Episode 64 - Yang-Wahn Hew & Azan Marwah

In this episode, we examine sports law, a practice area that is evolving rapidly as Hong Kong builds world-class sports facilities and hosts an increasing number of elite international sporting events. Our Senior Partner Colin Cohen is joined by barristers Yang-Wahn Hew and Azan Marwah to discuss the multiple governance, regulatory and compliance issues facing sports stakeholders. Stay tuned. 

Host: Colin Cohen
Director: Niall Donnelly
Producer and VO: Thomas Latter     

Established in 1985, Boase Cohen & Collins is an independent law firm equipped with Hong Kong knowledge and global reach. Please visit our website. 

Transcript

[00:48:00] Colin: Hello, everyone. I'm absolutely delighted to be joined today by not one but two guests, both of whom are barristers, and we're gonna consider the fast, evolving, and highly topical practice area of sports law. My guests are Yang-Wahn Hew, who is a barrister of Des Voeux Chambers and sits on the Department of Justice Advisory Committee on Sports Resolution.

Azan Marwah​ is also a barrister, being a member of Pantheon Chambers in Admiralty. And one of his key practice areas is indeed sports law. Respectively, Yang and Azan are chairman and vice chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Associations Committee on Sports Law. So welcome to both of you and as I always ask my guests, what's been keeping you busy recently, maybe Azan can back first.

[00:48:55] Azan: Alright, I have been having a bit of a wildly different year where everything is different every day. Yesterday I was prosecuting in a private prosecution. In the eastern magistrates court, which is a very different thing for me. But today it will be family law and fraud and asset recovery.

And tomorrow I think I have public law. So every day is very different from me.

[00:49:22] Colin: And you still got time to play hockey?

[00:49:23] Azan: Yeah. Sundays are reserved 

[00:49:25] Colin: Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And what's been keeping you busy?

[00:49:28] Yang: So I have been busy with several ongoing matters, including a trial that started earlier this year and that will conclude next month a mediation and some judgments from recent stints of sitting in the high court.

As chair of the our committee, Azan's and my Committee on Sports Law, I've also been looking into planning our initiatives for the upcoming year. Bearing in mind that we have lots of exciting developments in relation to sports law and dispute resolution. And we think it's important to ensure that everyone in the community benefits from this momentum.

[00:49:59] Colin: So that's good as well. And also, you and I have been keeping a little bit busy with dealing with some external examining.

[00:50:04] Yang: We have.

[00:50:05] Colin: We've got paper's we've been building up on my tray, but we are getting there. We're nearly finished.

[00:50:10] Yang: I think we're nearly there.

[00:50:10] Colin: we're nearly fair. It was. That's good.

[00:50:12] Azan: I block out external examining. I treat it as a PTSD.

[00:50:16] Colin: I do that as well. Sports, it's a multi-billion global industry with huge issues. Regulatory compliance, and sports law is growing rapidly and it is becoming. Absolutely necessary here. And perhaps you could give your views as to why you, we feel that sports is coming to the forefront of everything.

In the past couple of years ago, no one cared less about sports, although everyone loves sports, and yet now it's on everyone's agenda where we're looking at everything. The Liv Golf had just been completed this weekend and we are coming up to the Rugby Sevens, which will be in April as well.

[00:50:54] Azan: Well, Hong Kong now has a world class sports entertainment venue in Kai Tak which is a result of billions of dollars of investment. Hong Kong has numerous world class sporting events. These are massive investments. They bring so much to Hong Kong.

They have a multiplier effect on the economy. But. When you have those kinds of investments, you need a supporting infrastructure. And that's everything from contracts to railroads and stadia. But it also means you have to have dispute resolution mechanisms.

And so the reason why it may seem like everyone's talking about sports now, but I think in fact you and I have been talking about the need for the evolving industry of sports in Hong Kong, to have that kind of legal infrastructure for I think a decade, is the first time you and I sat down to talk about it.

