Sports and entertainment law in Canada is not what it was ten years ago.
What was once a practice area defined largely by sponsorship agreements, employment contracts and content rights has expanded into something significantly more complex and considerably more consequential for the athletes, creators and organizations at its centre.
Today, practitioners in this space are navigating name, image and likeness (“NIL”) rights, which is a shift in the NCAA landscape that has fundamentally changed what commercial opportunity looks like for amateur athletes. We are advising on governance challenges within national sport organizations (“NSOs”) that have long operated without sufficient accountability to the athletes they represent. We are working through human rights considerations, competition law questions, gambling regulations and an expanding body of international jurisprudence, as sport becomes an arena in which much larger social and geopolitical forces play out.
The practice demands more now—more precision, more perspective, and the willingness to take a position.
What We Believe
At Lucentem Sports & Entertainment Law PC, our practice is built on a conviction that is simple to state but harder to honour—athletes are entitled to counsel that see the full arc of their career, not just the contract in front of them, and are with them behind the camera.
The qualities that carry a person to the top of their sport (discipline, resilience, the capacity to perform under pressure) are the same qualities that, properly supported, translate into lasting success in governance, business and community leadership. Our job is to build the legal and commercial foundation that makes that transition possible. We see our clients not merely as signatories to agreements, but as individuals with careers, legacies and communities that extend well beyond their playing days.
That is the practice we have built. That is what this moment demands.
Narrowing the Gaps
The business of sport continues to shift in ways that create both opportunity and complexity for our clients. Women’s sport has opened a segment of the market that was long overlooked, with real growth in college, professional and international competition where brands and broadcasters were slow to invest. The legal frameworks that govern athlete sponsorship, broadcast rights and organizational governance have not yet caught up with that pace of change.
More athletes and creators from diverse backgrounds are now accessing commercial opportunities that were not available to them a generation ago. Brands and organizations are beginning to reflect this reality. For our clients, this opens meaningful new doors, and it requires counsel who understand not just the legal mechanics of a deal, but what the client is actually trying to build.
Sports leagues and governing bodies have moved quickly to integrate gambling as a core revenue stream, creating a compliance environment that athletes, leagues and NSOs are still learning to navigate. NIL continues to evolve rapidly, with new institutional responses from universities, athletic associations and commercial partners emerging on a near-constant basis. Each development creates new work. Each development requires a point of view.
Canada’s Moment
2026 is not an ordinary year for Canadian sport. The FIFA World Cup arrives on North American soil this summer, with Toronto and Vancouver among the host cities. In February, the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 drew approximately 30.5 million Canadian viewers, nearly 73% of the country’s entire population, across CBC, TSN, Sportsnet and RDS. These are not just viewership numbers. They are a measure of what sport means to this country and of the platform that Canada now occupies on the international stage.
Canada is positioned to be a global beacon for international sport. The legal, commercial and institutional communities around sport have an obligation to rise to meet that moment.
We are committed to meeting that challenge.
Lucentem has always kept one eye on how sport functions internationally—the governing bodies, the arbitral processes, and the cross-border relationships that shape decisions at the highest level. The 2026 calendar brings all that closer to home and creates real opportunities for Canadian practitioners to contribute to the development of international sports law.
The Governance Solution
Canada finished 11th in medal count at Milano Cortina, a result that sits in uncomfortable contrast with nations like Norway (1st) and the Netherlands (3rd), both countries with significantly smaller populations but far more equitable and well-funded sport systems. The question is not whether Canada can produce world-class athletes. It demonstrably can. The question is whether the institutions charged with supporting those athletes are worthy of them.
They are not. Not yet.
Canadian athletes who compete outside of major team sports routinely self-fund through community fundraising and individual sponsorships, while NSOs control the access to facilities, coaching and funding that could otherwise support them. The IOC has relaxed some sponsorship restrictions in recent years, providing athletes with greater commercial flexibility, but the structural imbalance between athletes and the organizations that govern their sports remains largely unaddressed.
One of the most straightforward remedies is also one of the most underutilized—putting former athletes in positions of governance. Those who have trained at the highest level, dealt with funding shortfalls, and lived through the ways institutional decisions affect performance are exactly the people who should be shaping those decisions. That has not happened enough. We expect 2026, with its historic sport calendar, surge of national pride, and growing push for athlete empowerment, to start changing that.
We have seen what athlete-led governance can look like in practice.
