Mark Hovell

Mark Hovell is Head of Sport at Mills & Reeve, where he also sits as a Board Member. He specialises in regulatory, governance, commercial and financial matters, across all sports, both in the UK and across the world. Additionally, Mark acts as an arbitrator at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and as a trustee of the James Milner Foundation. Further, he is a member of the Premier League Judicial Panel and the National Anti-Doping Panel.

1. How did you first start working as a lawyer in the sports industry? 

By luck, really! I remember back in the days when I was starting as a lawyer, there were no things like Google. There weren’t even laptops and PCs. So, when I was applying to law firms for training contracts, back in the 1980s, and was looking for firms in Manchester to join, really I just went for the first ten of the Yellow Pages with the biggest adverts. I reckoned they’d be the biggest firms and do the best work. One of those that I applied to was a firm called George Davies, and it was actually only at my second interview there that they said to me, ‘Do you like sport?’. I said, ‘Yes’, and they said, ‘Well, we act for the Professional Footballers’ Association and do all their work, so if you’re into your sport then you’d get the opportunity to do a bit of their work with us’. That was it really, I didn’t bother with any other firms, that was me sold. I joined there in 1991 and did a training contract there, and stayed on all the way through to being a partner and then the managing partner at that firm.

2. How do you manage to balance all of your roles and responsibilities? 

With a good team around me! I suppose I probably spend around half of my time now sitting as an arbitrator, which you can’t delegate to anyone obviously, that’s me that sits there and hears cases, whether that’s at the Court of Arbitration for Sport or the National Anti-Doping Panel or FA Rule K cases. The rest of my time involves working for a variety of sports clients. I’ve got a team of eight or nine people who do full-time sports law work across a variety of disciplines, and then probably another twenty people who spend parts of their days or weeks on sports law work (they’re more specialist people and work on pensions, property or tax, for example). I’ll try and push the work to them, we’ll have a team approach and I’ll try and project manage things and the team will help to get all the work done. A big part of it is about finding work and getting it to my colleagues to help the clients with.

3. What is the most interesting case that you have worked on so far? 

This is a difficult one when I’ve been doing it for nearly thirty years! I suppose a real highlight for me was getting to go out to Rio for the Olympic Games and working on the Court of Arbitration’s ad hoc Division. That’s incredibly pressurised work because the thing about the Olympic Games is that if you’ve got, say, the 100m final scheduled for a Sunday, you might have the semi-finals scheduled on a Friday and the heats scheduled on the Tuesday. If there’s a dispute on the Monday as to who’s actually qualified and going to take one of the lanes, that’s got to be heard and dealt with that day, because nobody can change the schedule – everything has to fit together (given obligations to TV companies etc.). So, what we’re actually doing there is 24-hour arbitration. You’d get a complaint on a Monday where one runner will say, ‘I should be running’, and the other one will say, ‘No, no, it’s me’. The first one who puts his complaint in has to do so in the standard form and in writing, then the other has four hours to respond. Then, we have to convene a hearing and hear both sides with their lawyers (who are often attending by telephone or video conference). You’ve then got to consider the case with your colleagues, write up a written award and deliver it within that 24-hour window, so the athletes know who’s taking on the track the next day. When I went to Rio, we had six of those types of cases. So, my first week was just basically in that hotel, not moving or going outside at all, and not getting a lot of sleep! It’s incredibly pressurised but crucial work, in a way, because it’s all in the background and nobody gets to see it. It might make the local news back in India if they had two athletes fighting over who could compete and one of them wins, but for the rest of the world, the Games just carry on.

4. What would you say the most significant legal development in sport is at the moment? 

You’ve got a few! If you want to be really up to date, the concussion cases are looking very interesting around rugby, and for sure it’s going to spin out into football. We’re already seeing a lot of very sad cases around dementia and if they can make the link between dementia and playing football stronger than what they have at the moment, I can see there being a lot of actions against employers and the competition organisers.

Data is another big area at the moment. You’ve seen in the press recently people like Zlatan querying why his image appears in EA Sports. Is this FIFA making money? Is this FIFPro making money which they then distribute down to other players across all the different PFAs around the world? Ultimately, Zlatan and many other players are thinking, ‘Well, if anyone should be making money, it should be me’. So, I think that’s going to be an interesting development over the next year or so.

5. What are the rewards and challenges are of being a sports lawyer? 

The main reward, if you like sport, is that you get to work in an area that you love and you’re passionate about. I’m sure there’s people who do things like music law and arts law and things like that. It’s absolutely fundamental, if you’re going to be a lawyer, that you actually enjoy the job because you’re going to do it for probably 30 to 40 years. So, if you’re a sports nut like me, then it’s amazing and a privilege to be involved in the sector. Some of the other rewards that you get, such as with Rio, is an “access-all-areas pass”, so when the work stopped and the Games started, you’re able to go and see every single Olympic sport and all of your Olympic heroes. So, there’s some great benefits from it!

A lot of the challenges are around communication. You have to understand when dealing with athletes that they’re busy and not really interested in lawyers. They’re also sometimes a bit nervous of talking to people in suits and they’re not all going to understand legal terminology. It’s about trying to make sure that you can make yourself understood succinctly and in language that an individual can understand, but then the next day you could be dealing with a chairman of a football club so you need to be able to switch and make sure you’re speaking in a way that they understand and want to receive their legal advice. Another thing is accessibility. The reality is that with a lot of this work, you can get a WhatsApp message at 3am and you’ll be expected to give your answer within an hour, so you’re pretty much on-call 24/7.

6. What advice would you give to aspiring sports lawyers? 

I suppose the difficulty is that ‘sports law’ is not really a recognised discipline. So, if you really want to practice sports law, then you have to find a firm that has sports clients. I would focus, as a young lawyer, on whether you want to be, for example, an employment lawyer, an IP lawyer, a regulatory lawyer or contract lawyer etc, before you decide which sector you’re going to apply those skills to. But, certainly it’s easier if you can find a firm that has a sports sector and that actually has a good number of sports clients that you can then apply your skills to.

7. Please can you describe a typical ‘Day in the Life of Mark Hovell’? 

Busy! I don’t actually have a car, so I’d typically run or cycle to work. Then I’d normally be working on some CAS case whether it’s a hearing that day or prep for a hearing or writing a decision afterwards. Focusing on the business side of it, I’d typically have meetings with clients and colleagues that we’re working on different assignments with, trying to find new business opportunities in amongst working on a few different boards where I sit as a non-exec. Then, I come home to a busy family life, so it’s certainly never dull!