Sports Law
Our country is filled with fans and participants at every level: each day, families root for kids involved in amateur sporting events, and fans loyally follow their professional favorites, week after week and season after season. Each newscast reports on sports news, and every weekend is filled with sporting competitions for all ages, at all levels, professional and amateur.
Law in the today likewise could be argued to be the lifeblood of our culture. Sports’ continued popularity has seen ever-increasing legal regulation of sports at all levels. Sports Law exists to protect the athlete and the organization, the fan and the participant.
Perhaps no area of our law is more complicated and wide-ranging. Sports law involves not only the regulation of amateur sporting events but sports as a professional industry, both nationally and internationally. It intertwines itself in all these areas, with sports law involving everything from local ordinances applicable to amateur events to international treaties impacting Olympic level competition.
Legal issues in sports law are always complex, and the expertise of a sports lawyer must include a variety of legal concerns: contract law, antitrust matters, union issues, privacy and publicity rights, negligence concerns, acts of intentional harm (assault, battery), defamation, and medical malpractice are all involved in the sports lawyer’s expertise.
Client concerns for the sports lawyer are multifaceted, as well. Sports law representation overlaps the amateur and professional athlete, as well as the sporting organization, team, league, official, or association, and sometimes, the spectator or fan.
The attorneys practicing in the Sports and Entertainment Group of Archer & Greiner are extremely experienced in every aspect of Sports Law.
Professional Sports and Professional Sports Law
A player becomes involved in professional sports upon receipt of any type of compensation for her participation. Compensation is the sole criteria separating the amateur from the professional: what may appear to be a nominal amount of money can legally turn an amateur athlete into a professional one.
Today, the amount of money at issue in professional sports is very controversial; some critics argue that professional athletes should not be allowed to negotiate the multi-million dollar contracts they sign. In the , the average professional athlete will earn between $5 and $25 million in his lifetime, earning around 90% of that lifetime sum before the age of 35. Star players earn much more. NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal made $20 million in the 2005-2006 season alone, and Alex Rodriguez is notorious for signing a 10-year contract with the New York Yankees for $252 million.
Meanwhile, professional sports remain very big business in . For example, according to ESPN, 2008’s Super Bowl XVII (Giants - Patriots) was seen by 97.5 million fans, making it the second biggest televised event in American television history (second only to the 1983 M*A*S*H* series finale). Each 30-second spot during that televised show cost the advertiser $2.7 million, and Fox aired 45 minutes and 10 seconds of commercial advertising during the Bowl game itself.
Professional Sports Contracts
Along with payment for services comes the contractual agreement, usually documented by the Standard Player’s Contract between the athlete and the team, with the accompanying Standard Representation Agreement signed by the athlete and his sports agent. Oftentimes, professional sports law involves either negotiating the terms of these contracts, or disputing whether or not one of these contracts has been breached.
Disputes may or may not result in lawsuits being filed; professional sports lawyers are adept at working through conflicts between pro athletes, professional sports teams, and sports agents. Alternative dispute resolution methods, including mediations and arbitrations, are often used in breach of contract controversies in order to avoid the expense of time and money, as well as the possible negative publicity, of formal courthouse litigation.
The impact of a player’s contract upon the player and the team cannot be underestimated. For example, Cleveland Brown tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. negotiated a $40 million dollar contract covering six years with the Browns; however, the contract provisions included language that a motorcycle injury would be considered a breach of the contract. In May 2005, Winslow was seriously injured when his motorcycle hit a parking lot curb and under the contract, the Browns successfully recovered over $300,000 in salary as well as a portion of Winslow’s bonus money for Winslow’s breach.
Professional Sports Torts
Traditionally, professional sports law focused almost entirely upon contract law with minimal dealing in tortious acts. However, since the mid-1970s, sports torts have been recognized and are now a common, everyday part of any professional sports law practice.
Sports torts involve legal actions against pro athletes, teams, organizations, and the like for a civil wrong done to an individual. Sport law tort actions include lawsuits claiming medical malpractice against team doctors; defamation suits alleging that a professional athlete has been libeled or slandered; and negligence actions brought by both players and spectators for injuries incurred during a sporting event. As early as the 1920s, spectators sued pro athletes for injuries - while the 1924 case against Babe Ruth for hitting a fan in the stands with a throw to third was unsuccessful, suits by injured fans are on the rise. And, commentators are finding themselves not to be immune from suit: in 2007,
Sports torts can extend into products liability, and other areas of tort law, as well. One 2008 sports tort lawsuit involved professional triathletes Amber Neben, Rebekah Keat, and Mike Vine filing suit against the maker of Endurolytes, alleging that the product failed to list ingredients on its label that caused each of the professional athletes to falsely test positive in standard doping tests, resulting in their being unfairly and wrongly sanctioned for using steroids.
The attorneys practicing in the Sports and Entertainment Group of Archer & Greiner are extremely experienced in every aspect of Sports Law.
For more information on Professional Sports and Professional Sports Law:
Sports Lawyers Association
http://www.sportslaw.org/
American Bar Association’s Forum on Entertainment and Sports Industries
http://www.abanet.org/forums/entsports/
National Football League Players Association
http://www.nflplayers.com/user/index.aspx?fmid=378&lmid=378&pid=0&type=l
Major League Baseball Players Association
http://mlbplayers.mlb.com/pa/index.jsp
National Basketball Players Association
http://www.nbpa.com/
National Hockey League Players Association
http://www.nhlpa.com/
Amateur Sports and Amateur Sports Law
Amateur sports are, simply, everything outside of professional sports. Amateur sports cover fun, informal recreational games, to organized T-Ball events for preschoolers (youth sports), as well as high school athletic competitions and collegiate-level sporting events.
Sports law usually comes into play in amateur sports when there are disputes between individual players and affiliated organizations, including school districts, interscholastic leagues, and team organizations. At the college level, sports law is often involved in the application of NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) rules and regulations as well as whether or not an individual has lost or regained amateur status. Occasionally, amateur sports will involve sports law controversies that involve constitutional issues, such as race or sex discrimination or rights to privacy in drug testing.
One growing trend in amateur sports law is lawsuits being filed by injured athletes against those officiating over amateur sporting events, alleging the official’s negligence as the cause of their injuries. Another major development in amateur sports law is the February 2008 NCAA settlement of a California antitrust lawsuit that alleged the NCAA limitations on scholarships (tuition, books, room & board) are an illegal restraint of trade since the NCAA (and the universities) receive extremely high revenues from the sale of team apparel, the broadcasting of the sporting events, etc. It is expected that additional, similar challenges will be filed in other states.
For more information on Amateur Sports and Amateur Sports Law:
Amateur Athletic Association
http://image.aausports.org/index.html
National Collegiate Athletic Association
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal
Olympics - Beijing 2008
http://en.beijing2008.cn/
Sports Law Attorney(s)