Technologies to monitor physical condition, performance and recovery of athletes are relied upon by management and coaches to inform decision-making. These technologies also generate large volumes of data which, understandably, raises questions around intellectual property (IP), rights in data and data protection.
World IP Day 2026 on 26 April, with its focus on IP and sports, provides a timely opportunity to examine the legal frameworks that sit behind these technology systems.
This article considers how the laws of IP, contract and data protection interact in the digital health technologies used in elite sport, and where the greatest legal risks present themselves.
Intellectual Property Rights
At the upcoming FIFA World Cup in June, we can expect most national football teams to be using digital health systems. Teams routinely deploy wearable GPS and biometric devices that track movement, mileage, heart rate and recovery metrics. Providers such as STATSports, who protect their brand through a trade mark registration at the UK Intellectual Property Office, are trusted by a plethora of elite football clubs to supply hardware and data analytics platforms that collate and analyse key performance data. This data can be used to make decisions about player readiness and preparedness.
Aside from measuring performance and condition, regulatory bodies in sports such as football and rugby now use digital concussion assessment and monitoring tools. Video review systems, mouthguards and clinical screening apps support team staff in identifying potential head injuries, an increasing short and long term health concern in many contact sports, and managing return to play decisions.
Health and performance in elite sport is now 'data-driven'.
These systems generate data continuously and on a significant scale. The underlying technology is protected by IP rights, patents in hardware such as wearable GPS systems and copyright in the underlying source and object code of software such as analytics platforms. But what about protection of the data as an asset itself?
Who owns and controls the data?
While the technology that generates digital health data is usually protected by IP rights, the data itself often is not. The data is treated as IP, licensed or offered as a service on a subscription basis to elite sports clubs, analytic companies and sport regulators. The legal rights that may arise and subsist in performance or health data produced by these technologies are nuanced and uncertain. This blurs the lines between IP and contract.
Pure performance or health data may not attract IP ownership, or IP ownership may not be the most effective way to protect this asset, yet it represents a valuable commercial asset that technology providers and analytics companies seek to exploit.
In practice, control over digital health data is most effectively achieved through robust contractual arrangements underpinned by confidentiality obligations and technical and organisational security measures.
This creates a range of contractual risks. Agreements may, for example, fail to draw a clear distinction between ownership of:
- the digital health platform itself;
- rights in the raw athlete data generated through its use; and
- rights in derived or aggregated datasets produced through analytics.
Sporting organisations may assume that all data generated through use of the technology is theirs, while providers may rely on broadly drafted licences permitting reuse of anonymised or aggregated data for product development, benchmarking or research. Where these issues are not clearly addressed, disputes can arise when data is reused beyond the immediate sporting intention.
Contracts may also permit processing "for performance and welfare purposes" while remaining silent on secondary uses, including algorithm training, historic analysis or sharing insights with third parties. Data access and transfer on termination is another common omission, leaving organisations exposed when providers are changed.
Example: Elite Football
Use of digital health data in elite football often involves the interests of multiple parties, the player to whom the data relates, the club or national team collecting it, the player's agent or management team and the technology provider that hosts or facilitates the generation of that data. Without clear contractual allocation of rights, organisations can find themselves in disputes over access, use and exploitation of this data.
Performance data collected during an international tournament may later be valuable for research, by companies that analyse large volumes of player data to sell to football clubs, or product development, by the organisation providing the platform to generate the data. When this data contains personal data, IP law, commercial contracts, data sharing, lawful processing under data protection legislation and cross-border considerations may all arise.
Ownership of a digital health platform does not displace these obligations. A technology provider may own the platform and analytics, but still be restricted in how the resulting data can be processed, retained or reused. This becomes particularly relevant where data is hosted centrally, analysed across multiple teams or used to train future algorithms.
Elite football demonstrates how digital health can enhance performance and player welfare while generating valuable but legally sensitive datasets. Legal frameworks, intellectual property law, contract and data protection, ensure that innovation can be commercialised but regulated.
Conclusion
Digital health technologies are transforming elite sport, enhancing both performance and athlete welfare. However, the value of these systems increasingly lies in the data they generate, raising complex issues around ownership, control and reuse. While IP law protects the underlying technology, it is contract and data protection compliance that largely determine how digital health data can be exploited in practice. Clear contractual obligations, robust governance and ethics and regulatory awareness are therefore essential to managing legal risk while enabling innovation in elite sport.
Looking ahead, the increased use of AI-driven analytics, better regulation of health and biometric data and growing emphasis on data transfer are likely to grow in relevance in the context of digital health in elite sport. At the same time, players and clubs can be expected to assert greater control over access, consent and secondary use through more detailed contracts and stronger data governance.
