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Playing by new rules: Sport and the Employment Rights Act 2025
Playing by new rules: Sport and the Employment Rights Act 2025
21 September 2026
Series
Blogs
21 September 2026
Authors: Irfan Allana and Viktoriia Sereda
The Employment Rights Act 2025 (“ERA 2025”) represents the most significant overhaul of UK employment law in a generation. Many sports organisations operate with employment structures that make them particularly exposed to the changes now coming into force: high turnover, short-term contracts, large casual workforces, and high-profile disputes.
In this blog, we break down the impact of the ERA 2025 on the sports sector, focusing on five key areas: unfair dismissal, third-party harassment, sexual harassment, restrictions on the use of NDAs, and zero-hours contracts.
From 1 January 2027, the two-year qualifying period for bringing an unfair dismissal claim will be reduced to just six months (section 25(2) of the ERA 2025). For many employers, this is a significant shift and for sport it is particularly acute. Sports organisations, especially clubs, are characterised by high-turnover cultures in performance and coaching roles. Heads of performance, analysts, and coaches are frequently engaged on short fixed-term contracts, and clubs have historically relied on the two-year qualifying period as a de facto buffer against claims. To put this in context, the average tenure of a Premier League manager is one year and 169 days.
The ERA 2025 will also remove the statutory cap on the compensatory award for unfair dismissal (currently set at the lower of 52 weeks' pay or £123,543), also expected to take effect from 1 January 2027, creating uncapped financial exposure (section 25(3) of the ERA 2025). For sports organisations, the implications are significant. Elite clubs and governing bodies employ individuals on substantial salaries across commercial, legal, finance, and performance functions. Under the current regime, the cap means that even where a dismissal is found to be unfair, the financial exposure is contained. For many high-earning employees, the cap arguably acts as a disincentive to pursue claims at all, with the time, cost (including legal fees, which are generally not recoverable), and reputational risk of tribunal proceedings outweighing the potential recovery. This will change with the ERA 2025.
Even if individuals still want to avoid tribunal proceedings, the removal of the cap would nonetheless shift the bargaining power towards the individual in exit negotiations, with additional elements of loss potentially on the table and becoming high-value battlegrounds, including incentive arrangements, pension losses and earnings beyond the end of the fixed-term contract.
Sports organisations should take steps in anticipation of these changes, including:
From 30 October 2026, employers will be subject to strengthened obligations to protect workers from harassment by third parties, including clients, contractors, and members of the public, where that harassment relates to a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Under section 21 of the ERA 2025, an employer will be liable where a third party harasses an employee in the course of their employment and the employer failed to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent it.
Exposure to third parties is common for many employees in the sports sector. Matchday environments, sponsor hospitality events, and player-facing administrative roles all carry elevated risk, with fans, sponsors, and broadcasters interacting with club and governing body staff on a regular basis. Governing bodies hosting major events face particular risks, given the sheer volume of third-party interactions involved.
A further question arises in relation to online abuse. The scale and persistence of online harassment directed at those working in sport is well documented, extending beyond players to coaches, officials, and support staff. ACAS guidance on the new duty states that a third party could harass someone online.
The duty is to take “all reasonable steps”, and sports organisations should ensure that risk assessments expressly cover the online environment and consider online-specific measures such as content moderation tools, social media training, and working with platforms to seek removal of harmful content where necessary. This is not a straightforward task, particularly as the online presence of sports players now typically straddles their personal life and commercial activities. Ultimately, what constitutes a reasonable step will be fact-specific and will depend on the nature and scale of the risk.
More generally, sports organisations should conduct thorough third-party harassment risk assessments and update their anti-harassment policies, as well as refresh training materials, to reflect the new obligations. Visible notices that harassment of staff will not be tolerated, displayed in matchday programmes, venues, hospitality spaces, and on websites can help set clear expectations for fans, clients, and contractors. Where complaints are upheld, prompt action and access to welfare support are critical. Consulting employee representatives (e.g. player unions) and staff networks when designing the overall approach can also surface practical measures that might otherwise be overlooked, and would itself be helpful evidence of a considered approach to compliance.
Since October 2024, employers have been subject to a proactive duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees. From 30 October 2026, that obligation is strengthened: employers will be required to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment (whether by colleagues or third parties) (section 20 of the ERA 2025).
Whilst the heightened duty takes effect in October 2026, the regulations specifying what will constitute “all reasonable steps” are not expected to come into force until 2027. Employers will therefore need to navigate the new standard without the benefit of this guidance, and should ensure they are following the EHRC's existing guidance in the intervening period.
Whilst this might appear like a nuanced technical change, the requirement to take “all reasonable steps” sets a much higher bar for employers and, if challenged, employers would need to demonstrate that there were genuinely no further steps they could reasonably have taken to prevent the sexual harassment from happening. Sports organisations should therefore review their existing anti-sexual harassment framework, including:
More generally, compliance should be treated as an ongoing process rather than a one-off exercise and organisations should keep their approach under regular review.
The ERA 2025 introduces constraints on the use of non-disclosure agreements (“NDAs”) in the context of workplace harassment and discrimination. Confidentiality clauses in employment contracts or settlement agreements that seek to prevent a worker from speaking about "relevant harassment or discrimination", or their employer’s response to such conduct, are expected to become void subject to limited exceptions (referred to as “excepted agreements”).
The UK government launched a consultation on the reforms which closed in early July 2026 (and to which Linklaters submitted a response). The consultation focused on three key areas:
The proposals under consultation include:
The use of NDAs in sport has attracted significant criticism in recent years. High-profile cases across football and other sports have drawn public and parliamentary scrutiny, with campaigners arguing that NDAs have been deployed not to protect legitimate interests, but to suppress allegations of misconduct and shield organisations from accountability. Against that backdrop, failure to comply with any new requirements could have significant reputational (and potentially regulatory) consequences.
The new proposals are expected to come into force in 2027 and the consultation paper states that they will not apply retrospectively to existing agreements. Sports organisations should closely follow these developments, and review current NDA and settlement agreement precedents to ensure they are ready to adapt once the final regulations are published.
The government has also recently ran a consultation on reforms to zero hours and similar contracts, with the aim of reducing the insecurity of hours and income that some workers face. The topics the reform proposals covered include:
Zero-hours arrangements are deeply embedded in the sports sector. Matchday stewards, hospitality and catering staff, and ticketing personnel are frequently engaged on this basis. Seasonal and irregular sporting calendars, including cup runs, additional fixtures, and international tournaments, have historically made zero-hours arrangements commercially attractive. A Government response to the consultation is expected by mid-November 2026, with reforms likely to take effect during 2027, so clubs and venues should consider auditing their zero-hours workforce now and mapping out working patterns to assess risk exposure.
The employment structures and workforce models in place in the sports sector mean that the impact of the ERA 2025 is significant. With key provisions expected to take effect in the coming months and into 2027, sports organisations should use this window to review their current arrangements and prepare for the new requirements before they come into force.
See our SportingLinks page for more dedicated legal opinion on topical issues in the sports sector and our EmploymentLinks page for updates and insights on the ERA and other upcoming reforms.