And that's hard work. Many backroom meetings to get the government to be fair to them, always been on side. But convincing the different stakeholders to come together. And we just now at the moment where those different strings are coming together to form quite a strong chord.

[00:52:03] Colin: Yeah I think that's fair, and what is also so important regarding sports. Everybody loves their sports. Everybody, premier Football, TV with the internet, everyone's saying what's happening, you're following your team. Even participating in sports and yet there are lots of legal issues that have to be addressed and dealt with.

What's your feel as to, the government have, in their policy addressed sports is dealt with. The only chief executive I know who's dealt with it is been the existing one. Never dealt with before. Never even raised before. 

[00:52:31] Yang: I think it's fair to say that this particular administration has put a lot of emphasis on developing sport and sports dispute resolution over the last few years.

Just a few examples. I think in 2024 to 25, they allocated nearly $1 billion to the Hong Kong Sports Institute. There's a more than 40% increase over 2019 to 2020. And of course in this year's budget, they've announced that 1.2 billion Hong Kong dollars will be injected into the sports portion of the Arts and Sports Development fund to promote sports development, strengthening training for team sport athletes, and so on and so forth.

Then of course, we have Kai Tak, which is the fruition of several years of very hard work and a lot of investment in every sense, not just monetary but a lot of sweat equity I think has been put in. I think you had Jeremy Irvin off from Kai Tak Sports Park on the Podcast.

[00:53:23] Colin: Yes, we did. We did. 

[00:53:24] Yang: So I think your regular listeners will appreciate how much effort has been put into that as part of promoting Hong Kong as a center for International Sporting disputes. Events, and of course, hopefully attendant disputes and sports as an industry through other things such as the n-mark system.

And so on. But I think where we go from here is we have this world class hardware. We actually also have world class dispute resolution software. And I think one thing that all of us in this room have been working toward for the last 10 plus years or so, has been in relation to connecting that sort of world class dispute resolution software with the sporting world.

And, creating some sort of synergy with all the hardware and events that are coming by

[00:54:08] Colin: Perhaps Azan, you could expand. Just to help our listeners, we all know sport. We all know we got the events here, we got the rugby, we got the golf. But behind the scenes. even the basic thing of immigration is an issue whereby you have athletes coming into Hong Kong, the football teams are followers on And it is an issue, and Getting the work permits because they're paid here and people forget to do that. I remember having to do that for the Hong Kong sevens, I was involved in that. Next minute, the team from Shanghai arrived, we're coming to do sports. Of course there was no prize money. I was able to convince them to let them in. They weren't going to, but in the end it worked out.

[00:54:45] Azan: Yeah. So I agree with what Yang was saying, that the administration are fairly good, but there are always these little things that you don't think of until the last minute.

And very often it's not that immigration haven't thought about it, it's that the organizers haven't thought about it, they haven't professionalized that aspect of it. And in the context of sport, we have everything from amateur. International or national Olympic level stuff. You have international professional sports like the rugby.

You have local professional sports and local amateur sports. Each one of those has its own set of problems. I can tell you that immigration department do have special visas for sports. They have professional visas for sports.

This infrastructure exists, but I very often see mistakes will be made. You take the example of visas, short-term visas for international events, but it's also things like if you are a sportsman, you come to Hong Kong, you are a professional sportsman, you're playing in the local leagues at the professional that the top tier, you have to have MPF.

And that might not be there, or you might only be coming out for the season and not realize you have to have these additional administrative things done. And in favor of the administration. They are trying to build up those systems so that the organizers are aware of these requirements, but we really have this disconnect.

Where the administration is trying to professionalize it. The the hardware of the stadia and the major investors, they are professionalizing, but the sort of sports governing bodies the local associations, they are fundamentally amateur, even in sports that have already professionalized in Hong Kong.

And they don't have budgets for things like, paying lawyers to draft contracts. And I've seen contracts, articles of association for local sports bodies that are clearly written by construction lawyers because those were the volunteer lawyers that had available at the time.

