- within Privacy and Antitrust/Competition Law topic(s)
Today, sport has evolved beyond being merely a field for displaying physical performance and has transformed into a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Athletes are now recognized not only for their athletic achievements but also for their identities, styles, and public images, effectively becoming brands in their own right. Their names, faces, and even personal stories constitute the core of branding processes and have become indispensable elements of advertising campaigns, sponsorship agreements, and licensed products.
This transformation has elevated athletes' image rights to assets of substantial economic value. Clubs, agents, and brands now assess not only an athlete's on-field performance but also their social influence and marketability. Consequently, image rights have become an independent component of contractual negotiations. As the commercial dimension of sport expands, athletes' rights over their names, signatures, photographs, and other personal characteristics have come to be treated as property-like economic values that warrant legal protection.
Sport is no longer merely a game won or lost on the field; it has become an economic system shaped by brand management, intellectual property, and commercial rights. The leading actors of this system, the athletes, now manage their professional careers as business entities, taking strategic and legal steps to protect and commercialize their personal image. Therefore, the right of publicity constitutes both an extension of personal rights and a key component of commercial gain within the modern sports industry.
Image rights encompass an athlete's name, likeness, voice, and other distinctive personal features. These rights should be regarded as both personality rights and intellectual property rights, deserving protection under the law.
Under Turkish law, the protection of image rights is primarily ensured through the provisions of Article 24 of the Turkish Civil Code, the Turkish Code of Obligations, Law on Protection of Personal Data and the Turkish Penal Code. Accordingly, an individual's face, bodily appearance, voice, gestures, name, surname, and private aspects of life that are not publicly disclosed fall within the scope of image rights. The unauthorized use of an athlete's image, voice, or other personal characteristics, therefore, constitutes a violation of such rights.
In practice, image rights issues arise most frequently in the field of football. During transfer negotiations, the use and distribution of image rights revenues are often debated. In certain cases, the sums paid to athletes for their image rights may even exceed their transfer fees, underscoring the growing economic significance of these rights while also generating legal controversy. Although Turkish law does not yet provide a comprehensive regulation of image rights, the subject has been thoroughly examined in foreign jurisdictions, where such rights are recognized and contractually managed. At the international level, clubs frequently conclude image rights agreements with players in order to capitalize on their fame and public recognition.
Entering into an image rights agreement generally entails the transfer of some or all these rights to the football club. However, such agreements may also be structured differently: the athlete may receive an image rights payment, the revenue may be shared with the club, or the income may belong exclusively to the athlete. Where the athlete has transferred image rights to a club, those rights must also be expressly reassigned to the new club by means of a separate agreement or annex upon transfer.
Considering the revenues derived from image rights, it is often in the best interest of the athlete not to assign these rights entirely. Given their personal nature, the transfer of image rights may restrict the athlete's economic and moral control over their own identity. Therefore, the scope, manner, and limits of image rights use must be clearly defined in contracts concluded between clubs and athletes.
In this context, negotiations concerning the assignment of image rights should particularly specify the capacity in which the club may utilize such rights. The term "club capacity" refers to the use of the athlete's image within the framework of the club's commercial activities, promotions, or sponsorship arrangements, such as kit advertisements, match posters, or official media content. Conversely, "personal capacity" denotes situations in which the athlete appears independently of the club, for instance, in personal sponsorships or advertising campaigns carried out under their own name or brand.
Failure to clearly delineate the boundaries between these two capacities may lead to significant legal disputes in practice. For this reason, image rights assignment or usage agreements should comprehensively define the scope, duration, territorial limits, revenue sharing, and jurisdictional authority of the rights in question. Such clarity ensures balanced protection between the athlete's personal interests and the club's commercial objectives.
Although image rights agreements may offer financial advantages to both athletes and clubs, they also carry certain risks. Chief among these is the practice of disguising a portion of athletes' salaries as image rights payments. While such arrangements may temporarily reduce the club's financial burden, they undermine transparency and distort the principle of fair market value within the sports economy. Therefore, the commercialization of image rights must be managed in an ethical, transparent, and legally compliant manner.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
