Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 8th December 2025

1. Introduction

Welcome to the English Open BJJ Championships ("we", "us", "our"). We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website https://www.englishopenbjjchampionships.co.uk/, including any other media form, media channel, mobile website, or mobile application related or connected thereto (collectively, the "Site").

Please read this privacy policy carefully. If you do not agree with the terms of this privacy policy, please do not access the site.

We are the data controller for the personal data collected through this Site for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

2. Information We Collect

We may collect information about you in a variety of ways. The information we may collect on the Site includes:

2.1. Personal Data You Provide to Us

Personally identifiable information, such as your name, shipping address, email address, and telephone number, and demographic information, such as your age, gender, hometown, and interests, that you voluntarily give to us when you register for events, fill out contact forms, or when you choose to participate in various activities related to the Site, such as online chat and message boards.

Specifically for event registration, this may include:

• Full Name
• Date of Birth (for age category calculation)
• Gender
• Weight (for weight class calculation)
• Contact Information (Email, Phone Number)
• Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Rank / Belt
• Affiliated Club/Academy
• Emergency Contact Information (optional, but recommended)
• Payment Information (processed by our third-party payment processors)

2.2. Automatically Collected Information

Information our servers automatically collect when you access the Site, such as your IP address, your browser type, your operating system, your access times, and the pages you have viewed directly before and after accessing the Site. If you are using our mobile application, this information may also include your device name and type, your operating system, your phone number, your country, your likes and replies to a post, and other interactions with the application and other users via server log files, as well as any other information you choose to provide.

2.3. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies, web beacons, tracking pixels, and other tracking technologies on the Site to help customize the Site and improve your experience. When you access the Site, your personal information is not collected through the use of tracking technology. Most browsers are set to accept cookies by default. You can remove or reject cookies, but be aware that such action could affect the availability and functionality of the Site.

Our cookie modal provides you with choices regarding non-essential cookies. For more detailed information on the cookies we use, why we use them, and how you can manage them, please see the information provided in our cookie consent interface.

3. How We Use Your Information

Having accurate information about you permits us to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and customized experience. Specifically, we may use information collected about you via the Site to:

• Administer competitions, promotions, and contests.
• Process your registration for events, including communicating with you about the event.
• Compile anonymous statistical data and analysis for use internally or with third parties.
• Deliver targeted advertising, coupons, newsletters, and other information regarding promotions and the Site to you (with your consent, where required).
• Email you regarding your account or order.
• Enable user-to-user communications.
• Fulfill and manage purchases, orders, payments, and other transactions related to the Site and our events.
• Generate a personal profile about you to make future visits to the Site more personalized.
• Increase the efficiency and operation of the Site.
• Monitor and analyze usage and trends to improve your experience with the Site.
• Notify you of updates to the Site.
• Offer new products, services, and/or recommendations to you.
• Perform other business activities as needed.
• Prevent fraudulent transactions, monitor against theft, and protect against criminal activity.
• Process payments and refunds.
• Request feedback and contact you about your use of the Site.
• Resolve disputes and troubleshoot problems.
• Respond to product and customer service requests.
• Send you a newsletter (with your consent).
• Comply with legal and regulatory obligations (e.g., for UKBJJA ranking).

4. Legal Basis for Processing Your Personal Data (UK GDPR)

We process your personal data based on the following legal grounds:

• Consent: Where you have given us explicit consent to process your personal data for a specific purpose (e.g., for marketing communications, non-essential cookies). You can withdraw your consent at any time.
• Contract: Where processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you (e.g., when you register for an event, we need to process your details to facilitate your participation).
• Legitimate Interests: Where processing is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, provided these interests are not overridden by your rights and interests. Our legitimate interests include improving our Site and services, administering events, ensuring the security of our Site, and understanding our user base.
• Legal Obligation: Where processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject.

5. Disclosure of Your Information

We may share information we have collected about you in certain situations. Your information may be disclosed as follows:

5.1. By Law or to Protect Rights

If we believe the release of information about you is necessary to respond to legal process, to investigate or remedy potential violations of our policies, or to protect the rights, property, and safety of others, we may share your information as permitted or required by any applicable law, rule, or regulation.

5.2. Third-Party Service Providers

We may share your information with third parties that perform services for us or on our behalf, including payment processing (e.g., Stripe, PayPal), data analysis (e.g., Google Analytics), email delivery, hosting services, customer service, and marketing assistance.

5.3. Event Partners and Affiliates

For the purpose of event administration, results, and rankings, we may share your information (such as name, club, rank, results) with relevant Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu governing bodies or platforms (e.g., UKBJJA, Smoothcomp or similar event management platforms). Publicly available information such as division lists and results may be published on our Site or partner sites.

5.4. Marketing Communications

With your consent, or with an opportunity for you to withdraw consent, we may share your information with third parties for marketing purposes, as permitted by law.

5.5. Online Postings

When you post comments, contributions or other content to the Site, your posts may be viewed by all users and may be publicly distributed outside the Site in perpetuity.

5.6. Business Transfers

We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

6. Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

For example, event registration data may be kept for a period to allow for historical record-keeping, result verification, and for UKBJJA ranking purposes. Anonymized data may be kept for longer periods for statistical analysis.

7. Your Data Protection Rights

Under the UK GDPR, you have a number of rights regarding your personal data. These include:

• The right to be informed: You have the right to be informed about how we collect and use your personal data.
• The right of access: You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
• The right to rectification: You have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• The right to erasure (the "right to be forgotten"): In certain circumstances, you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
• The right to restrict processing: Where certain conditions apply, you have a right to restrict the processing of your personal data.
• The right to data portability: You have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• The right to object: You have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling: We do not currently conduct automated decision making or profiling that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you. If this changes, we will update this policy.
• The right to withdraw consent: If we are relying on your consent to process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details provided in the "Contact Us" section below. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity.

8. Data Security

We use administrative, technical, and physical security measures to help protect your personal information. While we have taken reasonable steps to secure the personal information you provide to us, please be aware that despite our efforts, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and no method of data transmission can be guaranteed against any interception or other type of misuse.

9. International Data Transfers

Your information, including personal data, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ from those from your jurisdiction. For example, we use Google Analytics, which may transfer data to the United States.

If we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the UK.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

10. Children's Privacy

Our Site and events are open to participants of various ages, including juniors and juveniles. For participants under the age of 16 (or other age as stipulated by applicable law), we require consent from a parent or legal guardian for the collection and processing of their personal data for event registration and participation.

If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal data without your consent, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected personal data from children without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

11. Links to Other Websites

The Site may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the "Last Updated" date. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

13. Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, or if you wish to exercise any of your data protection rights, please contact us at:

English Open BJJ Championships
Email: englishopenbjj@outlook.com

14. Complaints

If you are not satisfied with our response to any complaint or believe our processing of your information does not comply with data protection law, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk