Showing off your brand new pair of sneakers on the court wasn't always very easy. The story behind the Air Jordans, as told in the 2023 film Air , involved a bit of activism on the part of Nike to change strict regulations  by the NBA that governed what shoes athletes could wear. No doubt, it's a legendary story that sells the idea of a shoe representing the essence of whoever's wearing it. So, what's the story behind sneaker deals today? As I've mentioned in previous articles, the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) spells out the rules for all NBA athletes and teams to follow. Salary caps is one of the many ways teams are prevented from being "pay-to-win" and funneling all of their funds into a handful of players. It's great for the league! For the athletes that would love an extra check in the mail, not so much.  Sponsorships are some of the ways athletes can have extra freedom over how much they get paid. This is partially subjected to limit...

On June 6th, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California approved a settlement that would finally allow college athletes to rake in the big bucks (as they deserve to). This comes four years after the U.S. Supreme Court case National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston , 594 U.S. 69 (2021), ruled that limiting compensation to student athletes violates the Sherman Act. This paved the way for student athletes to receive compensation directly from schools for playing college sports. As Dan Murphy, writing for ESPN, puts it: "college athletics should be treated less like an education-based endeavor and more like a lucrative entertainment industry." The long wait comes from the slew of legal challenges to the NCAA's rules as a result of the decision. The settlement, nicknamed the House settlement after its case name, opened the floodgates to the NCAA must not only pay back $2.8 billion in damages for all the uncompensated years for its athlet...

Pop icon Taylor Swift recently bought back the master recordings for her first six albums. The nostalgic trip behind the "Taylor's Version" albums was a way of circumventing the restrictions placed on her due to not having access to releasing her original records.  That's because, until 2018, Swift had a record deal with music label Big Machine, which gave them the rights to the master recordings of these six albums released with them. Swift rejected the offer to rejoin the label in exchange for access to her master recordings. Afterwards, Big Machine was acquired by  Ithaca Holdings, which is owned by Scooter Braun, whom Swift has a history of dispute with. Eventually, Ithaca Holdings sold her rights to Shamrock Holdings in 2020, who re-released part of her masters in an effort to exert their control of her works. Re-recording albums was her way of fighting back.  Music compositions are made up of many different copyrights, even down to who owns the recording. The ...

To put it bluntly, the NFL is a cash cow. Every single NFL team towers in revenue over some of the biggest sports leagues in the world, such as the English Premiere League (EPL). The lighter spending on players compared to other leagues, media deals with ESPN, Fox, CBS and more, and international recognition has made the NFL an attractive investment. In fact, the NFL has outperformed the S&P 500 for 20 consecutive years between 2002 and 2022. For most of its history, however, the teams have been family-owned. Many other sports leagues allow private equity firms - businesses that pool money from investors into funds that go towards investments - to own a portion of their teams. In 2020 , the NBA permitted Dyal HomeCourt, a private equity fund, to buy partner stakes in team franchises. From hereon out, other private equity funds would & could be approved with limited ownership rights. In the NHL , minority stakes in franchises can be acquired by a singular private equity fund u...

Let's be real - the Dallas Mavericks have not  had a good season. Missing the playoffs after the highly  controversial trade that shall not be named, the team needed a miracle to get back on their feet for the next season. And a miracle did happen! With only a 1.8% percent chance, the Mavericks snagged the #1 pick for the 2025 NBA Draft. Beating out teams such as the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards, both of which had a 14% chance to take the #1 pick, the incident has been met with a resounding sentiment from fans: "the draft is rigged." A lottery system for a sports draft isn't common. Two leagues sharing a similar foundation are the WWE and the NHL, and even they go about it in a completely different way. Why does the NBA conduct their lottery like this? What do other leagues do so different? And is the NBA Draft really rigged, or did Lady Luck strike once again? The NBA Draft and Tanking  The NBA Draft includes all of the teams. However, the top 14 picks are spe...

Have you ever found yourself needing to sign up for multiple streaming services just to find the shows you want to watch? These costs add up extremely quickly, and with rampantly rising costs of streaming, suddenly the price of eggs isn't your biggest worry. It is this concern that providers want to capitalize on. DirecTV, Xfinity, Spectrum and more offer streaming bundles intended to fix this problem. They offer their specific platform with thousands of channels along with access to other subscription services. You can pay one price for all the content you want - no exceptions. Except there are  exceptions. Streaming services are protective of their intellectual properties, or IPs. When they provide access to their services as part of these bundles, they are effectively lending over their property through licensing agreements. When these licensing agreements fall apart, we have what's known as a carriage dispute - where neither party agrees on who has the right to "carr...

In my last article, I mentioned that E-Sports leagues are largely at the mercy of their intellectual property (IP) holders - usually, the creator of the game. For some games, such as the platform fighter series Rivals of Aether , battle royale game Fortnite , and more, their developers actively encourage a competitive scene to play and stream their game to their heart's content. Other developers aren't so generous. Title 17 of the U.S. Code covers what is considered a copyrightable work and the protections afforded to their owners.  17 U.S.C § 102(a) defines copyright protection as "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." Video games are amalgamations of various IPs, from the musical score accompanying a playthrough, to the specific character models designed for the game, to the written code behind everything. From a business perspective, it's easy to see why developers want to protect their games so heavily. Sometimes, however,...