Peter Crowther Discusses BOA’s Relaxed Rule 40 Restrictions with SportBusiness

The British Olympic Association (BOA) has relaxed its Rule 40 guidelines, giving British athletes more freedom to promote their sponsors at next year’s Olympic Games. Winston & Strawn’s London Office Managing Partner Peter Crowther believes the adaptations have not gone far enough.

The new guidelines allow athletes to post generic ‘thank you’ messages to their social media during the ‘Games period,’ as well as shortening the timescale under which athletes must apply for consent for marketing activities from four months to three.

Peter argues that these new guidelines will still be detrimental to the commercial interests of lesser-known British athletes, who might not know whether they have a place on the British team until the last minute and miss the three-month exemption period.

He told SportBusiness: “The guidelines leave UK athletes far behind when it comes to freedoms enjoyed by other athletes. It is extraordinary the BOA has chosen to ignore the recent German Competition Authority’s ruling, which found that many aspects of Rule 40 were abusive towards athletes and contrary to EU law.”’

Read more about Peter’s response to the revised Rule 40 guidelines in SportBusiness here.