsistently. The contractual frameworks for separating playing income from commercial image income are less sophisticated than their UK or European equivalents.

The opportunity is real. As Indian sport globalises — with ISL expanding, esports growing, and the 2036 Olympics approaching — the commercial value of individual sporting personalities will increase significantly. Building the legal frameworks now — through trade mark registration, structured image rights agreements, and regulatory clarity on tax treatment — will determine whether those values are captured by the athletes themselves or dissipated through inadequate protection. The UK's experience, both its successes and its HMRC battles, is the most relevant template India has available.