2024 Sports Law Hot Topics to Watch
To those who have been with the blog in the past, WELCOME BACK! To those who are new to the conversation and the blog, WELCOME TO THE SPORTS LAW BLONDE BLOG! To all, here is your reminder that, technically, there is no such thing as “sports law,” per se. Rather, what a handful of attorneys such as myself do is specialize in understanding and zealously advocate to resolve diverse legal issues that take place within the sports industry because the law often treats sports in a special way compared to pretty much every other industry out there.
Admittedly, saying, “It’s been a while!” is a severe understatement, but after podcasting, growing my legal practice, and going through numerous personal life events across the spectrum, I felt it was time to come back to write something that I know many people used to look forward to reading because it’s that time of the year. My past predictions have been pretty accurate despite some unpredictable events in recent years. So, let’s get this party started!
Here are what I believe will be the Top 5 sports law hot topics to watch:
ANTITRUST! ANTITRUST EVERYWHERE!
YES! This is an incredibly general statement and an incredibly general topic, but I cannot emphasize enough how antitrust drives how the sports world looks. As a whole, antitrust laws are a collection of laws that prohibit unlawful anti-competitive business behavior and mergers because we benefit from competition. Whether you’re interested in…
WWE’s resurrection after settling a lawsuit by Major League Wrestling
The USFL-XFL merger (now, UFL) existing with the NFL’s “natural monopoly” (especially given the latter’s contining international expansion)
Salary caps, or the lack thereof
The A’s relocation drama and other franchise/club/team relocation discussions
The NCAA’s latest proposal for a new super Division I subdivision, which includes a price floor, i.e., a version of price fixing that technically is a per se illegal violation of antitrust law
… having a basic understanding of why (a) agreements with unreasonable restraints of trade are illegal, and (b) why we do not want “bad” monopolies to exist matters in discussing the sports world. Remember how sports media went crazy about “Deflategate” in the mid-2010s? I would classify that matter as many sports journalists’ and sports fans’ first exposure to what “sports law” is about, at least to that scale. When we turn around to see the path paved these past few years, I bet this will be a breakout year for sports fans to learn about antitrust law and experience how it shapes the industry they love.
Antitrust is one of the two slices of bread in the sports law sandwich. Who doesn’t like a really good sandwich?
College athlete “labor” rights
While we’re talking about sandwiches, labor law is the second slice of bread in the sports law sandwich. Labor law essentially mediates the relationship between employers and employees and their employee representative organizations. Whether or not someone is classified as an “employee” matters because employees have legal rights that are different from non-employees, i.e., “independent contractors.” Notably, the National Labor Relations Act gives employees the right to collectively bargain and inquire about wages, hours, and working conditions.
College athletes are not legally classified as employees, at least not yet. It is also true that our government branches consider a variety of factors on whether to assert jurisdiction and change that. A legal classification change would absolutely assist in resolving the inequities and could be in the cards in the near future (e.g., among others, this lawsuit), but with respect to my college athletes rights hot topic prediction, I put “labor” in quotations for a reason.
Why? I’m not just talking about legal status here. I’m not just talking about revenue sharing here, either, which we know will be discussed thoroughly, especially with the College Football Playoff expansion and coaches like the University of Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh publicly calling for it. I’m also talking about (a) player health, safety, and well-being; (b) intra-conference and inter-conference transfer mobility; and (c) being treated as humans who bring full-time work that certainly shapes how they approach schoolwork rather than pawns in a system, just to name a few biggies. All these concepts fall under “wages, hours, and working conditions” and can nevertheless be negotiated without “employee” status if the schools or conferences voluntarily agree to it; players just do not have the expressed right under federal law to do so right now.
We may not see immediate change, and whatever changes come may look different from sport to sport, but I’m looking forward to hearing what the players want, seeing what they get, and seeing others support them.
Broadcasting rights
Sports continues to keep people paying for cable TV subscriptions, but for how much longer? What streaming platform, regardless of whether it is connected or separate from a cable TV channel, isn’t trying to get exclusive rights to sporting events? Heck, you can even watch WNBA and NBA games on your Peloton now thanks to the multi-year partnership through NBA League Pass, “the league’s premium live game subscription service.”
ESPN and the NHL helped each other in 2023, but who is going to help the newly formed UFL? As the NBA’s own broadcasting rights deal expires at the end of the 2024-25 season, how many partners will the league have in its next broadcasting rights deal, mainly since Disney and Warner Bros Discovery are looking to scale back? As sports organizations divvy up portions of their respective totals to bidders so that the number of platforms with rights increases, and as the number of sports and sports events entering broadcasting/streaming rights agreements increases, there should also be more advancements in technology and interactive engagement.
(Note: To illustrate, it would not be surprising if platforms begin or discuss beginning Twitch-style interactivity, which gets me to our next hot topic prediction!)
Sports patent rights & disputes
A patent grants the owner legal intellectual property rights just like owners of copyrights and trademarks receive for their respective things. Processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter fall within the subject matter of a patent so long as they are novel, nonobvious, and fully and particularly described. Patents encourage invention and investing to commercialize new and better products. Also, because patents are complicated business, it makes sense that there will be disputes about who created and owns what. Two months ago, Nike sued numerous shoe companies for patent infringement regarding its “Flyknit” technology, and no matter how that case turns out, it’s a perfect example of what we’ll be talking about in 2024.
With respect to the sports industry, patents encourage all the technological advances we have seen, especially in recent years. For example, running shoe technology should continue to remain a topic of conversation as the running industry grows and seemingly insane records are being broken, but not for the reasons in the past (namely, whether or not carbon-plate “supershoes” should be allowed). Instead, companies will likely continue compete in the lab to design the fastest, lightest shoes and also compete in the courtroom over patent infringement and ownership questions. Another example is patents related to interactive streaming (e.g., patents assigned to Twitch Interactive) because streaming services are a major part of the sports experience, and those who may not have been in either the streaming service or the sports broadcasting business before may need to either receive licenses to use that technology or create their own.
All in all, things have been trending toward an enhanced focus on sports performance (think fitness class statistics, personal and professional wearable devices, etc.), monitoring health and safety, enhanced decision-making (think officiating), communications, and consumer experiences.
women’s sports demand & ADVOCACY
The more visibility women’s sports have, the more fan they can gain, and the more visibility and fans they have, the more money the athletes can make. Here are some notable 2023 happenings in women’s sports:
In a paid event (originally priced at $25 per ticket), 92,003 fans filled Nebraska Football’s Memorial Stadium to watch the Nebraska volleyball team defeat Omaha, setting a world record for the largest crowd to watch a women’s sports event.
New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu became the third woman to launch a signature shoe with Nike.
The Portland-based LBGTQA+ bar dedicated to playing and watching women’s sports called The Sports Bra opened with massive success and has mentioned thoughts of expansion.
LSU’s Angel Reese and Olivia Dunne are two NCAA athletes with the highest NIL earnings, and while a gender pay gap in NIL exists, current and former athletes are helping them close that gap.
The Pro Volleyball Association announced its first media partner, CBS Sports.
The NWSL’s Kansas City Current is getting to play the 2024 season in the first stadium built for a women’s professional sports team, and season ticket memberships SOLD OUT.
The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) began its inaugural season on New Year’s Day, with (a) national broadcast agreements in Canada with CBC/Radio-Canada, TSN and RDS, and Sportsnet; and (b) regional broadcast agreements in the United States with MSG Networks, NESN, and Bally Sports North.
If women’s sports already has THIS MUCH with hindered visibility, imagine what could happen if more people invested in women’s sports. Additionally, the interest and demand for women’s sports seems to increase around the Summer Olympics, and Paris 2024 is set to be a phenomenal showcase of talent that people will be encouraging one another to witness. I firmly believe 2024 will be an instrumental and advantageous year for women’s sports, and we are all going to be talking about it for a long time.