Jeffrey Benz, FCIArb

Jeff Benz is a commercial sports and entertainment lawyer with significant experience as an arbitrator and mediator. Over a career spanning more than thirty years he has advised, represented and resolved disputes for governing bodies, clubs, rights-holders, sponsors, media and technology companies, agencies, investors and individual talent across the global sports, media, entertainment and technology industries. He is dual-qualified as a barrister of England and Wales and as a United States attorney (California, Colorado, Hawaii and New York), with a worldwide practice based in London and Los Angeles.

Jeff’s commercial practice spans the agreements and disputes that underpin the sports and entertainment sectors, including sponsorship and commercial partnerships, media, broadcasting and digital rights, licensing and merchandising, talent, image and intellectual property rights, event and host agreements, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, and corporate governance, integrity and regulatory matters. Much of this expertise was built inside the industry: before and alongside his practice in chambers, Jeff held senior in-house and executive positions in sport and entertainment, giving him a commercial perspective grounded in the realities his clients face.

As a neutral, Jeff has significant experience, having arbitrated and mediated well over 1,000 disputes across commercial, sports, entertainment, employment, intellectual property and related fields under the rules of the world’s leading institutions. He sits on the Court of Arbitration for Sport and on the panels of numerous commercial and sports arbitral bodies in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, Asia and internationally, including the LCIA, the ICC, the American Arbitration Association, CIETAC, the Beijing Arbitration Commission and Sport Resolutions. He frequently sits as sole arbitrator, as chair of three-member tribunals and as party-appointed arbitrator.

Jeff’s sports disputes practice is widely regarded as among the most experienced in world sport. He has decided several hundred anti-doping, eligibility, selection, governance and commercial sports matters, including reported decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He is recognised in the leading directories: Who’s Who Legal has described him as “in a class of his own” in complex sports disciplinary disputes, and he has been repeatedly named “Lawyer of the Year” for arbitration by Best Lawyers.

His appointments have included the inaugural Disciplinary Tribunal of World Athletics (then the IAAF), the Court of Arbitration for Sport Ad Hoc Division at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, membership of the NCAA Independent Resolution Panel and the chairmanship of the NCAA Infractions Referral Committee. In his earlier executive career he served as General Counsel of the United States Olympic Committee and as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of entertainment and technology companies in the United States and Asia, where his responsibilities included commercial transactions, corporate governance, compliance and operations.

Jeff is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, a CEDR-accredited mediator and a member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. He is an adjunct professor teaching dispute resolution, arbitration ethics and sports law at Pepperdine University in California, and contributes regularly to the literature on dispute resolution and sports law. He holds a JD from the University of Texas, BA and MBA degrees from the University of Michigan and is a candidate for a MA in International Affairs from King’s College London.

Jeff is available to accept appointments as arbitrator, mediator and in other neutral capacities, and to advise and represent clients, including directly under the Public Access scheme in appropriate cases.

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