And I've seen a one arbitration clause that says arbitration to be conducted in accordance with the HKIC construction arbitration rules. Just because that's what the lawyer that was available 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, he was a construction lawyer. So that's what they have. And that kind of illness at visas, at employment arrangements, at dispute resolution clauses at articles of association, that middle point is amateur and it needs to professionalize.

[00:57:08] Colin: it's a learning curve and we're getting better and better. Yang, you sit on the advisory committee on Sports Dispute Resolution, which was launched by the DOJ, the Department of Justice, just over a year ago. Can you briefly explain its role in respect to that. 

[00:57:24] Yang: Sure, the role of the committee. There are several members of which I'm one, there are other members from the CSTB and DOJ. The role is to generally advise the government on how to best develop suitable dispute resolution systems for sports in Hong Kong. So that concerns mediation of course and arbitration because one of these situations where I think the government has seen that it's useful to have input from all stakeholders in deciding how to run initiatives such as the pilot scheme for sports dis dispute resolution which again, after much hard work from everyone over the past 10 years or so has come to fruition. I think in earlier this year where last month they announced that they would be accepting applications for mediation and arbitration under the scheme.

So it's an ongoing process. It will continue, as far as I can tell, as long as it needs to. But it's a rewarding process and involves meeting with stakeholders and considering various matters that might arise including in relation to drafting rules and paperwork.

But I think that's a very high level overview of the work that we do.

[00:58:34] c

[00:58:34] Colin: Yes. And Azan, if you want to add something to that as well, it is interesting in that. We have many sports associations here, football, cricket, golf those associations have all their disciplinary matters regulated by the international, let's say for cricket, you have the cricket association, and yet the overall umbrella for discipline is the ICC.

They set out all the codes of conduct and is up to the association to follow that, and that is dealt with the same way. 

The same with. Doping and football is all dealt with by that. But what we are trying to do is to offer an alternative because at the moment now, it's the cricket looking after the cricketers and they felt it's all dealt by one party as opposed to an independent dispute resolution.

[00:59:23] Azan: The people might have heard of ICC, they've heard of Fifa. They've heard perhaps of sports arbitration at that international level. And they might not realize that all of these systems there developed specifically to deal with certain tier of sport. Even in cricket, even in football, they don't necessarily apply at the local level unless the local level has opted into that. And most of the time nobody really wants disputes to be dealt with in Switzerland when they're really about Hong Kong. People might have expected, oh perhaps that international level will deal with the Lionel Messi coming to Hong Kong. That whole debacle, but most of these agreements, they don't specify that they're to be dealt with under that international level. And most of them, like I say, are a bit of a hodgepodge. Most sports, even professionalized sports at that local level, they have their own amateur disciplinary and government structures, and they really rely on volunteers.

But those volunteers have varying level of legal and professional background, and they may not really be equipped to handle complex disputes. And Yang and I were talking about it, but I increasingly see some sports are professionalizing. In fact, in Hong Kong, there are several sports where the top tier is entirely professional, fully paid.

Most if not all of the players aren't just semi-pro, they are pro they're being paid to do it. But when you look at the national governing body, the national governing body is not professionalized, and the people who are running the disputes or running the governance are purely volunteer.

And I have increasingly seen where those investors behind those big clubs or big teams are turning to, even last week getting a call about another team, another club, having this problem where they're saying we can't even get a decision.

We've been given a temporary ban or this player's been given a temporary ban, we can't even get a hearing. Or there was a hearing but there was no evidence called, there were no witnesses called. We didn't even have a chance to put in our submissions.

And that kind of amateurism that comes from people essentially reading what are very barely written rules and then trying to make it up as they go along, that's widespread and it means that people are less willing to invest money interprofessional the sports that leads to the higher quality sports that leads to more entertainment more successful sporting.

[01:01:45] Colin: Yes, and I should point out that the last time the three of us met together was last October and we did a sports arbitration demonstration at the Hong Kong Baptist University. The event which the bar and the Law Society got together, I was asked to be one of the judging panel. 

