British Association for Sport and Law Annual Conference 2016

13th October 2016 | The Olympic Stadium, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London. 

The conference will have four panel sessions covering anti-doping, sports governance, eSports and the football transfer system. In addition to the panel sessions we have our two  keynote speakers in Paula Radcliffe, MBE and Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, DBE

To book your place email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will send you the booking form. If you are a LawInSport Plus Member we will provide you with a code to claim your Members rate.

Organisations attending include:

• beIN

• British Swimming

• Dentons Blackstone

• Chambers Keystone Law

• Eversheds

• The Sports Consultancy

• NOC and Sports Confederation of Denmark

• Macfarlanes

• RFU

• Anderson Strathern

• Mishcon De Reya

• Shepherd and Wedderburn

• LawInSport

• Amateur Swimming Association

• Podium Search

• K&L Gates

• Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix

• Pitch International

• Squire, Patton, Boggs

• Edmondson Hall

• Charles Russell Speechlys

• Team Sky

• The FA

• England Golf

• Kerman & Co

• Morgan Sports Law

• DeMontfort University

• 4 New Square

• UCFB Wembley

• Stewarts Law

• Onside law

• Taylor Wessing

• Lewis Silkin

• Welsh Rugby Union

• Blackstone Chambers

• Wiggin

• Swedish Sports Confederation

• Squire, Patton, Boggs

• Sky Sports

• Outer Temple Chambers

• British Horseracing Authority

• Stevens & Bolton

• ATCO

• Beswicks Solicitors

• The Premier League

• BT Sport

• Simons Muirhead & Burton

• Manchester United

• Serle Court

• Table Tennis England

• Burness Paull & Williamsons

• Sporting Integrity

• Brabners

• Morton Fraser 

Pre-Conference Networking Drinks 12 October 2016

BASL and Mishcon de Reya LLP are hosting a networking drinks evening for delegates on Wednesday 12th October, the evening before this year's conference.

Taking place between 6.30pm and 9pm at the offices of Mishcon De Reya, Africa House, 70 Kingsway, London,WC2B 6AH this "invitation only" evening offers delegates the chance to meet and network with each other and with conference speakers.

Agenda 13 October 2016

Morning Programme

8.45am - BASL AGM

9.30am - OPENING WELCOME

9.35am - Keynote Speaker Paula Radcliffe, MBE

10.20am - Session 1: “Can sports governing bodies be trusted to run their own anti-doping programmes?”

Session Chair

Jon Taylor, Partner and Head of Sport Group, Bird & Bird

Speakers

Nick Bitel, Chairman, Sport England and CEO, The London Marathon
Paula Radcliffe, MBE, former Olympic Athlete and Women’s Marathon World Record Holder
David Walsh, Journalist, The Sunday Times

11.20am - 11.40am COFFEE BREAK

11.40am - Session 2: “With over 235 million viewers in 2015, eSports is the world’s fastest growing sport – is it a game changer for the sports media industry?”

Session Chair

Spike Laurie, Managing Director, ESL

Speakers

Sam Matthews, Founder and Chairman, Fnatic
Chester King, Chief Marketing Officer, International eGames Group
Michael O’Dell, Owner and Team Manager, Team Dignitas

12.30pm - 1.50pm LUNCH BREAK : Network and mingle during buffet lunch

Afternoon Programme

1.50pm Keynote Speaker Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE

2.35pm - Session 3: "Can government intervention eliminate corruption in sport?"

Session Chair

Sir Anthony Hooper, Former Court of Appeal Judge

Speakers

William Gaillard, Adviser to the President of the International Centre for Sport Security and former UEFA Director of Communications and Public Affairs, and Senior Adviser to UEFA President 
Jane Purdon, Head of Governance, UK Sport
Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE

3.25pm – 3.45pm COFFEE BREAK

3.45pm - Session 4: Hot Topics Session - Football Transfer Rules

Session Chair

Ian Lynam, Charles Russell Speechly partner

Speakers

Jon Smith, leading football agent
Bryan Swanson, Sky Sports News Chief News Reporter

4.35pm CHAIRMAN’S CLOSE

4.45pm Meet the BASL Board over Networking Drinks

BASL Board of Directors

Maurice Watkins, President
Adrian Barr-Smith, Chairman
Jane Mulcahy, Vice Chairman
Fahri Ecvet, Treasurer
Jason Saiban, Secretary

Andy Gray, Catherine Beloff, Daniel Saoul, Hussein Fahmy, Morris Bentata, Oliver Holland, Ashley Blake, Simon Pentol, Stephen Boyd, Mary Guest, Katie Simmonds, Stephen Ridgway, John Merzhad, Caroline McGrory and Polly Handford 

PRICE

*Only available to students in full time education. Please specify course being studied and education establishment at the time of booking.

