Legal and Ethical Issues in the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Global Sports

1. Introduction
Artificial Intelligence (further referred to as AI) has become an important part of our daily life
ranging from social life to industrial application as well. One such industry where AI is being
actively used is the Sports Industry and the related activities which range from training, scouting,
tactical decisions to doping detection.i Artificial Intelligence is gradually establishing itself in the
sporting industry and the smart solution recommended by AI has been able to develop sports in a
completely different way. AI has helped in analyzing, broadcast, recommending innovative
methods to have a competitive advantage on the other side. Irrespective of the benefits that AI
have in the field of the sports industry, one cannot ignore the legal and ethical issues that AI’s
application pose in the sporting world. With unobstructed access and growth that AI has to the
confidential resources a number of important legal and ethical issues arise which remain
unanswered

2. Application of Artificial Intelligence in Sports

AI is used to enhance the performance of not only individual sportspersons but also the team as a
whole. AI is integrated in the camera on any portable device in order to make a live action video
which is further used for tracking physical poses and give out data to improve performance. A
recent study has showed that AI can also help in predicting a level of exertion based on the vitals
of an athlete which would help in optimizing training sessions.ii
Another area where AI is applied is the field of scouting, coaching and decision making. In the
field of cricket it helps in analyzing data like number of runs, number of balls played, boundaries
scored as well as one-on-one competition between the bowler and batsmen, which helps in
predicting close to accurate match outcomes and also analyze a player’s performance.iii In Ice
hockey, Sportlogiq has developed an AI which has helped identify talented players who would
otherwise be ignored by the concerned bodies.iv In the field of football, Liverpool Football Club
used SkillComer, an artificial intelligence, which tracks players, which helps in creating a SWOT
analysis of the team in a short duration of time, which is further used to design training
programs.v Moreover, Artificial Intelligence can be used to help the coaches and team
management identify statistically perfect and efficient player combinations and team line-up.
 3. Legal and Ethical Issues in the Sports Industry

3.1. Need of Consent for Data Processing

In order to analyze data for being processed by Artificial Intelligence, an athlete needs to give
valid consent for collection and processing of the same. The consent must be specific, based on
the knowledge of all facts, free and explicit in nature. As per Article 6 of the General Data
Protection Regulation(further referred to as GDPR) requires an athlete to give consent to the
data processing and it is necessary for the performance of a contract. However, in the sports
context data analysis is usually done on the athlete’s medical and physical statistics in order to
determine the eligibility to participate in the sport, and take other tactical decisions. It must be
noted that such health data falls under the ‘special category’ as per GDPR, and the processing of
such data is prohibited under an exception stated in Article 9.2.
In the Indian context the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, proposes a number of requirements
to obtain consent to the processing of personal data. The requirements are more stringent if the
personal data is sensitive personal data and information. Unfortunately, India has no specific data
protection bill to regulate and protect the privacy and security of certain health information and
all health information is treated as sensitive personal data and is regulated under the Information
Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or
Information) Rules 2011, and is accorded higher protection than personal data. A report
published by the Srikrishna Committee in 2018 creates a set of data rights for the individual
including the right to confirmation and access, correction, data portability, and right to be
forgotten. By taking this approach, the report proposes to create a framework to address harms
arising out of AI, but does not empower the individual to decide how their data is processed and
remains silent on the issue of ‘black box’ algorithms. We hope that Indian lawmakers and
judiciary will address this issue soon given the widespread use of AI in the modern society.

3.2. Cyber Security Concerns

There has been a rise in the cyber security issues and concerns with respect to application of
artificial intelligence in sports. Lack of a universal set of rules and regulation for cyber security,
platforms and services renders the embedded artificial intelligence prone and open for severe
cyber attacks.
One such cyber trespass took place when the World Anti Doping Agency (further referred to as
WADA) was attacked by the Russian cyber group Tsar Team during the 2016 Olympics in Rio.vi
They gained illegal access to WADA’s Anti Doping Administration and Management database
who published the athlete’s medical details on the world wide web.
There is need for universal certification which would cover the internet based products, services
and processes that would ensure a contractual obligation between online service providers that
would adhere to a universal set of rules and regulations like that of ETSI EN 303 645 vii laid
down to protect the personal data of the sportspersons and the industry related personnel.