And you gave the welcoming speech and you were the narrator and it was amazing. We had numerous stakeholders. When I got there, I couldn't believe we had so many in the whole packed out room. All from different areas, from all the different associations where we ran a sort of mock...

[01:02:17] Azan: I would call it semi scripted. Semi scripted.

We always have a wild card on the tribunal.

[01:02:22] Colin: You think? Do you think I was being a little bit badly behaved? 

[01:02:25] Azan: Your contribution was really up there.

It is very valuable, and it created a dynamism that we really wanted to create in the room.

[01:02:32] Colin: Actually, that's for our listeners. It was a sort of mock dispute resolution concerning a squash competition whereby the racket got thrown in the tunnel and the racket hit the person. And it was lots of issues to be dealt with and a decision because the competition was ongoing.

The panel was convened as. Make a decision really quickly as to whether or not that person should be disqualified, allowed to play whatever penalty there was, and we had lasted for an hour. It was quite good.

[01:02:59] Azan: You've put your finger on what is one of the most important unique features of sports. Sports is all about time.

The season, the match, the game; decisions have to be taken quickly. To that I'd probably add fair play and competition. The ethos of sport being quite different from other areas of human activity.

But time is so important and that's why it's not good enough to have rules and structures written for what will take seven years to resolve. This things have to be resolved quickly.

[01:03:28] Colin: Yes, and what's very important, to give our listeners a good example, the recent Winter Olympics. I think the Bob Slay guy had his helmet. And on his helmet he had pictures of the people, Ukrainian, who had people who had got injured, got killed. It was quite political.

And then there was a issue as to whether or not he could wear that helmet. The Olympic Association says, no, you're not, you can't. They tried to have a hearing. They didn't happen. And he got suspended. He competed but got disqualified 'cause he wore the helmet, which is quite interesting that. 

[01:04:02] Azan: For these kinds of events. Even at the national games you literally have arbitration panels sitting in the wings, ready to make those decisions quickly.

Hearings that night, quick hearings in the way of immediately making those decisions. It's quite unique for sport.

[01:04:18] Colin: Yeah. And for the rugby as well. Let's say when you have the world cut rugby, you have a panel there all the time. And that all the rules are set out for immediate decisions as to a player get cited.

Again, cited means that, he's seen off the ball, gouging someone's eye out. Yeah, I'm using an extreme example and then he says I didn't really mean to do it, only ban me for one week as opposed to six weeks, as well. But that is very interesting and the object of us doing that demonstration was to try to convince the associations that it's a good idea to use the pilot scheme and to use the dispute resolution mechanism to deal with these disputes. So if Hong Kong is to become the center of, sports is growing and you come in, you've got your golf, your squash, everything you could imagine. And there's always issues happening even on the running ones.

You've got disputes over the marathon, did that person cut a corner or everything else? You need that set up. So Hong Kong has to have the infrastructure to deal with that as well.

[01:05:17] 

[01:05:17] Colin: Let's consider some of the main sports law in general. Some real life examples that has arisen.

You would agree that the key areas are regulatory governance we've spoken about, but we've also got commercial sponsorship. Intellectual property and anti-doping. Now they're quite big topics, et cetera as well. And we really gotta get the lawyers involved in those particular areas whereby we can have decent people who know how to draft contracts, how to deal the intellectual property issues as well.

Your experience of that?

[01:05:49] Azan: Sport is entertainment and it draws so many eyeballs. To Host the Olympics a jurisdiction actually has to pass special legislation to protect the IP of the Olympics. It's that hard coded into how the sport at that level operates.

So there's barely a sport where you do not see people plastering commercial and non-commercial IP all over themselves. And that is all because sports draws eyes. And the arrangements and agreements related to sport are intrinsically IP agreements. And that means at the same time that what the owners of the IP very often want to control what's being said or done around the sport similar to I guess any celebrity.

Oh, we don't say anything that might hurt the brand. So you have this ongoing conversation between brands and sport. 

