As artificial intelligence takes the field, sport faces new legal & governance dilemmas: Ian Blackshaw examines the state of play
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming sport—enhancing performance, officiating, talent identification and fan engagement—but its adoption is uneven and increasingly expensive.
- Serious legal risks accompany AI use, particularly around data protection, ownership of athlete data, liability for automated decisions, bias, and intellectual property rights.
- Strong governance and human oversight are essential to ensure AI supports sporting integrity, fairness and compliance as regulation struggles to keep pace with innovation.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking over the world, including the world of sport.
In this article, we will explain how AI is being applied to sport, and the main legal issues and sporting challenges which it gives rise to in practice. That being said, AI is a vast, complex and evolving phenomenon, heralding what has been rightly described as a new industrial revolution, but one with unpredictable consequences, so in this article we will only be able to scratch the
