For Immediate Release: 2019 Harvard Sports Law Symposium Scheduled for Monday, April 1, 2019. On April 1, the Harvard Committee on Sports & Entertainment Law and the Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law are hosting the 2019 Harvard Sports Law Symposium. An annual event, the Symposium is intended to bring together sports industry–focused practitioners, […]
A recent ESPN “Outside the Lines” investigation revealed an existential threat to football: the disappearing insurance market. From the NFL to Pop Warner, leagues, schools, and teams spend large sums of money on general liability insurance. With greater concern over traumatic brain injury, insurance companies are raising prices on premiums or pulling out of the
By Ross Evans ’20 Editor’s Note: In light of the March 6th sentencing of the defendants in United States v. Gatto (the first NCAA hoops corruption trial), we wanted to share a piece—written by our managing editor (Ross Evans ’20) and published on The Global Anticorruption Blog (GAB) in January—that argues the federal government’s successful
After pleading guilty in 2007 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and transmit gambling information, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy is back in the news. In an in-depth report, ESPN analyzed the games Donaghy officiated and interviewed his co-conspirators. The findings reveal that Donaghy did more than just bet on the games he worked – he
By Stuart N. Brotman Matt Lauer and Louis C.K. may be the latest answers on Jeopardy. But here is the real question: How do you control talent behavior in the entertainment and media fields? This inquiry has been posed for over 80 years now. When Hollywood had a studio system for the movie industry, most of
The Ohio Supreme Court became the first state high court to tackle the issue of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (“CTE”) in court, holding that CTE could be treated as a latent condition that develops long after an initial injury. Steven Schmitz, a former football player at Notre Dame from 1974 to 1978, initially sued Notre Dame
In a victory for daily fantasy sports operators DraftKings and FanDuel, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled last week that the names, likenesses, and statistical information of college athletes are newsworthy and may be used without players’ permission. A group of NCAA athletes sued DraftKings and FanDuel on the basis that players should be paid for
On Tuesday, online e-sports gambling platform Unikrn was approved for a gambling license in the Isle of Man. The license allows Unikrn to expand its nascent e-sports gambling service to countries with legalized sports gambling, including the US and most of Europe. The company, headquartered in Las Vegas, had previously only been permitted to operate in
On Wednesday, a jury of eight returned with unanimous guilty verdicts against Jim Gatto, a former Adidas marketing executive, Merl Code, a former Adidas consultant, and Christian Dawkins, an aspiring sports agent, after three days and 18 hours’ worth of deliberations. The defendants were convicted on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit
Steve Penny, former President and CEO of USA Gymnastics, was arrested on Wednesday in Tennessee after he was indicted by a Texas grandy jury on charges of evidence tampering. Penny resigned from his post in March 2017 amid mounting concerns regarding USA Gymnastics’ handling of allegations of sexual abuse by sports doctor Larry Nassar. Nassar
In her latest move in her battle with the NFL, Shayana Jenkins Hernandez (“Jenkins”), the former fiancée of late New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, refiled a lawsuit in state court against the NFL and Riddell, the NFL’s official helmet provider from 1989-2013. The claim alleges that the NFL was negligent in failing