[01:06:41] Yang: Yeah, I think it's the confluence of all these factors which mix sports disputes and sports law. Interesting and really unique because Azan said, it's actually mainly a commercial, but also IP related activity. And everyone likes to watch sport and focus on the stories behind it. So there's so many different levels that are there. Then of course you have the anti-doping point, as you mentioned, Colin.

That in a way is actually what really got me interested in sport law. Because of things like how the Lance Armstrong scandal unfolded. And there's obviously a technical and scientific element to that as well.

just 

[01:07:20] Colin: Let me explain to our listeners very quickly, this was the Armstrong was his cycle in the Tour de France, and he won it every single year. He actually was doped up to the eyeballs, I'll put it bluntly like that. Had his blood redone and all the rest as well.

[01:07:33] Azan: Actually the way I got very interested in sport. I used to love cricket, but my love of cricket was killed by one thing. And it's something that I know you've had a lot of experience in, corruption.

[01:07:42] Colin: Oh yes. 

[01:07:43] Azan: I know that, for example, in Hong Kong. This was the top performing football market in China. All the top footballers were in China. We had a fantastic football association here that was doing high level football. Thousands and thousands of people attending matches killed by corruption. My own personal love of cricket killed by corruption. And we very often see in Hong Kong.

I regret to say, we do have corruption in sport, particularly professionalized sport often related to betting. 

[01:08:12] Colin: Almost 80% linked to betting. And all the cricket, South Africa and the issues in India the world, you do not realize how much cricket is shown in India and how much all the betting and the events in the England, in the Pakistani-England test match, the bowlers were corrupted to bet on how many no balls will be bowled in the specific over.

And then he got paid to do all that. He ended up in prison.

[01:08:36] Azan: And you have this danger related to sport where people are dedicating their lives, especially their young lives, to a career in sport. And it's that nexus that touch point between amateur sport and professional sport where people, are especially susceptible to corruption. And when I look at the sports around us and I think how can we professionalize, how we can get a sport to that level where people can afford and not really be as susceptible and at the same time have governance at this high quality that you have an effective check against corruption.

That's how I got into this and thought we've got to be doing something. It does lead to funny things though. I don't know if you were involved in this, but there was a recent corruption scandal where one of the members of the syndicate I can't remember if you were involved for one of these defendants.

They had a joint WhatsApp group and they're so brazen in their corruption. Their WhatsApp group was called criminals.

[01:09:30] Colin: But again, Yang was talking about the importance of doping and that's a real big area because for example, the Hong Kong football club plays in the Premier League, and I know that for could being, I used to be on Secretary of the Football club and heavily involved and after every match, all the players are tested.

And then there's blind test. You've gotta be available to be tested in professionals all the time as well.

Short notice and then the sort of what they do. The best way to do is think, oh, I forgot about it. Then you'll get disciplined to dealing with that.

And that's an area which a lot of legal advice coming in, dealing with it. Your A sample, your B sample, complicated area. 

[01:10:07] Azan: Yeah, it's very technical because doping has reached a level of sophistication, which most people are simply unaware of. There's intermittent doping. So the reason for this, what you were calling blind testing is because what people were doing is they would dope between matches or between testing.

So they would improve their capacity but it wouldn't show up by the time of the examination of the testing. 

[01:10:28] Yang: Yes, it's highly technical and that's obviously also why they have things like in off season, requirements as well. And of course the biological passports which have been introduced mainly in professional level sport, I would've thought.

But yeah, people will still think if I can bend the rules or figure out some way to get around them, then they will do whatever they can, I think because there's their entire career at stake.

[01:10:51] Azan: And there's an industry around it. That means that even when the sports person themselves is not intentionally doping, but the backup crew behind them the infrastructure are incentivized for them to win.

They themselves are sometimes unknowingly themselves doping. But that will not absolve them of responsibility. And so you have this need to actually audit. Not just the sports person, but the infrastructure around them.

[01:11:18] Yang: Yes, at this level, the sophisticated doping can only be achieved by frankly a team of engineers and scientists, which will back them up. Just like it, engineers and scientists are needed to back up any serious sports team in other legitimate fields. I think in ways.

