Broadcasting The Olympics In Brazil And Beyond

The key legislation governing nearly all aspects of sports law in Brazil, the "Pelé Law", named for the then-Brazilian Sports Minister and former footballer, Pelé, provides that sports entities (such as teams, leagues, federations or confederations) own the media rights over sports events that they organise and/or take part in. These rights, known as "arena rights", are generally exploited through three channels: (1) broadcast agreements (2) broadcast licences and (3) advertising contracts.

Overview of sports broadcasting law in Brazil

Broadcast agreements for sports events in Brazil are heavily dominated by Rede Globo (Central and South America's largest commercial TV network and the second-largest commercial TV network in terms of annual revenue, worldwide) and its cable channel, SporTV, which usually retains the rights to license the arena rights to third parties. The buyer has the option to acquire specific rights for each platform, as TV rights, radio, internet, mobile telephony, and so on, and for specific territories, languages, types of payment (such as pay-per-view), and type of programme (live or delayed transmissions, and so on).

The broadcast agreements and licences may also regulate advertising exploitation, covering areas such as advertisements on team clothing or at the sports venue. In other cases, the payment made by the network includes advertising revenue and the broadcast licences may then restrict the advertising made by the licensee.

Another area of exploitation covered by the Pelé Law is image rights, including rights of publicity, which are assured by the Brazilian Constitution and Civil Code. The Pelé Law provides that athletes' image rights should be compensated with 5% of the arena rights paid by the networks to the sports entities.

In terms of intellectual property rights belonging to sports entities, these are subject to acquisition and ownership in a broadly similar way as under UK law. Whilst there is no doctrine of "fair use" or "fair dealing" in Brazil as such, there are limitations in the Law on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights effectively providing almost identical defences to the "fair dealing" defence, such as reporting current events and quotation for the purposes of criticism or review.

Olympic specific rules

Shortly after Rio de Janeiro was selected to host the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Brazilian Congress passed The Olympic Act, which contains a number of special rules required for the...