Media & Entertainment Law

Stanford Considers Cutting Sports

Posted on January 21, 2009
As the economic recession continues, the effects are being felt throughout collegiate athletics. It is hitting large and small colleges alike. The impact may be greater on smaller schools with limited budgets that are ill equipped to absorb the substantial increases in travel and other costs together with a large decrease in revenue, but large athletic programs at Division I (excuse me, Bowl Subdivision) schools are feeling the pinch as well...

AIG Won't Renew Man U Shirt Deal

Posted on January 21, 2009
From the category of too obvious for words, but I feel compelled to report it anyway, AIG has announced that it will not renew its sponsorship deal with Manchester United when it expires in May, 2010. AIG has been essentially nationalized by the US government following hundreds of billions of dollars in losses in the global financial crisis...

Ky Appeals Court Restores Sanity, Blocks Domain Name Seizure

Posted on January 20, 2009
Last fall, Franklin County, Kentucky Circuit Court Judge Tom Wingate upheld the seizure of 141 domain names of online gaming sites by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Judge Wingate found that the domain names were gaming devices within the meaning of Kentucky's gambling statutes and, as such, were subject to seizure...

ESPN Boots MLS From Thursday Night Slot

Posted on January 19, 2009
The two year experiment with turning Thursday night into soccer night in America is now over. Starting this season, ESPN will show its MLS game of the week on different nights throughout the week, depending on matchups, stadium availability and lead-ins...

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Cardinals to Super Bowl; Warner Cashes In

Posted on January 18, 2009
Congratulations to the Arizona Cardinals for making their first Super Bowl, especially since I had them beating Philly. My condolences to Donovan McNabb, a genuinely fine QB, whose life will now be a living hell for failing to get the Eagles to the Super Bowl again, despite overachieving to get this far...

T-Mobile Pulls Plug on Wade and Barkley

Posted on January 14, 2009
In the wake of Charles Barkley's DUI arrest, T-Mobile has decided to pull the television campaign featuring Sir Charles, which had been considered very successful. Most recently the campaign had been featuring Barkley and Dwyane Wade in T-Mobile's "Fave 5 program," which landed in Time magazine's Top 10 ads of 2008...

NFL Ad Sales Still Super

Posted on January 13, 2009
One place the recession has not seemed to hit has been ad sales for the NFL playoffs. Both Fox and CBS report that sales for the Conference Championship games are just about sold out and NBC has reported that 90% of the ads for the Super Bowl have been sold...

Red Sox Find a Bull Market

Posted on January 11, 2009
When a group of investors led by futures trader John Henry took over the Boston Red Sox, it didn't take them long to realize that the marketing principles applied to the Sox could easily be applied to other sports. They decided to expand the scope of their interests to other sports related ventures...

Porn Industry Wants Bailout

Posted on January 11, 2009
This is a couple of days old but I just saw it and it was too good not to post in case someone missed it. As proof that this recession/depression is like no other, the porn industry is now complaining about hard times. In past downturns, you would see an increase in activity for the movies industry as people flocked to the theater to escape their troubles for a couple of hours...

Cardinalsl Now A Hot Ticket

Posted on January 11, 2009
What a difference a game makes! When the Cardinals hosted the Falcons in the first round of the NFL playoffs, they needed an extension from the Commissioner's office in order to sell out University of Phoenix Stadium and avoid a home market television blackout...

MLS Expansion to Philly May Be in Trouble

Posted on January 05, 2009
The Philadelphia MLS soccer franchise is slated to begin play in 2010. The franchise owners, Keystone Sports was recently quoted as saying: "I wish we could give you hard commitments today, but we?re not even sure the stadium is going to be built. If the markets tank next month, then we won?t build this thing...

More Proof of the Recession - NFL Style

Posted on January 02, 2009
The myth that sports is exempt from the effects of a recession should have been exploded from everyone's minds by now, but just in case you needed to be reminded that either this is no ordinary recession/depression (it's not, see 1929) or that it is hitting sports as hard as any industry save maybe banks and the auto industry, along comes the NFL playoffs...

Move Over Saban, There's a $6 Million Man in Okie Land

Posted on December 31, 2008
When Nick Saban was lured away from Miami to resurrect Crimson Tide football, he was lured by a contract that was said to be the richest ever offered to a NCAA football coach. Whether that remained true before this season, I'm not sure, but Saban's guaranteed base salary, before bonuses, of $3,750,000 puts him ahead of Mack Brown, who is the Big XII highest paid coach, when bonuses are not included...

Top 10 Sports Business Stories of 2008

Posted on December 31, 2008
It's the end of the year, and although I'm still trying to recover from the pain of last night's Valero Alamo Bowl loss to Missouri (why oh why did you ever punt to Maclin at the end of the first half????), I thought it would an interesting exercise and somewhat obligatory blog post, to come up with a list of the top ten sports business stories of 2008...