Solicitors Regulatory Authority Accredited: CPD 6 hours

Bar Standards Board Accredited: CPD 5 hours

BOOK YOUR PLACE

To book your place email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will send you the booking form. If you are a LawInSport Plus Member we will provide you with a code to claim your Members rate.

Keynote Speakers

Paula Radcliffe

Paula Radcliffe was born in Northwich, Cheshire, in 1973, but grew up in Bedford. She joined Bedford and County Athletics Club at the age of 11 and competed at the World Cross Country Championships at 16.

After graduating from Loughborough University with a first-class degree in modern languages in 1996, she devoted herself full-time to her running and is now acknowledged as one of the finest athletes of the modern era.

As well as her achievements on the track, Paula has established herself as the master of the ultimate distance race, the marathon. She holds the world record and won the London Marathon in 2002, 2003 and 2005. In November 2004 she won the New York Marathon in breath-taking style and in 2005 she took the gold medal at the World Championships in Helsinki for the same distance.

Paula was awarded an MBE in June 2002 and later that year was voted the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year.
 

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, DBE

Britain's greatest ever paralympic athlete, Tanni Grey-Thompson crowned a magnificent career with two gold medals in the 100 and 400 metres in the 2004 Athens Paralympics. It took her remarkable medal haul over 16 years and five Paralympic Games to 11 gold, 3 silver and a bronze and established her as one of the most gifted and courageous sportswomen of her generation.

Born with spina bifida and confined to a wheelchair from the age of seven, Tanni began wheelchair racing at 13. At 17 she joined the Rookwood paraplegic club in Cardiff and started her competitive career. She went on to train for the 1988 Paralympics in Seoul from where she returned with a bronze in the 200 metres. She won her first London Wheelchair Marathon in 1992 and later that same year, in the Barcelona Paralympics she hit the headlines with quadruple gold medals in the 100, 200, 400 and 800 metres. She went on to win the London Wheelchair Marathon again in 1994, 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2002, completing the latter just three months after giving birth to daughter Carys.

In the Atlanta Paralympics, Tanni won one gold medal, in the 800 metres, and three silver medals in the 100, 200 and 400 metres. She was back to the gold standard with a vengeance in Sydney in 2000, repeating her tour de force of Barcelona, with gold medals in the 100, 200, 400 and 800 metres.

Away from the track, she has played an active role in administration. She is the Vice-President of the Women's Sports Foundation, a member of the United Kingdom Sports Council, a patron of the British Sports Trust and she was a member of the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games Organising Committee. Her latest appointment is with UK Athletics to help identify Britain's paralympic stars of the future.

In 2003 she was awarded the Freedom of the City of Cardiff. In 2005 she was created ‘Dame’ Tanni Grey-Thompson for her services to sport. In March 2010, Tanni was created a life peer on the recommendation of the House of Lords Appointments Commission and was conferred as Baroness Grey-Thompson, of Eaglescliffe in the County of Durham.

Speakers

Jon Taylor

Jon Taylor is a partner and head of the Sports Group at Bird & Bird. He advises a wide range of sports bodies on commercial matters, contentious matters (including challenges to regulatory decisions, rights protection programmes, and commercial disputes), and regulatory and disciplinary issues. He is an experienced advocate, appearing regularly before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, as well as a number of internal sports tribunals. He is a member of Sport Resolutions' Panel of Arbitrators, of the British Horseracing Authority’s Ethics Committee, and of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Working Group on Legal Matters. He is co- editor (with Adam Lewis QC) of the leading UK sports law text, Sport: Law and Practice (3rd Edn 2014), and was Director of Studies in Sports Law at King's College, London from 2000 to 2007. He will be the Chair of the WADA Independent Observer team at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Nick Bitel

Nick Bitel was appointed Chair of Sport England in April 2013 following three years as a Board Member. He has been the Chief Executive of the London Marathon since 1995. The event has grown substantially in that time and now sees over 35,000 finishers each year who between them raise a world record £52 million per annum.

Nick is also a solicitor and consultant at Kerman & Co specialising in sports law. His major event clients include The Wimbledon Championships and the Ryder Cup. Nick is a Board Member of the London Legacy Development Corporation. He is also a Board Member of UK Sport.

