Sports Fashion Law: Where Athletic Merchandising, Image Rights, and Brand Protection Meet in Africa

Sports and fashion have never been separate industries in practice, they are, increasingly, the same commercial ecosystem. A national team kit is a fashion product. An athlete’s personal brand deal is an endorsement contract governed by the same licensing principles as any designer’s collaboration with a manufacturer. A counterfeit jersey sold on the street is exactly the same legal problem as a counterfeit designer bag. Sports fashion law sits precisely at this intersection, and it is one of the fastest-growing, least understood practice areas in African commercial law today.

Why This Is a Genuine, Distinct Practice Area, Not Just “Sports Law”

Sports fashion law spans several legal domains that must work together seamlessly: intellectual property protecting team branding, kit designs, and logos; contract law governing licensing, sponsorship, and merchandising agreements; image rights law protecting athletes’ names, likenesses, and personal brands; and increasingly, statutory frameworks specifically regulating the commercialisation of sport. Cardinal Counsel advises clients across each of these dimensions, and understanding how they interact is precisely what distinguishes genuine sports fashion law practice from generalist commercial advisory.

The IP Foundation: What’s Actually Being Protected

At major sporting events and within national federation structures, trademarks form the commercial backbone, team badges, tournament logos, mascots, and sponsor branding are what merchandising and sponsorship arrangements are actually built around. Copyright protects broadcast and audiovisual content, often the single largest revenue stream in sport. Patents, industrial designs, and trade secrets protect genuine innovation in equipment and performance technology. Within this ecosystem, athletes themselves function as commercially exploitable assets, their names, images, and increasingly their digital presence monetised through endorsements, sponsorships, and personal brand deals.

Image Rights: Africa’s Fastest-Moving Legal Frontier

This is genuinely live, developing law right now. Kenya’s Draft Sports Bill, 2026, currently before the National Assembly, introduces the country’s first express statutory right for sportspersons to control the commercial use of their own name, image, and likeness, a significant shift away from relying purely on contractual and common law protection. Under Section 95 of the Bill, athletes gain a defined legal right rather than one merely inferred from contract terms, meaning endorsement and sponsorship arrangements will need to be structured against a statutory standard, not just negotiated case by case. This has real, practical consequences, questions of ownership, control, and permitted use that have historically been a frequent source of dispute will now be assessed against clear statutory criteria.

Nigeria has not yet moved to this kind of express statutory image rights framework, meaning image rights protection here continues to rely primarily on contractual provisions and common law principles, tort claims such as passing off, and, where applicable, trademark protection over an athlete’s name or persona. This makes properly drafted, comprehensive contractual image rights clauses considerably more important for Nigerian athletes and the brands working with them than in jurisdictions with express statutory protection already in place.

Real Disputes That Show Why This Matters

The commercial and legal stakes here are not theoretical. In a widely discussed dispute, Mohamed Salah’s representatives alleged that his image was used disproportionately more than his teammates’ in promotional material for the Egyptian Football Federation, creating an impression of personal endorsement he had not agreed to, precisely the kind of conflict that arises when a federation’s commercial rights and an individual athlete’s personal image rights are not clearly delineated in the underlying agreements.

Beyond sport specifically, the Rihanna v. Topshop case remains a genuinely instructive precedent for African sports and fashion lawyers alike, where a UK court found that using a public figure’s image on merchandise without permission created a misrepresentation to consumers that the individual had endorsed the product, establishing liability even absent a direct contractual relationship between the parties. This principle applies with equal force to an athlete’s image used without proper authorisation on unofficial merchandise.

The Conflicting Sponsor Problem

A recurring, genuinely difficult issue in sports fashion law involves conflicting sponsorship obligations, where an athlete’s personal endorsement deal conflicts with obligations owed to their club, league, or national federation. Consider a footballer with a personal endorsement deal predating their move to a club sponsored by a competing brand in the same product category, whose promotional obligations now directly conflict. Properly drafted player and endorsement contracts need explicit provisions addressing exactly this scenario, non-compete clauses, carve-outs, and clear hierarchy of obligations, precisely the kind of clause-level drafting that prevents a genuinely damaging dispute later.

Ambush Marketing: A Growing Risk Category

A newer, increasingly significant risk area involves ambush marketing, campaigns constructed to create consumer association with a major event or team without the brand actually being an official, paying sponsor. This creates real, acute legal exposure specifically for athletes contracted to official sponsors, since even unknowing participation in a rival brand’s ambush campaign, through association with event terminology, imagery, or timing, can trigger contractual liability under an athlete’s federation, club, or endorsement agreements. Athletes and their advisors increasingly need pre-clearance review of any commercial activity timed near a major sporting event, precisely the kind of proactive legal check Cardinal Counsel builds into our advisory work with clients in this space.

Merchandising: The NFF-Adidas Lesson Applied Broadly

The Nigeria Football Federation’s recent $8.5 million kit deal with Adidas, including its 20 percent merchandise royalty structure, illustrates precisely the commercial architecture underlying sports fashion merchandising generally. Merchandising arrangements monetise an athlete’s or institution’s image and brand status by applying it to a defined range of products, and building this properly requires meaningful investment in protecting and growing that underlying brand, including a genuine trademark portfolio covering names, logos, and distinctive marks. Whether the client is a national federation, an individual athlete building a personal merchandise line, or a fashion brand entering a sports-adjacent licensing deal, the same fundamental questions apply, what exactly is covered, how is the royalty calculated, and what audit and enforcement rights actually exist to protect that value once the agreement is signed.

Taxation: The Often-Overlooked Dimension

Image rights income raises genuine, distinct tax questions many athletes and their advisors underestimate. Depending on jurisdiction and structure, image rights income may be treated differently from ordinary playing or performance income, and some jurisdictions internationally have developed specific tax regimes around image rights specifically, given their growing commercial significance. Athletes and brands structuring image rights and merchandising arrangements should factor tax treatment into the underlying agreement’s structure from the outset, not as an afterthought once income has already started flowing.

What Cardinal Counsel Advises Clients On in This Space

Drawing all of this together, our sports fashion law practice covers drafting and negotiating athlete endorsement and sponsorship agreements, including clear conflict-of-interest and non-compete provisions; structuring merchandising and licensing agreements with properly defined royalty bases and enforceable audit rights; protecting trademark and brand assets for athletes, clubs, and federations; advising on image rights protection within Nigeria’s current contractual and common law framework, while monitoring the kind of statutory developments already underway in Kenya that may well influence future Nigerian reform; and pre-clearing commercial campaigns for ambush marketing exposure ahead of major sporting events.

The Honest Conclusion

Sports fashion law in Africa is genuinely still developing, Kenya’s Draft Sports Bill represents the kind of statutory maturation this space needs more of across the continent, and Nigeria’s own framework will likely need to evolve in similar directions as the commercial stakes involved continue to grow, as the NFF-Adidas deal itself demonstrates clearly. For athletes, brands, federations, and businesses operating in this space today, the protection available is real, but it depends entirely on properly drafted contracts, clearly defined rights, and genuine attention to the clause-level detail that determines whether commercial opportunity translates into actually protected, enforceable value.

Cardinal Counsel advises athletes, brands, federations, and businesses on sports fashion law, including endorsement agreements, merchandising, image rights, and brand protection across Nigeria’s sports, fashion, and creative sectors. Learn more at cardinalcounsel.co.

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