Muzammal Nawaz, a five-time professional world middleweight kickboxing champion and longtime Lucentem client, took the fragmented landscape of Canadian kickboxing and built something lasting out of it. He helped establish the Council of Amateur Sport Kickboxing (“CASK”) in 2003, and today he serves as President of WAKO Canada, the national governing body for amateur kickboxing, where his leadership has established the organization as a credible affiliate within international combat sport governance structures. Nawaz did not wait for a seat at the table. He built the table. That is the model.
A Canadian Perspective on What Comes Next
Layth Gafoor, Lucentem’s founder and owner, served as president of the Sports Lawyers Association (“SLA”) and had the privilege of presiding over the organization’s 50th anniversary annual conference, its largest gathering in history held in Nashville, TN, alongside a board and community of practitioners who have collectively shaped sports law across North America and beyond. That milestone offered a particular vantage point—what has this practice area built over half a century and what remains to be done?
The answer, from where we sit, is that the legal and commercial infrastructure of sport matters more than it ever has, and Canadian practitioners are well placed to contribute to how it develops globally. As the SLA enters the second half of its first century, there is a real opportunity for Canadian sports law to take a more prominent role in international jurisprudence. We intend to be a part of that.
Women’s sport sits at the centre of this conversation. The commercial and institutional investment in female athletics is growing, but it remains structurally unequal. For us, this is not merely a professional priority—it is personal. The next generation of Canadian women in sport deserves a legal and commercial infrastructure that actually serves them. We intend to help build it.
Case Study
The philosophy behind our practice is most clearly visible in the work itself. Two recent client matters show how we approach the challenges that define this space, and what it looks like when athletes have the right legal foundation around them.
Building a Career That Lasts: Damien Alford
Damien Alford came to Lucentem as a wide receiver at Syracuse University. He was talented, ambitious, and right at the start of the NIL era. He had the ability. He needed the infrastructure.
We negotiated sponsorship agreements that allowed him to capitalize commercially on his name, image and likeness while maintaining his eligibility. We established the legal entities, tax structures and immigration considerations that a professional athletic career requires. We reviewed, drafted and negotiated contracts. The objective was straightforward—handle everything off the field so that Damien could focus entirely on what he did on it.
When circumstances at Syracuse prompted a transfer to the University of Utah, and limited playing time there led him to declare for the CFL Draft, Lucentem remained a constant. Damien was selected first overall by the Calgary Stampeders. A strong rookie season followed. NFL teams came calling. In January 2026, he signed with the New Orleans Saints.
The headline is worth celebrating. But the more important story is the foundation built around a young athlete from Montreal before any of it happened. The NIL agreements, the corporate structures, and the contracts were the groundwork that allowed him to move through one of the hardest transitions in professional sport with clarity and confidence. That is what we do. The Alford matter is a clear example of why NIL is not just a commercial development. It is a shift in how young athletes build careers, and it requires counsel who understand both the law and the long game.
From Athlete to Architect: Muzammal Nawaz
The governance challenge we described above is not abstract for us. We have watched it play out in real time, and we have helped clients navigate it.
Muzammal Nawaz was a five-time professional world middleweight kickboxing champion who saw a sport that had shaped him operating without the institutional structure it needed. In 2003, he collaborated with martial arts clubs across Canada to help establish CASK, a unified national body for amateur kickboxing that created a membership structure for individuals, clubs and organizations committed to the sport’s development. Today, as President of WAKO Canada, his leadership has established the organization as a recognized affiliate within international combat sport governance, and it has driven the implementation of national athlete development programs and event structures that did not previously exist. In the fall of 2024, that contribution was recognized at the highest level with Nawaz being honoured as a Member of the Order of Canada for his trailblazing career and his role as a global ambassador for Canadian sport.
He also co-owns and heads Bay Area Athletic Club in Burlington, Ontario, a training facility for martial arts and kickboxing that serves athletes and community members of all ages and skill levels.
The Nawaz matter speaks directly to what we believe about the relationship between athletic excellence and leadership. The qualities that made him a five-time world champion—the discipline, the strategic intelligence, the ability to perform and build over time—are the same qualities that have made him an effective governor and institution-builder. Our role was to support that transition at every stage—structuring the entities, advising on governance, and helping to build the legal framework within which a sport could grow.
That is what athlete empowerment looks like in practice. And it is what Lucentem continues to build toward.