Harvard Legislation Faculty’s Committee on Sports activities & Leisure Legislation (CSEL) hosted its 2024 Harvard Sports activities Legislation Symposium during the last two weeks. Learn our protection of the symposium’s notable occasions and audio system from JSEL’s Hugh Reynolds and Alec Winshel.
On Tuesday, April ninth, the 2024 Harvard Sports activities Legislation Symposium started with the presentation of the 2024 Paul C. Weiler Awards.
College students, practitioners, and professors gathered on Harvard’s campus to current this yr’s distinguished award to Brandon Etheridge, Senior Vice President and Basic Counsel of the Baltimore Ravens.
Mr. Etheridge oversees all authorized, compliance, and threat issues for the Baltimore Ravens Restricted Partnership, the M&T Financial institution Stadium, and the Baltimore Ravens Basis. His educational profession started at Yale College, the place he additionally performed on the varsity’s soccer group. He then matriculated to Harvard Legislation Faculty and earned his J.D. He has since been honored on Forbes’ “30 Below 30” record as one of many sports activities world’s “brightest younger stars.” Professor Peter Carfagna, head of Harvard Legislation’s Sports activities Program, introduced Mr. Etheridge with this yr’s award at an in-person ceremony on the Harvard Legislation Faculty campus. Different stars of the sports activities world–Jeff Pash (GC of the NFL), Jihad Beauchman (GC of the San Francisco 49ers), Mike Zarren (VP of Basketball Operations for the Boston Celtics), Megha Parekh (EVP of the Jacksonville Jaguars), and Ashwin Krishnan (Head of Authorized & Enterprise Affairs at Betr)–joined to share tales of Mr. Etheridge’s excellence as a colleague.
The presentation additionally included awards for excellent college students. Kellen Duggan ‘24 and Peyton Bush ‘24 acquired the Paul C. Weiler Scholar Award. Sam Spurrell ‘24 was honored with the Paul C. Weiler Writing Prize.
On Wednesday, April tenth, the symposium hosted a panel on the globalization of investments in sports activities. The panel featured Russell Benjamin Hedman, a accomplice at Hogan Lovells; Chuck Baker, a accomplice at Sidley Austin and Co-Chair of the agency’s Sports activities & Media Trade Group, and Theresa Smith, an affiliate at Proskauer Rose. The panel was moderated by Chris Deubert, Senior Counsel at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, and former Basic Counsel of D.C. United.
The panelists mentioned the worth of sports activities groups as investments. Baker described that groups have historically been trophy property: tremendously prestigious with a restricted provide and liable to appreciation in worth regardless of rates of interest, recessions, and even world pandemics. Smith shared insights concerning the course of of buying a sports activities group for each majority and minority house owners. Baker defined that the groups are very unleveraged, as leagues have strict guidelines round borrowing and consumers could not use the group itself as safety for borrowing. This makes groups a sexy asset class for personal fairness corporations.
Deubert requested the panel about worldwide investments in home sports activities leagues. Hedman famous the quantity of inbound US funding in sports activities is usually overstated within the media. Hedman famous that there are challenges if overseas house owners, together with that if groups are shedding cash, leagues need assurance that the property wanted to help the group are within the U.S. Smith agreed with Hedman, although she talked about that overseas curiosity has been rising.
With respect to personal fairness, Baker described how U.S. groups are taking classes from Europe, the place non-public fairness and institutional capital has been permitted in group investments. In 2018, most leagues started loosening their guidelines with a purpose to facilitate non-public fairness investments and, ultimately, institutional investments. The leagues did this rigorously, inserting restrictions across the fund buildings permitted in these investments. For instance, they restricted the proportion of every group a non-public fairness agency might management, and the variety of groups that personal fairness might personal a bit of. Hedman famous that the incentives for personal fairness corporations largely align with house owners’ curiosity: PE corporations, like house owners, desire a thriving, aggressive, profitable league, and a return on their funding.
Deubert raised the query of why the NFL has but to permit non-public fairness investments. The panelists posited that the NFL doesn’t want it—however maybe it’s on the horizon. As costs proceed to rise for groups, there could also be some extent the place people can now not afford them. All leagues require a controlling proprietor to personal a threshold share of the group. Costs proceed to go up, and at a sure level, any league could think about allowing institutional capital into the league so as to add liquidity to the system.
On Wednesday, April sixteenth, the symposium hosted one other panel concerning the way forward for the NCAA. Scott Sherman and Jeffrey L. Kessler of Winston & Strawn LLP sat in dialog with Professor Carfagna to debate their careers and the looming authorized uncertainties for the NCAA within the wake of the Supreme Court docket’s latest pronouncements about its education-related restrictions for college students.
Sherman, a litigation affiliate with the agency, opened the panel by describing his time at Harvard Legislation Faculty and the way his involvement in its sport regulation program led him to his present place at Winston & Strawn LLP. Kessler, the agency’s Co-Government Chairman, shared particulars about his personal authorized journey: his early work as an antitrust lawyer grew to become more and more intertwined with the authorized issues of main sports activities leagues. Later, because the monetary pursuits associated to collegiate sports activities ballooned, Kessler’s work started to focus particularly on school athletics and the function of the NCAA. He efficiently represented Division I athletes earlier than the Supreme Court docket in Alston v. NCAA, the latest paradigm-shifting resolution that has created long-term questions concerning the NCAA’s management over college students that take part of their faculty’s athletics program. The panelists supplied a uncommon glimpse into their preparation for the oral arguments. They described how they selected to focus narrowly on the problems introduced to the courtroom—restrictions on education-related advantages—reasonably than trying to make use of the case as a car to leverage antitrust doctrine extra assertively in opposition to the NCAA’s dominance in school athletics.
Winston & Strawn LLP has now turned its consideration to a brand new set of instances within the wake of NCAA v. Alston that can pose even sharper challenges for the NCAA’s restrictions on college students. The “explosion within the NIL market,” as described by the panelists, has created new litigation alternatives for the agency. They’ve filed claims for damages due to the missed NIL alternatives for athletes that have been unable to license their likeness previous to the NCAA’s revised coverage. They’ve additionally filed lawsuits in opposition to colleges for offering funds to college students in violation of the exact same NIL coverage. One of many agency’s pending instances, Carter v. NCAA, presents a frontal problem to the NCAA’s longtime conception of amateurism that has the potential to reconfigure the very framework of faculty sports activities. Sherman describes a rising recognition amongst stakeholders that “change is required” for college students concerned in NCAA athletics. The longer term for the NCAA is unsure, however it’s clear that the panelists may have a hand in shaping its subsequent decade.
The 2024 Harvard Sports activities Legislation Symposium drew multiple hundred college students from throughout the campus to its occasions and uncovered them to among the most urgent authorized points within the area. The Journal of Sports activities & Leisure Legislation extends its due to the Committee of Sports activities & Leisure Legislation and its Officers, school advisor Professor Peter Carfagna, the panelists who joined us, and the numerous others who helped make this symposium occur.