[01:11:33] Colin: yeah and a good example is that there is another idea where this individual has decided to have the doping games. So he says we're running a sports, we're gonna have an athletics meet, take what you like and we'll do the event on that basis.

I don't think that's got very much,,

[01:11:48] Azan: It comes at a cost. 

[01:11:49] Colin: It comes at a huge cost as well. The other area which I'm a little interested in, of course, sports people are very highly paid athletes. We are having more and more professionism here, contracts to be drafted, fixed term contracts, non restrained, competition area.

That's a huge area for lawyers to get involved as well.

[01:12:07] Azan: Yeah, and I think because of that transition from amateurism to professionalism, people aren't including that in the way they assess well, how I should go forward.

I need to have an agent. I need to have a professional manager, someone who is conversant with my legal responsibilities, who's taking taking that advice, taking that best practice, inserting dispute resolution clauses in my personal contracts, watching out for these anti-competitive controlling exploitative contract clauses.

And that's not just at the club level or at the governing body level, or the sponsor level, but at the individual sports person when they're signing those contracts.

[01:12:45] Colin: Yeah. And that's very important as well, because that leads us into, you have the issues with athletes and they have lots of issues, safety issues. And one big issue at the moment now is the rugby players concussion and personal injury. And now it's being decided that lots of footballers who have been professional, headed the ball. And in the old days, the pitches were wet and dirty and hit, and that ball come into your head. Now the school's football, they won't allow the kids to head the ball 'cause they're worried about issues of safety and being sued as well.

That's a new area. A completely new ball game, excuse the pun, coming in as well.

Yeah. Yeah. But no the rugby thing with concussion and, dementia coming on early, it's a big problem in America as well.

[01:13:33] Yang: Yeah, I think there's a big suit at the moment.

[01:13:35] Colin: Yes, there is. Yes.

[01:13:36] Yang: With including some world Cup team members from 2003 and so on, and it'd be interesting to see how it develops.

[01:13:44] Azan: This is the touchpoint with insurance law and we have I all too often see that because at some point some responsible person has come in and said, oh, we've got to have liability insurance for this competition.

And I won't say which sports, but there'll be like a youth development team for a particular sport. And you've got under nineteens or under sixteens or whatever. And there'll be an accident at training and then somebody puts their hand up and says, is there liability insurance covering this training? And there isn't. 

[01:14:14] Colin: The rugby sevens, very sad, an athlete broke his neck.

is many years ago. The rugby had insurance for that and cover all the medical costs as well. When I was involved in dealing with advising the Cricket Association on the Cricket sixes in Kowloon, the cricket balls flying over. We had to get cover, so Cricket balls hitting a passer by.

All those issues in dealing with and making sure the players are covered, it is a lot of issues, which really comes us back to how important sports law is. It's dynamic. It covers everything from employment, to discipline, to contracts, and to dispute resolution across the board.

I would like to see it as a topic at a university. It could encompasses everything. 

[01:14:58] Azan: It is its own discipline. And I know, you mentioned Baptist University. The Universities, they're expressing interest. There is a desire to do this, and it's one of those things that's going to have to go along with Hong Kong's development as a sports law hub.

[01:15:14] Yang: Yes. Obviously apart from it being taught as a subject, there are also other options to help develop it, like a further demonstrations, a mooting competition. And now that people can do it online. I think quite a lot of successful sports law moots have been held within Asia and overseas as well. So, there are many options for us to explore developing sports law and building it up into becoming subject at university. I think it's mainly the European Universities which so far focus on it as a full course or subject though. 

[01:15:46] Colin: Yes, one area for lawyers whereby you can be quite a lucrative area for lawyers is becoming a FIFA football agent. And you have to be a lawyer, you pass your exam and then you become a registered Fifa, to do all the transfers when you take a big cut.

[01:16:00] Yang: That's right itself, they've just revised the rules I think.

