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Alastair Cotton

Principal Associate

What can I do for you

Alastair specialises in providing commercial and intellectual property advice to clients in the sport, media and technology sectors.

Alastair helps clients to protect, exploit and licence their content, rights and data. He has negotiated ground breaking global sponsorship deals and media rights agreements with media companies across the world. He also works with individual athletes, artists and talent, helping them grow their profile through endorsement deals, influencer campaigns and structuring and commercialising their image rights.

Alastair also works with a range of sports and media clients to protect their brands and content from unauthorised use and piracy. He has created and implemented brand protection and ambush marketing strategies for a range of global and national sporting events.

Supporting your ambitions

Alastair is often engaged to support clients undergoing significant change, growth and transformation, often driven by digitisation. He frequently helps with establishing new joint ventures, partnerships and collaborations with third parties, advises on how best to structure a new product / service or revenue opportunity or assists with the outsourcing (or insourcing) of a critical business function.

One client commented that Alastair was “fantastic at understanding the scale and scope of the project and offering practical solutions, pro-actively suggesting points that we should think about (which we hadn’t) and being very sharp”. He enjoys forming teams from across the firm to work together to achieve the client’s objectives.

What do others say

"Is able to handle complex and sensitive issues in such a way that you have absolute confidence in the advice."

"Provides personalised and expert service. Very approachable and knowledgeable across a broad range of sports law matters."

"Is very dedicated and understood the values and importance of our organisation and applies his experience in a judicious manner that delivers results. He is also courteous, personable and extremely hard working."

"Has a wealth of experience across a range of commercial and regulatory sports matters. His calm and focused approach provides great reassurance."

What else should you know

Alastair spent over 10 years working in house in a range of legal, operational and strategic roles, including sitting on boards and senior management teams. He worked for a global publishing business (Cambridge University Press) and an international sports federation (International Paralympic Committee), and was lucky enough to experience working at two Paralympic Games. He welcomes the opportunity to support in-house teams and use his past experience to provide pragmatic solutions to meet business need.

He also is a trustee and board director of Cambridge Junction, a live music, culture and arts venue (and more) in Cambridge.

What our clients say about us

  • I think Mills & Reeve are a wonderful firm. The support they have provided to us in a really difficult area has been brilliant, collaborative and commercially minded. The team were absolutely wonderful and a joy to work with. Amazing advice and support and a real collaborative effort with us. I can't thank them enough for getting us through some really tough times and doing so with an amazing can-do attitude.
  • They are friendly, fast, always available and always on top of the game. I tend to judge my legal team against the other side's legal team and never doubt Mills & Reeve is the better of the two.
  • All interactions have been very clear. Responses to questions have always been very swift and unambiguous. Our company, and my family, have used various services in Mills & Reeve with the same level of satisfaction.
  • I value the fact that Mills & Reeve are recognised as a good place to work in the UK Best Companies survey. This aligns with the values of our business and means that Mills & Reeve can share what is required to achieve this status with our business.

As many clients will testify, too many lawyers deliver the required legal expertise but fail to deliver an outstanding client experience. Which is why we always listen to our clients and constantly ask ourselves what we can do to deliver the results you expect.

You expect a close and attentive working relationship, with a lawyer that is responsive and available when you need them. You also want clear, pragmatic and commercial advice tailored to your needs, and transparency and certainty on costs. We completely agree. That’s why every day, through our culture and approach we are committed to delivering the exceptional results and service our clients expect of us.

Related sectors and services

  • Sport, media and entertainment
  • Education
  • Technology
  • Commercial
  • Information technology
  • Intellectual property

Contact Alastair