J. Ty­rone Mar­cus

What is it about West In­dies crick­et that keeps mak­ing the head­lines? If it’s not teams fail­ing to ap­pear at lim­it­ed overs fi­nals, then it might be how to dis­ci­pline a play­er who walks off the field dur­ing a game. When we leave the pitch and head in­to the board­room, con­tro­ver­sy is not far away. In a dis­pute that tru­ly re­flect­ed Caribbean sports law, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), legal­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in the British Vir­gin Is­lands, found it­self in a Guyanese court in a bat­tle in­volv­ing a Trin­bag­on­ian ad­min­is­tra­tor and a Bar­ba­di­an lawyer!

Fast for­ward to 2025 and al­ready, an­oth­er con­flict is brew­ing as the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC), with some in­flu­en­tial sup­port, is con­sid­er­ing split­ting test crick­et in­to two tiers. Time alone will tell if they get “court” be­hind or “court” in the slips.

It is in­dis­putable that the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the sports sec­tor has sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed its le­gal land­scape and gov­er­nance frame­work in re­cent decades. The re­gion has be­come more ac­quaint­ed with ter­mi­nol­o­gy once re­served on­ly for lawyers. In­junc­tions, pre-ac­tion pro­to­cols, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments, and spon­sor­ship con­tracts are terms that avid sports fans now use with greater con­fi­dence. In fact, in No­vem­ber 2024, un­der the theme ‘Lex Sporti­va: The Olympics and the World of Sport’, the Fac­ul­ty of Law and the Fac­ul­ty of Sport at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (“The UWI”) wel­comed a wide range of stake­hold­ers to ex­am­ine the over­lap be­tween sport and the law.

One no­table dis­cus­sion at the UWI con­fer­ence was the pas­sage of “sun­set leg­is­la­tion” in Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, as the West In­dies and the USA joint­ly host­ed the men’s 2024 ICC T20 World Cup. The laws were en­act­ed on­ly for the event and a short pe­ri­od there­after, repli­cat­ing the leg­is­la­tion passed in 2006 when the West In­dies sub­se­quent­ly host­ed the 50-over ICC World Cup in 2007. The re­spec­tive statutes aimed to pro­tect valu­able in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights be­long­ing to the ICC, CWI, and their com­mer­cial part­ners. In 2024, leg­is­la­tors in­sti­tut­ed mea­sures to en­sure that non-spon­sors did not un­law­ful­ly pig­gy­back off the good­will and rep­u­ta­tion of the World Cup and those le­git­i­mate­ly af­fil­i­at­ed with it.

Con­nect­ed to those dis­cus­sions is the broad­er land­scape of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights for crick­eters and celebri­ties in gen­er­al. Mem­bers of the Ja­maican pub­lic may re­mem­ber the 1994 land­mark de­ci­sion of the Supreme Court in Robert Mar­ley Foun­da­tion v Di­no Michelle Ltd, where Jus­tice Clarke ruled that Bob Mar­ley’s name, im­age, and like­ness had com­mer­cial val­ue both in Ja­maica and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. As a re­sult, with­out spe­cif­ic im­age rights leg­is­la­tion, Mar­ley’s le­gal team could re­ly on the law of tort, in­clud­ing the claim of ap­pro­pri­a­tion of per­son­al­i­ty, to pro­tect Mar­ley’s rights even af­ter his death.

Al­though no sports-re­lat­ed im­age rights case has been de­cid­ed in Caribbean courts, it is be­com­ing more ev­i­dent that our ath­letes un­der­stand that their face, voice, sig­na­ture, sil­hou­ette, jer­sey num­ber, nick­name, and cel­e­bra­to­ry pos­es have rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing po­ten­tial. For in­stance, Us­ain Bolt, Dwayne Bra­vo, and Shel­ley-Ann Fras­er-Pryce have vig­i­lant le­gal teams who have ei­ther reg­is­tered trade­marks as­so­ci­at­ed with their clients or cre­at­ed pop­u­lar mer­chan­dis­ing lines with le­gal pro­tec­tion. It would not be fan­ci­ful to sup­pose that Olympic sprint cham­pi­on Julien Al­fred of St Lu­cia, Man­ches­ter City stand­out Khadi­ja Shaw of Ja­maica and Do­mini­ca’s triple jump gold medal­ist Thea La­Fond have joined the grow­ing list of Caribbean ath­letes who un­der­stand their com­mer­cial worth and are seek­ing to mon­e­tise that val­ue.

The past year al­so saw the heart­break­ing sto­ry of Ja­maican ham­mer throw­er Nayoka Clu­nis, who was un­able to par­tic­i­pate de­spite her el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for Paris Olympics 2024. This un­for­tu­nate turn of events oc­curred af­ter the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) ruled that her dis­pute did not fall with­in the ten days pre­ced­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, so that the mer­its of her non-in­clu­sion could not even be ven­ti­lat­ed. Many times, we Caribbean peo­ple are ac­cused of con­sis­tent­ly be­ing late. This was a case where, strange­ly enough, Klu­nis was too ear­ly. Since the sub­stance of her mat­ter arose in the first week of Ju­ly 2024 and the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny was on Ju­ly 26th, the CAS Ad Hoc Di­vi­sion, on lo­ca­tion in Paris, had no ju­ris­dic­tion to hear Clu­nis’ claim.

The year 2025, there­fore, promis­es to be fas­ci­nat­ing re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly. Whether we are con­sid­er­ing the pend­ing dop­ing case in­volv­ing world num­ber one ten­nis play­er Jan­nik Sin­ner, or the long-await­ed rul­ing on the 115 charges faced by Man­ches­ter City, there is much to grab our at­ten­tion in the months ahead. Our eyes are sure to be fixed on both courts.

J. Ty­rone Mar­cus is a lec­tur­er in law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, the au­thor of Sports Law in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the co-au­thor of Com­mon­wealth Caribbean Sports Law.