3.3. Application of AI in the life-cycle of Sports Legal Contracts

Legal Contracts contain critical data with respect to organizational commitments, obligation,
rights, remedies and rules that reflect past decisions in order enhance future performance.
Artificial Intelligence scans through terminologies, policies, rights and conditions, thereby
helping in deriving an insight into the main aspects of the contract. This application of artificial
intelligence can be used at various stages of a sports legal contract.
The National Football League in the United States applies artificial intelligence in determining
whether a team is over spending in building a team by analyzing a player’s statistics. viii The final
reports acts as a bargaining chip to negotiate more favorable terms for the management.
This is not very efficient and effective in nature because all the data available to the software is
of the past and based on it any future prediction would be a huge gamble. There are players who
turn out to be one time wonders but fail to maintain consistency in their performance. These
cannot be identified by the algorithm and thus the chance of a faulty decision increases.
Moreover, while drafting any contract, each and every stakeholder’s wants, needs and interests
are to be taken into account so as to have an efficient management of all the parts of the sports
team. These cannot be taken into consideration by an AI controlled algorithm as they can be
emotional or personal in nature and not based on any statistical data. Therefore one cannot
depend solely on drafting and coming up with the terms and conditions of Sportsperson’s
contract.

3.4. Illegal Broadcasting

AI has no doubt improved the level and quality of sports broadcast that we experience today.
AI has helped in picking out highlights of live sport events that are distributed to multiple web
based media services as well as television channels. But, unfortunately with all these
advancement various illegal elements have also emerged to take benefit on any technological
back door and gain from it. This damages the Intellectual Property Rights as illegal broadcasting
is clearly a violation of the Copyright Laws irrespective of the jurisdiction where it takes place.
In case of any technical glitch or human controlled trespass takes place in the technological
environment which is controlling the live broadcast of any sporting event, a huge number of
doors open up for the proxy broadcasters.
In case the question of liability is raised as to who will be liable for illegal broadcasting in India,
where an AI has assisted or operated the broadcasting platform, the issue will focus on the
personhood. The essence of legal personhood lies in whether such entity has the right to own
property and the capacity to sue and be sued. As per Indian law legal personhood has not been
granted exclusively to humans only, status of legal personality has granted to Non-human entities
also such as companies’ corporate houses and other legal persons. But till date copyright has
been granted only to natural or legal persons and any machine or tool used for creating any
original work is only considered as a mere tool and thus have not been granted any copyright in
the programs name. Today machine learning has increased the work which can be generated
through AI

3.5. Betting and Gambling

AI systems basically analyze data to come to any conclusion. This includes analyzing data to
predict the outcome of the result of the game which would work like a boom to the betting and
gambling industry.ix AI has almost no limitation when it comes to data processing and thus is
becoming an important tool in the betting industry.x Legal sports betting around the world
involves working with a lot of information and data collection. Various sports leagues around the
globe give bookmakers this data to come up with better products to enhance legal betting. And to
improve the field of legal sports betting with massive data, no technology could work better than
Artificial Intelligence. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are helping in predicting the
patterns in a sport, but, for AI to work significantly well this sport has to be predictive, and
should follow a particular set of rules. Absence of prediction is one of the most important aspect
of sports and if Artificial Intelligence is used intensively it would not remove the excitement out
of sports but would lead to extensive gambling activities due to presence of almost-perfect data.
In India, betting and gambling can be found in part II of the State list. They have been mentioned
in detail in the seventh schedule of the Indian Constitution. In other words, this simply means
that the state government can exercise full control over betting and gambling practices in their
state. The fact there is a diverse set of laws and regulations for betting and gambling creates a
huge ambiguity in the Indian legal framework. The legal status of gambling in India requires
revamping various gambling laws that is more uniform. India, has followed the footsteps of the
U.S. with regards to the “dominant factor” test. The “skill versus chance” question was first
addressed in the State of Andhra Pradesh v. K. Satyanarayanaxi and in Dr. K.R. Lakshmanan v.
State of Tamil Naduxii. The Indian courts are of the opinion that no game exists which can have
skill as the individual factor to determine the result. Every game involves an element of chance
though the degree may be very small. In another Supreme Court decision in State of Bombay v.
R.M.D. Chamarbaugwala,xiii the court propounded that if a game contains both elements, i.e.,
skill and chance, it would be considered a game of skill. The current Indian stance is “whether a
game is of chance or skill is a question of fact to be decided on the facts and circumstances of
each case.” The mere fact that AI models can precisely predict the outcomes of sports reflects the
fact that there is an application of skill involved while playing these games. Specifically, with
regard to gambling and betting, the advantage that AI brings to the game is that it doesn't need to
be correct all the time. A bettor or a gambler just wants that extra edge over their competitors
which the AI duly provides as has been argued herein. The government needs to step up its game
by installing a proper legal framework on the subject. Once India has a uniform law for betting
and gambling, it will be more practical to regulate the application of AI in the same.