[01:16:03] Colin: Yes, they have. They have, yeah. Yeah, those ones as well. Looking forward. As to the future of sports law. Everybody says, oh, every youngster, oh, I wanna do sports law. It's a sexy sort of catch label. But it's requires a lot of resilience.

It requires a lot of knowledge, and there's lots of in enhanced regulations and governance. And how are we gonna do that? They say they wanna throw money in to it. The government, they want Hong Kong to be a sporting legal hub for sports law. But you've gotta have people who are able to do that, who know what they're talking about.

It's one thing saying it, and the next thing is doing it.

[01:16:36] Azan: And right now we have a fragmented approach to sports. You'll know horse racing is its own animal. It has its own set of rules. And there are people who've been doing that area of law for a very long time.

But that's totally disconnected from football, from rugby. I actually think we have to have a multiple, angled approach to dealing with this. We should be sending more arbitrators to to become international sports arbitrators. We should be sending students not only to our local trainings.

We should be sending people on secondment to Australia, to the US, to Europe, to Switzerland, to get a direct experience of what's working and what's not working in those other jurisdictions and bring back. We can't imagine that we're going to reinvent the wheel here.

We should be going and learning what we can from the top alternative markets. And that will be really important also in connecting Hong Kong with those other markets. For example, snooker dispute resolution. It doesn't take place here. How many top level snooker players are from Hong Kong? But to have that kind of experience, we need to send our people to go and have that experience elsewhere and bring it back.

[01:17:47] Yang: Yes. That's part of it.

I think, I agree entirely with Azan. It's very important. There are a lot of local initiatives, which I think could also benefit from bringing back of this experience. I think it's helpful to highlight, I think that the S-F-N-O-C has actually formulated a code of governance for compliance by all of the national sports associations.

Which was submitted to the CSTB, and they're going to review implementation of that code by member associations early next year and possibly intervene as necessary. There are also other ongoing initiatives locally, such as I think the I-C-A-C-S-F and OC and Jockey Club and the Chartered Governance Institute have launched a Sports Governance and Integrity Alliance.

So I think these initiatives locally are very helpful, but of course they can only be assisted by further integration and discussion of how best practices abroad arise and may be relevant to Hong Kong.

[01:18:38] Colin: Yeah. I agree entirely, but the local sporting associations have gotta agree to do that. They love it to keep it in-house. They've gotta say, no, we agree that's the way to deal with. Another topic, ESports is massive. US dollar 12 billion was the global valuation was gonna come up in this in 2030, which is not too far away. Hong Kong likes its, eSports as well. I think that's an interesting area. Your views on that?

[01:19:06] Azan: So eSport a hundred percent. But e eSports is another aspect of sport. Yes. Is it in the same way that racing is another kind of sport in the same way that chess is another, I think it's called mind sports.

These are high level, high stakes sporting events than the National Game of China Way Chi or Go. They there is so much disconnection. I can tell you I've run into professional eSports players in Hong Kong or former professional eSports players in Hong Kong, and they are in a way, at the moment, their own animal because eSports revolve around particular IP, particular games which are typically controlled by the game publisher. And they're writing their own dispute resolution clauses. They have their own mechanisms. They still need the same things that you need in the rest of sport. And there is one crossover I have in particular in mind. What's it called? Drone sports.

Which is drone racing and even whether they call it basically drone fighting, robot fighting, These kinds of things, they have the same set of problems, including insurance, including the nexus between professional and amateur. But because the commercial players are fundamentally different and the hardware and software is fundamentally different, that requires additional specialisms when we deal with them as lawyers.

[01:20:23] Yang: Yes. I think that because of the major involvement of publishers it really creates a different angle as opposed to the sort of more universal way knowledge of how to kick a ball around with feet and maybe lesser heads nowadays. There's also room for development of hybrid sports in a way.

For example there's the popular video game Grant Turismo, Sony ran an academy to select, the best Grand Turismo players to become real life racing car drivers from which several drivers have actually graduated over the years. And in fact, there was a recent, movie was made about the experience of one of them.

