Winter Olympics - Music Copyright in the Spotlight
- 13 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Imagine:
You're an elite athlete, you've trained for years to build up your skills, and your routine - set to an awesome, catchy song that you love - is perfected. Then, days before a huge competition, you're told you can’t skate to the music.
This devastating possibility became a reality for Spanish skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté (pictured above with ClicknClear Founder & CEO Chantal Epp at Milano-Cortina), who nearly lost his Minions-themed routine at the Winter Olympics 2026 due to music copyright licensing issues.
“Finding this out so close to the biggest competition of my life was incredibly disappointing, frustrating, and stressful. No-one should have to go through that experience.”
Tomàs
This isn't an isolated incident. Milano-Cortina highlighted the urgent need for a solution to music rights issues, with at least five publicly known cases arising from Milano-Cortina 2026 to date. From Madeline Schizas having to cut Beyoncé tracks to Amber Glenn's post-performance dispute over "The Return" by CLANN, it is clear that just "hoping for the best" is not a viable strategy for athletes - or their federations.
This is true not only of figure skating, but of all sports where music is used to accompany athletes' routines, such as gymnastics, artistic swimming, dressage, dance, and several others.
A Complex Jigsaw Puzzle of copyrights
sits at the Core of the Problem
The ownership of music rights is fragmented, making it difficult for each athlete to get all the permissions needed.
Plus, as detection technology is improving and the music industry seeks to increase monetization, legal action is on the rise. Unlike in the past, when just one public lawsuit occurred at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, legal challenges are now more common. Recently, one rightsholder demanded Euro €2M (~USD $2.3M) for unauthorized use of music by an athlete in figure skating.
This global-scale high-profile issue inevitably also affects the grassroots level, as seen when the Cheerleading industry in the US was sued by just one record label in 2014 with substantial impact.
All levels of sports need to comply with music licensing.
Many millions of athletes worldwide therefore face a lengthy search and contractual negotiations with, on average, ten rightsholders for each song used. Reaching out to the artist on social media and assuming that no response equals "permission" is not legally correct. Explicit permission is needed usually in the form of a license, and artists often have contractual obligations that prevent them from making commercial decisions on their own (for example with record labels and / or music publishers possibly needing to be involved).
The last thing athletes, who are already under immense pressure, and their federations should have to worry about is the potential threat of a lawsuit.
ClicknClear’s Solution
ClicknClear helps choreographed sports athletes and federations manage their music copyright infringement risk.
Our streamlined, process-led solution to address the problem on a global scale uses:
a large pre-cleared catalog of music available for instant license, and
an online tool to help athletes and federations check their music licenses
Our team was fortunately able to help Tomàs successfully change music rightsholders' minds, and cleared all his songs just in time for the competition. This isn’t always possible, rightsholders have absolute sole discretion about the use of their music.
“I’m very grateful to ClicknClear for their help, as well as the music companies and authors involved in the process for their cooperation and willingness to offer a solution.”
Tomàs
The support of music industry rightsholders, including all major labels and publishers, coupled with our in-house technology, has enabled us to offer our fast-growing catalog (which has millions of great music industry tracks of many genres), available to license instantly with official downloads.
Licensing music from this catalog creates a win-win-win situation:
Instant licenses eliminates uncertainty and stress for athletes.
It ensures artists and writers are paid.
It creates new opportunities for federations and event producers (EPs) to share content legally online.
The International Olympic Committee’s recently updated MUSIC IN SPORT guidelines for athletes strongly recommends that all athletes license their music at the start of the season BEFORE they start to use it to accompany their routine - our previous blog gave an overview of the revised document:
AI Issues
Czech ice dancers Katerina Mrazkova and Daniel Mrazek (NOT pictured above!) were at the center of controversy due to their use of AI-generated music. They used an AI tool to generate what has been described as an ‘AC/DC-style track’, for their rhythm dance.
Online commentary has suggested this was done to avoid licensing fees. When this came to light the skaters also faced significant backlash from viewers and commentators who felt it undermined the artistry of the sport.
The use of AI music is a rapidly evolving area, as discussed in
Many AI tools remain unlicensed, and there are numerous examples of them regurgitating whole identifiable sections of copyrighted music.
Because of this the IOC's Music In Sport Guidelines say that for each piece of music used in your routine:
“The sound recording and the song/composition must not have been created using any Artificial Intelligence System.”
International Olympic Committee
Music Copyright in the Spotlight
Music Copyright in choreographed sports hit the headlines at Milano-Cortina.
It provided us with the perfect platform to illustrate how our process and tools are showing their worth, as we bridge the gap between athletes and the music industry.
We were also contacted by many global publications who wanted to better understand the issues (a short selection below):
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