The growth of sport as a global industry has brought with it greater legal sophistication—and also a sustained increase in disputes. From his dual role as an arbitrator for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and a specialized lawyer, Luis Alejandro Fernández offers a clear perspective: sports law has ceased to be a secondary field and has become a highly technical arena, where knowledge of the game is no longer sufficient. In this conversation, he explains what is truly changing in sports arbitration and why the ability to litigate makes all the difference today.
“In these proceedings, we’re not really talking about sport, we’re talking about law.”
Luis Alejandro Fernández puts it directly, dismantling a widespread idea outside the sector. Sports refereeing—especially at the international level—isn’t decided by who best understands the game, but by who best masters the process. Knowledge of the sporting context helps, but it’s not the deciding factor.
The real difference lies elsewhere, he asserts. “It’s useless for a lawyer to know how many World Cups a player has if they don’t know how many days they have to file an appeal.”
The phrase is not accidental. It summarizes the fundamental change that sports law is undergoing: from being a field perceived as specialized in content, to one defined by legal technique.
More conflict, more industry
This change is occurring in parallel with another phenomenon: the sustained growth of conflicts. The data clearly reflects this. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went from reviewing 2,909 cases between 2015 and 2019 to 4,642 between 2020 and 2024. At FIFA, labor disputes increased from 1,187 to 2,032 in just a few years.
The increase is significant, but Fernández’s interpretation is different from what might be expected.
“What these numbers tell us is that sport is a growing industry.”
In his view, there is no crisis of the system. There is more activity, more contracts, more legal relationships, and consequently, more disputes.
Another factor is the professionalization of the sector. The emergence of more training and specialization programs in sports law not only responds to demand but also drives it.
“It’s not that there are more problems, it’s that there’s more industry.”
A more sophisticated… and more demanding system
This growth, however, is not without its challenges. For Fernández, the main sticking point remains access to international sports arbitration.
“Many federation processes are free, but when you get to arbitration the costs go up considerably.”
The leap is not only economic. It is also technical. The complexity of the procedures requires specialized lawyers, which further raises the barrier to entry. Significant progress has been made—such as the incorporation of Spanish, the digitization of processes, and the creation of support funds—but the system remains difficult for many players to navigate.
“Not everyone can easily access or even understand how it works.” The consequence is a more developed, but also more demanding, system, where the ability to litigate becomes a decisive factor, the lawyer adds.
The new profile of the sports lawyer
In this context, the role of the sports lawyer is also changing. For years, the differentiating factor seemed to be knowledge of the environment: clubs, federations, the dynamics of the game. Today, that knowledge is still useful, but it is no longer enough. “The key is knowing how to litigate.”
Sports law has become integrated into a broader legal framework, where procedures, deadlines, and procedural strategy carry more weight than context. This, he argues, does not eliminate specialization, but rather redefines it.
It’s not about knowing about sports, but about understanding how sports work legally. And that involves mastering rules, procedures, and forums like the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where decisions are made under strictly legal standards.
The conversation that reaches the Forum
This same approach is what Luis Alejandro Fernández will address at the Foro Gerencias Legales y Arbitraje en Miami. Rather than a technical explanation of the system, his interest lies in conveying an idea that runs through all his experience in international sports arbitration: sport can no longer be understood without its legal dimension.
“What I want to convey is that we are facing an industry that is growing and becoming increasingly sophisticated.”
And that sophistication changes the game. “That makes specialization necessary. It’s no longer optional; it’s a requirement to navigate the sports world effectively.” It’s not just a warning for lawyers. It’s a clear sign of where the sector is headed.
The sport continues to grow, but not everyone is growing at the same pace. While the industry expands and raises its standards, sports law has ceased to be a space of shared interests and has become a field of genuine technical rigor.
It is no longer enough to understand the game, or even to know its rules, because the decisions that define the result are no longer made on the field, but in the process.
And in that arena – as Luis Alejandro Fernández points out – it is no longer the one who best understands the sport who wins, but the one who knows how to litigate within it.