Another Baseball Owner in Favor of Salary Cap

Posted on December 30, 2008
The response of baseball owners to the Yankees unprecedented free agent spending spree continues as another owner has joined the call for a salary cap. The difference this time is that the owner does not represent a small market club as did most of those who pushed for a cap in the past and as does Mark Anastasio of the Milwaukee Brewers who was the first to call for one this time around...

Pro Bowl Says Aloha to Hawai'i

Posted on December 30, 2008
I guess you really can have too much of paradise. The NFL is moving the Pro Bowl to Miami after holding the game in Hawai'i every year since 1980. The game has traditionally been held the week following the Super Bowl but will be moved up to the week before, falling on the Sunday between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl...

NBC Sues Arena Football League

Posted on December 26, 2008
As if the Arena Football League didn't have enough problems, what with suspending its season next year, now one of its television broadcast partners has filed suit against it alleging the league owes over $1 million dollars in advertising costs. NBC filed suit in New York State Supreme Court claiming that the AFL owes it $$1,597,320 in revenue sharing from advertising from the 2006 season...

Yankee Madness Cont'd.

Posted on December 26, 2008
For another perspective on the madness inherent in allowing the Yankees to buy up baseball while still going to the City of New York on bended knee for subsidies for New Yankee Stadium, please see this commentary.ARTICLEURL

Want to Own a Piece of the Red Sox?

Posted on December 26, 2008
The newspaper business has had more than its fair share of problems the last few years and they have only been exacerbated by the recession. No paper has been immune from the falloff in print readership and accompanying decline in advertising, including the venerable New York Times...

Coyotes Seek NHL Bailout

Posted on December 25, 2008
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's grand Sun Belt expansion strategy has been troubled for several years now, as attendance at the Southern US franchises has been, well, less than one would hope in a league where a team's financial success is driven by ticket sales...

Yankees Now Own Baseball: Salary Cap to Follow

Posted on December 23, 2008
With the wholly expected signing of Mark Teixeira to an eight year, $180 million deal today, the Yankees now own the four highest active major league contracts. This is only the third big free agent contract the Yanks have signed this off-season, in response to not making the playoffs this past year...

College Football Still a Ratings Boananza

Posted on December 22, 2008
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NASCAR and the Recession - Is This the Beginning of the End for Racing?

Posted on December 17, 2008
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AIG Has a Duke Lacrosse Problem

Posted on December 15, 2008
As if AIG didn't have enough problems, what with running through, and now owing 23 Billion of tax dollars, as part of the $150 billion bailout the Fed has arranged, it now has gotten itself ensared in the ugly morass that is the Duke lacrosse case. How can a global giant insurance and financial services company get caught up in a case involving a local lying Durham North Carolina stripper and a bunch of college lacrosee players? Easy, don't pay insurance claims...

Madoff Scandal Hits Sports

Posted on December 13, 2008
At least two sports figures lost considerable sums in the Bernie Madoff scandal sweeping Wall Street yesterday. As Darren Rovell reported yesterday, Mets owner Fred Wilpon may have lost as much as $300 million, although the organization released a statement that the Madoff matter would have no effect on the operation of the team or "the long term plans of the Mets organization or the CitiField project...

Maybe This Conference Title Game Wasn't Such A Good Idea After All

Posted on December 10, 2008
When the ACC raided the Big East back in 2003, poaching away Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College, ACC Commissioner John Swofford, college sports' version of Atilla the Hun, proffered as the main rationale the development of the ACC as a football conference...

Arena League Calling Off 2009 Season

Posted on December 10, 2008
The effects of the worldwide recession continue to be felt throughout sports and probably hit minor sports the hardest. The latest evidence of that: the Arena Football League is expected to call off its 2009 season. This decision, which should be made formally in a conference call of the owners sometime later this week, reflects a need for the league to obtain new capital, seek a new business model and develop a new relationship with its players...

Impact of the Recession Cont'd - NFL

Posted on December 10, 2008
The NFL is almost universally recognized as the world's best and most well run professional sports league. Only the English Premier League is even close to the NFL in terms of revenue and all around professionalism and maximization of revenue. Yet, even the best are not spared in this economy...

Illinois Gov. Arrested by Feds; Blackmailed Tribune Co.

Posted on December 09, 2008
The latest installment of the soap opera As Wrigley Turns, finds Governor Rod being asked by Chairman Zell for help in keeping the Cubs in Wrigley Field. Chairman wants to ease the tax burden on poor, overburdened and debt ridden Tribune Company, so he asks his good friend Rod for help...

Cubs Sale Cont.:Tribune Weighs Bankruptcy

Posted on December 08, 2008
The Tribune Company, owner of the Cubs, the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and other media properties is weighing the possibility of filing bankruptcy as early as this week. The company has hired Lazard as an investment advisor and the law firm Sidley Austin to advise it on bankruptcy...

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