INTEGRATION OF BLOCKCHAIN-BASED SMART CONTRACTS INTO SPORTS LAW AND NEW LEGAL PRACTICE

Abstract

In this article, the authors research the processes of integration of blockchain-based smart contracts into sports law in their theoretical and practical sense. The relevance of the study is due to a significant increase in interest in this issue in the financial, legal and other areas of human activity, and it is predicted that blockchain will become critical for all finan-cial institutions working on business process automation. Blockchain-based smart contracts have been found to contain the same level of detail as physical contracts and do things that no conventional contract can do: perform tasks such as price negotiation and inventory monitoring. This capability replaces costly manual efforts with dynamic, automated track-ing of supply chains, inventory levels, and costs to reduce costs and increase profits. At the same time, important aspects of the study were emphasized in terms of: 1) the advantages of blockchain-based smart contracts (high accuracy and reliability; real-time updates; reduc-tion in the number of intermediaries; lower cost; adaptation to different business models) and 2) disadvantages, as this technology is at the early stages of implementation and needs to be developed in certain areas (processing speed and scalability; dependence on program-mers; confidentiality; high latency). It has been proven that blockchain offers new sources of growth for the sports industry: clubs and sports organizations can optimize their business models, ticket and athlete management can become more streamlined, and teams can gen-erate new revenue streams through fan tokens, digital souvenirs, and data monetization. The authors identify the most relevant cases of using blockchain technology in the sports ecosystem, in particular: fan tokens and fan engagement; NFT tokens; game tickets; tokenization of future athletes and cryptocurrency payments; athlete data and performance man-agement; drug testing; streaming; and blockchain betting. It is established that the civilized world needs a developed sports crypto partnership.