LeClairRyan's Sports Industry team regularly represents professional athletes, coaches, agents, and professional sports franchises in a full spectrum of legal matters, consistently providing clients with tailored legal strategies and business solutions that protect and enhance profitability.
The legal arena is nearly as much a part of the sports world as is the field of play. Headlines centering on the likes of banned substances, bad investments, eligibility disputes, and player-owner conflicts regularly dominate the sports page. Members of our interdisciplinary Sports Industry team possess legal backgrounds as diverse as the issues they handle. Our clients have included boxing legend Muhammad Ali as well as top athletes from the Olympics, NCAA, NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA Tour and NASCAR.
Our distinctive strengths include:
- Marketing deals and contracts
- Contract review and negotiation
- Bankruptcies
- Privacy rights and protection of rights to name and licensing agreements
- Intellectual property disputes
- Stadium construction contract negotiations
- Professional sport franchise acquisitions and sales
- Sporting event operation issues
- Collective bargaining agreements
- Agent regulations
- Employment and immigration issues, including O visas for athletes
- Player disputes with agents and clubs
- Domestic relations matters
- Tax matters
Representative engagements:
- Negotiated deferred compensation in licensing deals
- Provided counsel regarding tax and estate planning to athletes and agents
- Represented Olympic athlete in immigration and permanent residency issues
- Represented professional athletes in disputes with agents
- Represented agents in investigations by players associations
- Represented PGA Tour players in disputes with sponsors
- Represented professional athletes with domestic relations, criminal, league discipline (alleged use of banned substance), and financial ssues (including bankruptcy)
- Represented Major League Baseball player in litigation against Japanese baseball team
- Represented the interests of prominent football coach in his capacity as an investor
- Represented severely injured NCAA athlete in a dispute over insurance benefits under the NCAA catastrophic injury policy
- Represented NCAA baseball player in obtaining release to play for another institution
- Represented NCAA basketball player in eligibility dispute
- Secured successful result for professional boxer in litigation to secure the rights to his life story
- Provide advice to several NASCAR drivers regarding their capacity as participants in investments
- Provide general counsel services to two minor league baseball teams, a minor league hockey team, a minor league soccer team, and the Virginia State Golf Association