So it builds another aspect and another angle to the sporting industry, which can help. I think everyone develop and appreciate that eSports athletes actually put in a lot of effort into what they achieve. They also actually have a very short lifespan compared to many of the more traditional sports, mainly 'cause of the, I think the reaction times that are required to compete at such a high level. Obviously things like integrity and doping in an adjusted way are also 

[01:21:27] Azan: relevant.

No, they are there because what people miss is that particularly gaming is a very physical activity and the amount of stamina required. My former pupil is a former eSports player, and you have to have a training regimen that includes.

Physical training and eating to operate at that high level.

[01:21:47] Yang: That's right. And I think that apparently recently people look at the screen very closely now as well in competitive shooting games, just to reduce the amount of movement that's required. It's very draining. And I think more people appreciate this now than they used to so it does require a different level of understanding and different type of understanding from all 

[01:22:06] Azan: involved. 

The contracts are also fundamentally different. If you think of a top tier tennis player like Coleman Wong, you go outside, how is Coleman Wong making money?

One thing is at tournaments and then, the double Decker bus passes us and Coleman Wong eating a Big Mac. You know how Coleman Wong is being paid and his commercial counterparty, is McDonald's or whatever. But if you are an eSports player, you, the way you're making money is off direct marketing to subscribers through different online platforms, through YouTube or TikTok or whatever. And so your commercial counterparties are these much larger companies running these other kinds of entertainment networks. And you may attend events that requires a legal infrastructure that's very personalized to you, but also understands not only local contracts, but these international bodies because half of it is online. You'd be surprised the amount of money people receive from direct subscription.

[01:23:05] Colin: It's an incredible industry. We aren't even beginning to s in closing our chief justice Andrew Chung, has acknowledged Hong Kong's great success in international sports, said the following. The legal industry must develop in parallel to meet the increasingly complex demands of sports law.

We can agree that is Absolutely correct. Your views on that, in closing remarks. 

[01:23:34] Azan: I'm so glad to hear those words come out. I was so glad to hear Andrew Jung say that. And a credit to him. I've heard similar words from our current secretary for Justice, from our former chief secretary. And I can recall seven years ago, more than that meeting with Theresa Jang, or however many years ago. And the things you wanted to talk about most was how we are going to fix this. And, the current pilot scheme, that's a product of our request. We speak to them, we ask them to do this. They put their money where their mouths are. They take it seriously. What's needed now, we have to be connecting the gray matter. Our industry it's the private sector that needs to start filling the gap. The government are there, their ears are open. They're willing to help us write rules. They're willing to sign checks. It's really a question of private industry on the legal side, connecting with the commercial side and developing mechanisms whereby whether it's individual sportsmen or it's clubs can easily receive support.

[01:24:37] Colin: I agree with you, Yang, your feelings?

[01:24:39] Yang: I think that's right. Once you put the infrastructure in place and you tell people and remind them that it's there and it's ready to assist, then it will come much more naturally for them to use it to resolve any issues, whether it be through mediation, arbitration or hopefully not, but eventually at some point, litigation it's part of hong Kong's community, and it should become, I think an even more important part going forward.

[01:25:05] Azan: And the fear that you mentioned earlier, that national sports governing bodies that mid-tier, it's something they haven't been dealing with before and they're afraid of it. Many of them they just they're afraid of the resource commitment.

They're afraid of what it means to have lawyers in the room. They're frankly afraid of lawyers. Until they meet us. I'm not surprised.

[01:25:24] Colin: I'm not surprised,

[01:25:26] Azan: But in a way that was the purpose of our demonstration. like pop the bubble. We've done, which have been very oversubscribed, very popular talks, mini talks, panel discussions, just to connect them.

And they can see that it isn't scary. It can really improve your lives. It can take a lot of stress and aggravation off your table by having a process in place that deals with conflicts. 

[01:25:50] Colin: Thank you very much. And on that note, we shall finish this fascinating discussion about Sports Law, Yang and Azan, thank you so much for joining us on Law & More.

Thank you.