Image rights and intellectual property in sports intersect at virtually every commercial touchpoint in the sector, covering athlete endorsements, club merchandise, broadcast rights, event sponsorship, and digital content. The position in Kenya is changing quickly, and the single most important thing to understand right now is that the law on image rights specifically is mid-transition rather than settled.

Image Rights and Intellectual Property in Sports Today: A Right Assembled From Other Rights

Kenyan law currently has no standalone statutory right in a sportsperson’s image, name, or likeness. What functions as “image rights” in practice is assembled from contract law, trademark law, copyright law, and the common law tort of passing off, a patchwork that works reasonably well for a clean negotiated deal but leaves real gaps where interests overlap. An athlete’s commercial value in their name and likeness can be licensed through a contract with a club, brand, or event organiser, and the well-established contractual default is that an employment contract silent on image rights does not transfer them to the club; the right has to be expressly assigned or licensed. Where a name, signature, or likeness is incorporated into a registered trademark, the trademark owner gets the enforcement tools of the Trade Marks Act, and where a photograph or piece of footage is involved, copyright in that specific image or recording belongs to whoever created it, not automatically to the person depicted. Unauthorised commercial use that creates a false impression of endorsement can also be challenged as passing off. The practical consequence of relying on this patchwork is that an athlete’s protection is only as strong as the contracts and registrations actually put in place, since there is no statutory backstop to fall back on if those are silent or poorly drafted. A club that wants to use a player’s image in a season ticket campaign, for instance, needs an image rights clause that actually says so; absent that, the player can object even if the club assumed the image was theirs to use simply because the player wears the kit, and the club’s only fallback would be arguing implied consent, an uncertain position to be in mid-campaign.

The Sports Bill, 2026: A Statutory Image Right on the Way

That is about to change. The Sports Bill, 2026, prepared by a ministerial taskforce and currently before the National Assembly, would create a standalone statutory image right for the first time. Section 95 of the Bill confers on every sportsperson the right to control the commercial use of their name, image, and likeness and prohibits unauthorised exploitation without consent, a substantive change from the current position where that protection is inferred rather than directly granted. Section 96 promotes the commercialisation of sport more broadly, covering media rights, merchandising, event hosting, and athlete branding, and Section 97 provides an institutional framework requiring commercial sports organisations to operate through recognised, accredited legal structures, while permitting the use of subsidiaries, special purpose vehicles, and joint ventures to hold and exploit commercial rights. For a club, sponsor, or athlete negotiating a multi-year deal now, the practical question is not whether to wait for the Bill to pass, since there is no fixed timeline for that, but whether the contract being signed today is drafted in a way that still makes sense once a statutory right exists alongside whatever the contract itself grants. A sponsorship or representation agreement that defines image rights purely by reference to “applicable law as it currently stands” risks an awkward gap the day the Bill is enacted.

Club and Federation Trademarks

A club or federation’s name, badge, and kit design are registrable as trademarks at the Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI) under the Trade Marks Act (Cap 506). The process starts with a search using KIPI’s TM27 form to check the mark is not already taken, followed by a TM2 application specifying the applicant, a representation of the mark, and the Nice classification covering the relevant goods or services, merchandise, broadcasting services, or sponsorship-related classes among them. Registration is class-specific, runs for ten years from the filing date, renewable indefinitely, and goes through a sixty-day opposition window in the Industrial Property Journal before the certificate issues. KIPI does not itself enforce a registered mark; enforcement against counterfeit merchandise or unauthorised use is a civil action the rights holder brings through the courts, typically seeking an injunction, damages, or an account of profits. For a club or federation with ambitions beyond Kenya, ARIPO’s Banjul Protocol allows a single application to extend trademark protection across multiple member states rather than filing separately in each one, and the Madrid Protocol does the same internationally through WIPO. Because the Sports Act permits the Registrar to register only one national sports organisation per discipline, trademark registration of the federation’s own name and badge is also one of the more durable ways of protecting institutional identity against a breakaway or rival body trying to trade on a similar name, since trademark rights survive a governance dispute in a way that registration status under the Sports Act alone does not.

Broadcast Rights

Broadcasting rights to a sporting event are owned by the event organiser rather than by any single participating club, which is why a federation’s constitution and competition rules should say explicitly who holds and can license those rights before a season starts, not after a broadcaster comes asking. Broadcasting agreements need to define the licensed territory, the platforms covered, the duration of the rights, and the financial terms, including any minimum guarantee and revenue-sharing structure, with enough precision that a dispute over whether a new streaming platform falls inside or outside the grant does not have to be litigated mid-contract. Broadcast content sits under copyright as a separate work from the underlying sporting event itself, and content licensing questions around clips, highlights, and rebroadcasting interact with the wider rights management framework discussed elsewhere on this site, including the takedown procedures available where a broadcaster’s footage is rebroadcast without authorisation on an unlicensed platform.

Anti-Ambush Marketing

Kenya has no standalone anti-ambush marketing statute, so an event organiser protecting an official sponsor’s exclusivity has to rely on the same patchwork as image rights: contractual restrictions on venue advertising written into ticketing and accreditation terms, trademark enforcement where a rival brand crosses into use of protected marks, and passing off where a non-sponsor’s conduct creates a misleading impression of association with the event. The Sports Bill, 2026’s broader accreditation and institutional framework for commercial sports organisations may eventually give organisers a firmer regulatory hook for this, but until it is enacted, the contractual route through ticketing, accreditation, and venue access terms remains the only reliably enforceable mechanism.

Clay & Associates Advocates advises athletes, clubs, and federations on image rights agreements, trademark registration and enforcement, broadcast and sponsorship contracts, and preparing for the commercial and IP changes the Sports Bill, 2026 would bring. If you are negotiating a sponsorship or representation deal now and want it to hold up once the statutory image right lands, or need a club’s badge and merchandise protected before a season starts rather than after a counterfeit problem appears, we can help you draft for that without waiting for the Bill to pass first.

Protecting or commercialising sports IP in Kenya? Contact Clay & Associates Advocates. Book a Consultation

Related reading: Media and Broadcasting Law in Kenya | Sports Contracts in Kenya | Sports Governance in Kenya

For tailored legal advice on this matter, speak with our sports law practice team at Clay & Associates Advocates. We advise businesses and individuals across Kenya on Sports Law matters from our offices at Nextgen Mall, Nairobi.