The old cliché of something in sports being such big news that it moves from the back pages to the front certainly applied last summer and, for Onside Law managing partner Oliver Hunt, it was for a story which meant a lot. England midfielder Jude Bellingham’s move from German Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund to Spain’s Real Madrid reportedly cost his new club a nine-figure sum and was the culmination of a long-developed relationship between the lawyer, Bellingham and his family. After all, how many people can say they advised on the legal aspects of English football’s most promising player in a generation?
Though advising Bellingham was the pinnacle of 2023 for Hunt, last year saw him work across a range of individual players, clubs and governing bodies, demonstrating the breadth of both Hunt’s expertise and those of the firm he founded.
Counting both the English Cricket Board and world football’s governing outfit Fifa as clients, Hunt and Onside are integral in myriad commercial aspects of two entities which are crucial to the running of their respective sports. Though cricket and football made up the bulk of Hunt’s work last year, it’s golf that looks set to dominate 2024 as the fight over the sport’s future escalates between the Professional Golf Association Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Tour. There’s never a dull day in the life of a sports lawyer.