David Walsh

David Walsh began his career as a journalist reporting for the Leibtrim Observer and at the age of 25 he became the editor. In 1996 he joined The Sunday Times and in 1998, David began working on the story about doping in professional cycling alongside another Sunday Times journalist called Paul Kimmage. Together they managed to expose the extent of illegal doping that was taking place within the professional cycling circuit, in particular the US postal team and its leader Lance Armstrong. His article written in 2001 and titled 'Champ or Cheat' asked the question of why Lance Armstrong, a supposed clean rider would work with the controversial Italian Doctor, Michele Ferrari.

David has also written three books about Lance Armstrong, in which he revealed his findings and suspicions of drug use. He is a four-time winner of the Irish Sports Writer of the Year and a four-time winner of the UK Sports Writer of the Year. David was recently judged Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards for his work on the Lance Armstrong story.

In October 2013 it was announced that his book Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong was to be adapted into a film, starring Chris O'Dowd as Walsh and Ben Foster as Armstrong, and directed by Stephen Frears. The film was released in Autumn 2015.

Jane Purdon

Jane Purdon joined UK Sport in May 2015 as Head of Governance and Leadership. Prior to this she worked for 14 years at the highest levels of professional English football.

UK Sport is the strategic lead body for high performance sport in the UK, and invests public funds to enable British Olympic and Paralympic athletes to maximise their chances of medal success. Jane’s responsibilities include ensuring that the national sports governing bodies in which UK Sport invests operate to robust governance standards.

William Gaillard

William Gaillard, is Adviser to the President of the International Centre for Sport Security. Prior to joining the International Centre for Sport Security, William was UEFA’s Director of Communications and Public Affairs and was the Senior Advisor to the UEFA President Michel Platini. He advised the UEFA President on political issues, communication and social responsibility. Prior to UEFA, William had an impressive professional career including Head of Media Relations at the European Commission Delegation to the US in Washington DC, Chief of External Relations at the United Nations, Director of Communication and Political Affairs at the UN International Drug Control Programme and Director of Corporate Communication of the International Air Transport Association.

Sir Anthony Hooper

The Right Honourable Sir Anthony Hooper is an associate member of Matrix Chambers, a fellow of the Judicial Institute of University College London and Chair of the Expert Witness Institute. After eleven years teaching in English and Canadian law schools, Sir Anthony practiced at the criminal bar in England and Wales. He became a High Court judge in 1994, sitting in the Queen’s Bench Division and in the Employment Appeal Tribunal. From 2004-2012 he was a member of the Court of Appeal.

In 2013 he chaired a Commission set up by Public Concern at Work and produced a wide ranging report on whistleblowing in the workplace.

In 2014 Sir Anthony was appointed to investigate four individuals whose conduct in relation to the Russian marathon runner Lilya Shobukhova was alleged to be in breach of the IAAF Code of Ethics. He finalised the report in August 2015 and the individuals have subsequently been sanctioned by the Ethics Commission.

Spike Laurie

Spike Laurie has been International Business Development Director and UK Co-Managing Director of ESL, the world’s largest esports company, since September 2015. Spike is also currently responsible for the roll out of ESL’s Brazilian operations. Before joining ESL Spike was responsible for retention and engagement across Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment games in EMEA and globally responsible for the Mortal Kombat X competitive play and esports programmes. When time allows, Spike is a keen supporter of UK games industry charities Gamesaid and Special Effect.

Chester King

Chester King is a co-owner and Global Board Director of the International Group of companies, which was founded in 1964. International Group has worked in 52 countries and completed 480 healthcare, leisure and sporting projects.

Chester is CEO of the ‘International eGames Group’ which operates The eGames - an international eSports competition, launched in Rio August 2016 – where Pro Gamers represent their country for medals.

Chester is also Acting CEO for the not for profit ‘British eSports Association’ - the National Body for eSports in the UK for grassroots players up to professionals.

Sam Matthews

Sam Matthews is the Founder and Chairman of Fnatic which he set up in 2004. Since that time Fnatic pro-gamers have won thousands of tournaments and collected over US$10 million in prizes across more than 20 games – making it one of the most successful eSports brands worldwide. Team Fnatic have over 8 million fans on social media and a global audience each month of tens of millions. In addition to his work with Fnatic, Sam has also founded ‘UGame’ – a social network designed exclusively for gamers and ‘Neverbland’ a company developing digital products for multiple partners.

Michael O’Dell

Michael O’Dell is Managing Director and one of the original players of the Battlefield 1942 team that created Team Dignitas in 2003. Michael is responsible for all aspects of running the company, along with the management of staff and players.