Esports & Emerging Sports Committee
Objectives & Mission
- Bring legal structure to esports, which has grown up largely without it
- Establish fair terms between players, publishers, teams and tournament organisers
- Set integrity and anti-cheating standards specific to competitive gaming
- Build contract templates suited to esports careers, which follow a different shape from traditional sport
- Support new and hybrid sports seeking formal recognition
- Keep FISLA relevant to disciplines that did not exist when most sports law was written
Areas of Activity
- Drafting governance models and regulations for esports federations and teams
- Examining the legal relationship between players, publishers, teams and organisers
- Regulating anti-cheating, integrity and digital anti-doping policy in esports
- Drafting model employment, transfer and streaming-rights contracts for esports
- Monitoring the growth of emerging sports, including padel, urban sports and hybrid disciplines, and proposing statutes
- Advising on legal recognition pathways for new sports seeking formal status
Committee Overview
Esports & Emerging Sports
Esports built a substantial competitive industry before acquiring the legal infrastructure traditional sport takes for granted: player contracts, transfer rules, anti-cheating enforcement, and a clear line between publisher and governing body. This Committee works on supplying it, on terms suited to esports rather than borrowed from football or athletics.
Alongside this, the Committee covers the smaller and faster-growing sports that do not yet fit anywhere neatly, among them padel, urban disciplines and hybrid formats, and helps them reach the point where their legal status as a sport is settled.
