Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by notahacker on Thursday November 26, 2020 @09:24AM (#25220235)

I think the challenge will be persuading courts that actions that users are paid to undertake in public and contractually agreed to reassign relevant image rights to are [i] 'personal data' under the intended meaning of GDPR and that [ii] something they didn't have informed consent about the possibility third parties might have access to when signing those contracts. Proving actual instances of harm suffered from the dissemination of unfavourable statistics is also going to be tricky (even though there are undoubtedly players that have lost out). It's plausible the net effect of increased statistics on player salaries is positive; certainly they haven't gone down on average.

Since most player contracts are frequently renegotiated and most clubs use third party databases and generate revenue from betting companies (so if necessary they'd all end up with clauses permitting this data use), the long term effects of a favourable stretch of the definition of 'personal data' are more likely to have chilling implications for people collating activity/performance metrics or compiling biographies of other types of public figure anyway...

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by boomboomsubban on Thursday November 26, 2020 @10:04AM (#25220573)

>Proving actual instances of harm suffered from the dissemination of unfavourable statistics is also going to be tricky (even though there are undoubtedly players that have lost out).

All you would need is one club saying they searched the data for say "any player over six foot" and one player who fit the search term but the data was inaccurate.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by wolco2 on Thursday November 26, 2020 @10:19AM (#25220718)

That would only count toward one person one club not a widespread pattern.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by boomboomsubban on Thursday November 26, 2020 @01:32PM (#25222453)

While I was being extreme, showing that similar searches happen often and errors are somewhat common makes the case.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by Retric on Thursday November 26, 2020 @09:44AM (#25220395)

I think betting is likely to have an unusually negative economic impact on the players. Loss avoidance means people are more likely to remember players ‘underperforming’ expectations than exceeding them. That’s going to have a negative impact on their marketability as paid sponsors independent of actual performance.

It’s questionable if they can win, but demonstrating damages may be the easiest part of this case.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by notahacker on Thursday November 26, 2020 @09:53AM (#25220482)

I think proving a specific instance of lost sponsorship income to the satisfaction of a court is going to be extraordinarily difficult, especially if the argument is that consumers draw more adverse inferences from commercial datasets (which they generally don't have access to themselves; betting companies use them to help set the odds) than watching the matches.

Even more so when the context is that virtually any employer of professional footballers derives some of their revenue from betting, and betting companies are the primary sponsors of half the English Premier League teams and the English Football League organization

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by Retric on Thursday November 26, 2020 @11:12AM (#25221187)

You can demonstrate harm without showing specific damages. Damaging someone’s reputation for example isn’t acceptable.

It’s the same basic principle as speeding or drunk driving being illegal even if nobody was actually harmed, putting people at significant risk of harm is not acceptable.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by julesnp on Thursday November 26, 2020 @01:31PM (#25222435)

Isn't the harm to the players' reputations coming from their own quality of play in publicly viewed matches?

In my opinion a third party would only be liable for harming their reputation if the statistics being published were untrue.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by Retric on Thursday November 26, 2020 @05:10PM (#25223886)

It’s a team sport so they don’t optimize for fantasy leagues. If they are pulled to avoid risk of injury on a blowout their stats look worse. Essentially, a 2:0 win could look worse than a 2:3 loss.

In effect their a RNG that happens to make people dislike them.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by matthewheath on Thursday November 26, 2020 @09:29AM (#25220268)

Yes, I quite agree that the prospect of success appears remote. They would have an arguable case for negligence regarding data inaccuracy though, so I wouldn't be surprised if they submit that as an additional claim and abandon the GDPR claim if that seems likely to fail.

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