ENSafrica Privacy In Brief - Issue 5

The Rugby World Cup win and the fervour which surrounds this glorious win remain fresh in almost every corner of South African society. Not only did this magnificent achievement demonstrate the effect of sound leadership on the nation's success, it also created a group of individuals who will forever be regarded as legends to South African society and to rugby fans worldwide. Being a legend, however, does come at some cost, and for sports stars it raises multiple questions around the demand to feed the passion of fans and a demanding media versus the individual legend's right to privacy. In this week's feature article, we touch on some of the issues that sports stars and their teams need to consider from a privacy law perspective.

Being a celebrity sports star is not an open sesame for individuals and companies to violate the privacy rights of sports stars. While media scrutiny of sports stars has always been prevalent, and while legislation like the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 ("POPIA") has certain exceptions which generally do not constrain the media from processing personal information of data subjects, in a world being increasingly driven by data and technology, the privacy concerns of sports stars continue to increase. Some of the concerns arise from:

eager fans posting all types of personal information of sports stars on social media or other channels; misappropriation of the name or likeness of the sports star: players are increasingly becoming concerned about third parties using their name and/or image without consent, either for commercial purposes or for creating fake social media accounts; use of virtual reality technology during live games, which allows fans to have a multi-sensory experience often from the actual player's perspective. This raises multiple concerns for the player from a privacy perspective; the use of wearable technology to track the sports star's performance; the data from such devices is often made available by sports organisations to third parties such as broadcasters, gaming companies, betting organisations and even fans, usually without the consent of the sports star; the transfer of players from one club to another raises the issue of what happens to data of the player (including health data) collected by the current club. Can it be transferred to the new club either at a separate cost or as part of the transfer fee? Will consent of the sport star be required before such transfer of data...