Gambling News - July 2005 Edition

"Beckham Betting Case Dismissed"

Beckham and his team mates want their names off the betting websites.

Now that there is unlimited opportunity of online betting on the Internet, gamblers can bet on just about anything. Soccer and sports in general is no exception. Of course, a number of legal questions have arisen regarding online betting and one very recent one concerns David Beckham and his Real Madrid team mates. Beckham and his team mates want their names to disappear from betting websites and have argued, in a French court, that their names be removed. Alternatively, they want to be paid for the privilege of using their names.

Lawyers for Beckham and some of his other team members, mainly the high profile team members Luis Figo, Raul, Ronaldo, Zidane and Zinedine, argued in the French court that seven different online bookmakers, including Ladbrokes, Sportingbet and William Hill, should either pay a license fee for using the players’ and team names on their sites or remove the names altogether. The lawyers claim that bookmakers were using the club and its members’ names for purely commercial reasons and should be asked to pay a license fee. Lawyers for the bookmakers, who cooperated with each other in order to fight the injunction, argued that the use of the names in the placing of bets was accurate reporting and not for commercial or promotional reasons.

The French court decided against Real Madrid, which is a set back for the club and its members. Real Madrid, which is highly protective of the intellectual property rights of its top players, has still to decide whether they will continue the fight against the bookmakers. France has notoriously tough privacy laws so the French court’s decision does not bode well for Real Madrid. The decision to take the case to the French court in the first place was based on the French privacy laws.

A spokesperson for the Association of Remote Gambling Operators, an organization that represents online bookmakers, Clive Hawkswood, pointed out that had Real Madrid won, it would have set a precedent for all other soccer players. “If the injunction had gone against us it would have encouraged every other footballer, and in fact, every sportsman, to take similar action…. We sincerely hope this is the end of the matter," he stated.

Lawyers for the bookmakers are obviously pleased with the court’s decision and some, such as a William Hill spokesperson, Graham Sharpe, said he didn’t think the case would hold up anyhow. “We actually never believed that we had a case to answer to in the first place,” Sharpe said.

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