With the advent of Internet betting, interested parties can bet on just about anything, and soccer is no exception. Not surprisingly, there are a number of legal questions that have arisen due to online betting and a 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.

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

For now, the French court has decided against Real Madrid, which is a real set back for the club and its members. Real Madrid, which is very protective of the intellectual property rights of its top players, has not yet made it clear whether they will continue their fight against the bookmakers, but France’s decision does not bode well for them since the decision to take the case to the French court in the first place was based on the fact that France has notoriously tough privacy laws.

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

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