The most famous football player in the Arab world achieved unprecedented successes with his current club, Liverpool FC, by winning the English Premier League Championship after a career in Egypt.

Salah’s journey started at a local Egyptian club called Al Mokawloon Al Arab instead of the more famous clubs such as Al-Ahly and Zamalek. Salah went on to play internationally at different clubs; FC Basel, Chelsea FC, ACF Fiorentina, then AS Roma.

He returned to England to join Liverpool FC. He raised arguably one of the most critical, substantial, and consequential issues against FIFA concerning Intellectual Property and Advertising Rights for players, teams, bodies, and national, continental, and international sports federations. His image was used on an aircraft of state-owned Egyptair allocated to the Egyptian team for their participation in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. This was also the case with the Saudi team that played the opening match of the World Cup against Russia then two other matches — one of which they played against Egypt and won.

There was an overlap of emotions, law, and politics in this matter, which caused a great and profound conflict of interests. This affirms that the sports industry has a wide array of legislation and embedded legal principles due to its links to investment, economy, media, security, and other industries. Consequently, discussing the privatization of sports is critical, given that sports, media, radio and satellite broadcasting rights, communications, technology, the audience, and a variety of other relevant sectors are strongly intertwined.

When it comes to investment in the sports industry, there must be a strict reliance on the law, abstaining from any emotional or governmental interference in the affairs of the game or players, except for when it relates to supporting the sport, due to a notable difference between support and intervention.