3.6. Ethical Challenges

Ethically, we need to need to determine a boundary to limit the use of artificial intelligence in
enhancing sports performances. The human factor may be lost with high technological doping in
the form of statistical data which would turn human athletes into data-based machinery. There
should be bar to human enhancement in the form of natural as well as technological alteration to
an athlete.
Regular use of AI would remove the human factor from the sports by erasing all emotions from
the sport.xiv AI would make sports so predictable that it would become like a scripted movie as
everything would be based on pre-defined data. One cannot enjoy a perfect show of sports, rather
the human element of mistakes causes excitement as well as frustration within the fans engaged
in the sports, which makes sports what it is today.

4. Conclusion
Currently, there are no defined laws or regulations that govern the field of artificial intelligence
in India. Though India is making fast progress regarding technology, the stakeholders involved
are yet to discover full potential and utilization of this technology. Some independent bodies
exist with an aim to research and create machinery underlying the thought of intelligent
behaviour. In order to keep innovation and research thriving, the way forward for the AI
community is to find the right balance between compliance and data usage. AI’s application in
sports and in general needs to be molded in such a way that there is clear demarcation between
privacy and utility of personal data
An extreme of anything is considered to harmful. The same applies to Artificial Intelligence and
its application sports. The important aspects that every sports organizations wishing to adopt and
use Artificial Intelligence is that there should be clear line of differentiation between the
technological and human factor of sports. There needs to be clarity with respect to data
protection as well as ownership of the athlete’s data. A robust cyber security mechanism needs to
be adopted in order to secure each area of practice. Lastly, there needs to be the ethical
boundaries regarding the use of AI-systems to increase sport performances.
i
Baijayanta Roy, AI Augmented Sports Revolution TowardsDataScience (2019), https://towardsdatascience.com/ai-
augmented-sports-revolution-5c0727ba7004
ii
Arne Jaspers et al., Relationships Between the External and Internal Training Load in Professional Soccer: What Can We
Learn From Machine Learning? (13 ed. 2018).
iii
Himanshu Bahmani, Application of Data Science and AI in Cricket Neenopal.com (2019),
https://www.neenopal.com/Application_data_science.html
iv
Sportlogiq: AI-powered sports analytics and how it works, Smartseries.sportspromedia.com,
https://smartseries.sportspromedia.com/thought-leadership/ai-sports-analytics-sportlogiq-how-it-works
v
Andrew Cohen, Liverpool F.C. Partners With SkillCorner’s AI Platform to Extract Data From Matches Sporttechie.com
(2019), https://www.sporttechie.com/liverpool-fc-skillcorner-ai-platform-soccer-data-sports-tech#
vi
WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group (13 September 2016), World Anti-Doping Agency (2016),
https://www.wada-ama.org/en/media/news/2016-09/wada-confirms-attack-by-russian-cyber-espionage-group
vii
European Telecommunication Standards Institute, Cyber Security for Consumer Internet of Things: Baseline
Requirements(2020), https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/303600_303699/303645/02.01.01_60/en_303645v020101p.pdf
viii
Eddie Moran, Now Evaluating NFL Player Contracts? AI - Front Office Sports Front Office Sports (2019),
https://frontofficesports.com/ai-evaluating-nfl-player-contracts/
ix
James Vincent, This startup is building AI to bet on soccer games The Verge (2017),
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/6/15923784/ai-predict-sport-betting-gambling-stratagem
x
James Vincent, This startup is building AI to bet on soccer games The Verge (2017),
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/6/15923784/ai-predict-sport-betting-gambling-stratagem
xi
AIR 1996 SC 1153
xii
AIR 1957 SC 699
xiii
AIR 1957 SC 699
xiv
Andrew Barlow & Sathesh Sriskandarajah, Artificial IntelligenceApplication to the Sports Industry (2019),
https://www.pwc.com.au/industry/sports/artificial-intelligence-application-to-the-sports-industry.pdf