Who bears the salary risk for national-team injuries? Recent guidance from Basketball Arbitral Tribunal

Professional basketball players regularly leave their clubs to represent their national teams. For the player, national-team selection is a major feature of a professional career. For the club, however, it creates a particular contractual risk: the club releases a player whom it employs and pays, but the player may return injured as a result of sporting activity performed for another sporting entity. This raises a deceptively simple question: if a player is injured while representing his national team and cannot play for his club during the recovery period, does the club remain obliged to pay his salary?

The answer cannot be determined simply by asking for whom the player was playing when the injury occurred. As Basketball Arbitral Tribunal (BAT) jurisprudence demonstrates, the starting point is the employment contract and, in particular, how the parties have allocated the economic risk of injury.

BAT has already considered a national-team injury in 2013 in the case of Atsur v Fenerbahçe, BAT 0337/12^[1]. However, the contractual wording in that case was unusually clear: the agreement expressly provided that the club would continue to fulfil its contractual obligations even where the player was injured while training or playing for the Turkish national team. The case therefore left a key question open: how would BAT approach a national-team injury where the employment contract contained a general injury guarantee but did not specifically address injuries sustained while playing for a national team?

A recent BAT award, in which the author represented the player, provides a clearer indication of BAT’s approach to that situation. The relevant contract did not contain a specific national-team injury clause. It did, however, constitute a multi-year, fully guaranteed agreement and contained a broad guarantee protecting the player’s remuneration in the event of injury, illness or disability. BAT held that, in those circumstances, an injury suffered on national-team duty did not relieve the club of its obligation to pay the player’s guaranteed remuneration. At the time of writing,

That conclusion, however, has clear limits. The award should not be understood as establishing that a club must necessarily continue paying salary following every national-team injury. BAT’s reasoning was closely connected to the guaranteed nature and specific wording of the contract before it. A differently drafted agreement, and particularly a non-guaranteed agreement or one containing an express national-team injury exception, may lead to a different outcome. The recent award is, in the author’s view, best understood as guidance on how BAT approaches the allocation of national-team injury risk under a fully guaranteed contract, rather than as a universal rule applicable irrespective of the parties’ agreement.

This article considers the earlier BAT jurisprudence, the reasoning in the recent award, the arguments advanced by the club which were rejected, and the practical lessons for both players and clubs when negotiating professional basketball contracts. Please note that the award had not yet been made publicly available on the FIBA website, but should be published in early 2027.

Article overview

• BAT 0337/12 Atsur v Fenerbahçe: the earlier national-team injury case
• The recent BAT award: no specific national-team injury clause
• The role and limits of the guaranteed contract
• Why the club’s arguments did not succeed
  • Medical examination: no annual reset of the guarantee
  • Registration: eligibility to play was not the same as salary entitlement
  • No services: participation was not a condition of guaranteed salary
  • Third-party compensation: quantum, not liability
  • Ex aequo et bono: fairness does not rewrite the contractual bargain
• Practical drafting implications
  • Drafting implications for clubs
  • Drafting implications for players
• A broader cross-sport perspective