ABSTRACT
A new legal term has entered the lexicon of football fans. Image rights, broadly defined as the commercial appropriation of someone’s personality, including indices of their image, voice, name and signature, entered football consciousness during the 2000/1 season. For many football fans, a community that have long scrutinised the contractual negotiations of professional footballers, image rights must seem just another stage in the ongoing commercialism that characterises the modern game. Although footballers have been exploiting their fame and notoriety for commercial ends for many years, with George Best arguably the starting point of a new generation of modern marketable players, image rights present a new departure in the economics of the sport.
