In May, we published an article asking whether the Sporting Events Bill – the UK government's new modular framework for protecting commercial revenue and deterring ambush marketing at major sporting events – should go further. (As a reminder, the Bill proposes protection for major sporting events to be designated by the Secretary of State, with provisions covering ticket touting, advertising and trading controls, unauthorised association, and transport.)
The key question at the heart of our article was why does the Bill exclude the UK's most prestigious annually held sporting events from its protections?
Since then, the House of Lords has answered that question emphatically. At the Report stage, peers agreed to a package of amendments that removed the "not regularly held" requirement from the Bill's framework conditions entirely. The Bill has now passed its second reading in the House of Commons with cross-party support, and the Government has signalled that it intends to preserve the substance of the Lords' changes. But this is not yet a done deal. The Bill faces committee scrutiny and further amending stages in the Commons before it can be given Royal Assent. Here is what has changed, what it means, and what happens next.
What the Lords changed
As originally introduced, the Bill imposed three conditions that an event had to satisfy before the sporting events framework could be applied to it. Two of those were uncontroversial, namely, that the event be held wholly or partly in the UK, and that it be of significant international interest with likely social or economic benefits. The third required that the event be "of a kind that is not regularly held" in the UK.
Our earlier article identified this third condition as the Bill's most significant limitation. It excluded some of Britain's most prestigious sporting occasions by design. Wimbledon, the Open Championship, the London Marathon, the Six Nations and the British Grand Prix all fell outside the framework, despite the enormous economic value and international profile they bring. The Government's own explanatory notes confirmed this at the time, citing the FA Cup Final and the Wimbledon Championships as examples of events that would not qualify. This position has now been reversed.
Following the amendments, the Bill proposes that the framework conditions are:
- the event must be a sporting event held wholly or partly in the UK; and
- the event must meet the following criteria:
- the event is likely to be of significant international or national interest;
- the organiser must have requested that the framework be applied; and
- the event must be likely to bring social or economic benefits to the UK.
The updated explanatory notes now explicitly state that regularly held events such as the Wimbledon Championships, the Open Championship and the Formula 1 British Grand Prix could qualify under the revised conditions.
For completeness, if hosting an event in the UK is likely to improve the UK's chances of securing other events which meet these requirements (such as a junior international tournament), it can also qualify.
The new safeguard: organiser choice
Widening qualifying events to include those regularly held in the UK is not a wholesale opening of the floodgates. A new and important safeguard was introduced alongside it: the event organiser must have asked for the framework to be applied. As asserting and enforcing the new rights will involve some expenditure, qualifying events will want to consider the cost-benefit analysis. This new condition therefore prevents the framework being imposed on an unwilling event and also acts as a practical filter, since only events whose organisers see value in the protections will come within scope.
This is a proportionate compromise. It addresses legitimate concerns about scope creep while making sure that the events most in need of protection (those whose organisers actively seek it) are not arbitrarily excluded merely because they happen to take place every year.
Could this amendment still be reversed?
The Bill received its second reading in the House of Commons on 3 September 2026 with cross-party support. The Government has said that it intends to preserve the Lords' amendments, and wholesale reversal, beyond 'technical tidying', now seems unlikely.
What this means for annual events
Inclusion in the framework does not mean every protection will automatically apply. The Secretary of State (or devolved ministers) must make regulations applying one or more parts of the framework to a specific event, and those regulations are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, meaning Parliament retains oversight. This modular approach matters because different events will find different parts of the framework most useful, and it would now appear open to events to request some, but not all, protections. For example, events which are regularly the target of ambushing and rely heavily on sponsorship may prioritise the unauthorised association provisions in Schedule 4; others, where safety, crowd control and anti-counterfeiting are of greater concern, may benefit more from the ticket touting, street trading and/or advertising controls.
Where does this leave rights holders and brands?
The Bill now offers a genuine opportunity for rights holders and event organisers of annually held events to obtain significant protections. However, with the opportunity comes the potentially high expectations of sponsors and other commercial partners. These expectations will need to be managed, and if the rights are granted, funding for the cost of asserting and exercising those rights will need to be found.
The perspective of brands is likely to vary depending on which side of the equation they are on. Brands may sponsor one event, for which they'll no doubt welcome the protection, but may at the same time partake in ambush campaigns of other events. As such, they may be more neutral on the merits of the Bill.
One crucial factor for brands and rights holders is the current lack of certainty surrounding what will constitute an unauthorised association. Similar concepts in previous event-specific legislation have not been tested in the UK and, unless the Bill is updated to clarify this, it is likely to remain unclear until there is a test case how much more protection the new association right will provide than, for example, is currently available under the law of passing off.
Next steps
The Bill is due to start Committee stage from 20 October. The Committee will scrutinise the Bill line by line and is expected to report by Thursday 22 October 2026. The Bill must then pass Report and Third Reading in the Commons before returning to the Lords if further amendments are made.
In our earlier article, we asked whether the Bill should go further. The Lords said yes, the Commons appears to agree, and the industry is plainly behind it. The question is no longer whether the Bill should extend to annual events, but how the details will be refined as the Bill moves towards the statute book.
