By Gordon Drakes, Co-head of Franchising and Distribution, Fieldfisher

If 2025 felt like a different year for franchising, that’s because it was. Not because the model stopped working – it didn’t. The sector remains resilient, scalable and attractive.

What changed was something more subtle, but more important: scrutiny.

• Franchising moved out of trade press discussion and into:
• courtrooms (with a renewed focus on good faith),
• Parliament (with questions around power imbalance and accountability), and
• large-scale disputes (with the Vodafone litigation putting discretion under the spotlight).

And when that level of attention converges around a business model, the legal risk doesn’t usually come from exotic clauses.

It comes from a simpler question: Did you exercise your contractual power in a way that looks fair, rational and defensible?

• To read the full article, view Franchise World Summer 2026 issue, page 45.

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