Sports contracts: Are they binding or not?

I am not a law expert so I wouldn’t mind if law experts would chip in and help me where I am lacking or fill in with more details. How binding are sports contracts? In every profession, the employer would like you to fulfil certain duties that drive his business or company forward but that doesn’t seem to count for much in the sporting world. I will look at a few examples in different sporting codes.

One of the biggest of the sporting contract shocks is Winston Borgade. I know some of you are going to ask Winston who? How come we have never heard of this guy? He is a former Dutch footballer of Suriname descent. During his career he played for Ajax, AC Milan, Barcelona and finally Chelsea. It’s his time at Chelsea that I’m going to focus on. He was signed for Chelsea by Gianluca Vialli in August 2000 on a multimillion-pound four-year contract. But on the eve of the new league season, Vialli was sacked by Chelsea and replaced by Claudio “Tinkerman” Ranieri. Ranieri relegated Borgade to the Chelsea reserves and later on didn’t even give him a squad number. Borgade never considered terminating his contract because he was happy with the money but then was he giving Chelsea their money’s worth? He was even quoted saying “that money is mine”. He stayed at Chelsea for the duration of his contract, which was four years, and then on May 14 2004 parted ways with the club. He was one of their highest-paid players but never really contributed much. If a situation like this arises shouldn’t a team have the right to fire the player and not pay him for the rest of his contract?

Here’s a different scenario: Sebastien Bourdais was a Formula One car race driver with the Toro Rosso. He was signed to a multimillion-dollar contract with Toro Rosso in 2007 as their race driver for 2008. The contract was to be renewed annually. He renewed his contract in 2009 to partner Sebastien Buemi, who was new to Formula One. Bourdais struggled in his races and was even outshone by his rookie teammate. Toro Rosso decided to terminate Bourdais’s contract on July 16 with immediate effect. He threatened legal action saying: “I consider that Toro Rosso has breached contractual duties. Nothing in my behaviour would legitimise a decision to terminate. I have instructed my lawyers to review the situation including the possibility of issuing legal proceedings.” Here is a sportsman who was on a big contract but was not delivering on his end of the deal and when the team did the right thing by terminating his contract, he started threatening legal action. Would he have been happy if the roles were reversed, the team was the one suing him for not delivering the race wins they wanted? He gave them a mere six points in 27 races.

When Michael Owen recently joined Manchester United, he was signed to a pay-as-you-play deal, which means that with Owen’s recent injury history, if he gets injured, Manchester United are not obliged to pay him, he gets paid only when he is on the pitch delivering the goods. This sounds like the perfect deal that suits all parties involved. So, shouldn’t all sports contracts in the future be performance-based? If you as the employee deliver, you get paid, but if you don’t then the club will have the power either to fire you or not pay you at all.