We are nearing the end of Representing the Professional Athlete MOOC as we head into week 4 focusing on athletes in their peak professional years and the challenges the agent and athlete will face together in this vital stage. This week students will gain an understanding of the history of publicity rights, constructing and defending against a Right of Publicity Infringement Claim, the important components of an athlete endorsement agreement, and how to construct the marketing efforts of your athlete-clients. This week students will navigate through stages in the professional athlete’s career that include protecting and monetizing an athlete’s image rights, marketing athletes as they reach their free agency years, approaching writing an endorsement agreement, building a mega agency from the ground up, handling an athlete in a crisis situation and investing the monies earned from the biggest contracts of the athlete’s career.
For this week’s case study students will analyze the “decision” of LeBron James to return home to Cleveland in light of the materials and best practices learned in the week’s lessons.
Guest speakers for week 4 are:
Craig Nard, Galen J. Roush Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve School of Law
Jeff Schwartz, President & Founder of Excel Sports Management
Jay K. Reisinger, Partner at Farrell & Reisinger, LLC
John Palguta, Managing Director of Sports at MAI Wealth Advisors, LLC
Course professor, Peter Carfagna and teaching assistant Ricky Volante said “This is where the course really hits its stride, as we delve into the strategies of representing an athlete at the most crucial stage of his or her career. As a professional athlete reaches the peak stage of their career, they will have the maximum number of exposures and liabilities, and it is up to their representation team to limit those while still maximizing the athlete’s revenues through their player contract, NIL rights and endorsement agreements. The students will certainly want to tune in this week to understand how to manage their Athlete-client relationship in this make or break time frame for everyone involved.”
This week’s live discussion session will take place on October 12th at 7:00 pm EDT.