Abstract:
Sports organizers refer to individuals or organizations that organize and plan sporting events, enjoy relevant rights and assume corresponding obligations. The development of technology has enlarged the scale of the audience of sporting events, bringing in greater profits and difficulties in the protection of such rights. Considering no laws in China to protect the broadcasting rights of sporting events, some courts have cited the by-laws of the sports organizers to secure such rights for them. By-laws of the sports organizations have some sort of legal effectiveness. But since the sports organizations are not qualified legislators, the rules set by them have no legal basis. The study compared several ways of protection among different jurisdictions in western countries and concluded that China could stipulate sports broadcasting right in its Sports Law and amend its Copyright Law to protect audiovisual works of sporting events. And the sports organizers could also cite property law and contract law to argue that they have control over the dissemination of sporting events information.