Contractual relationships are the center of any professional franchise—league contracts, licensing agreements, player contracts, stadium agreements, naming rights, insurance contracts, vendor agreements, real estate covenants and dozens of similar contractual relationships. Our lawyers work with many of the leading professional sports teams across the country and have deep experience in drafting, negotiating and litigating those agreements.

Other than the players themselves, the intellectual property (IP) associated with any professional sports team can be and often is the most important asset held by the team. Protecting that IP, exploiting it for maximum return and ensuring fair, consistent and appropriate licensing arrangements can be overwhelming. Our lawyers have handled IP matters for leading teams—both defensively and offensively. And when things go wrong, our litigators stand ready to take up the fight.

Maintaining appropriate relationships with national professional sports leagues while protecting a team’s own interests is a critical balancing act and not one for the faint hearted. Our Sports group lawyers have years of experience in dealing with the national sports leagues, have close working relationships with key decision makers and can bring that experience and those relationships to bear to assist in working through even the most difficult and fraught issues.

Our Real Estate & Land Use practice attorneys have extensive experience working with city officials to secure locations, and our Construction practice attorneys have experience negotiating the design, construction and supply components. When there are disagreements regarding the location, we also have experience representing teams in litigation.

Our Advertising, Marketing & Promotions practice team has significant experience advising sports teams on structuring contests, sweepstakes and related games and drafting contest and sweepstakes rules and promotion-related agreements.

Our Privacy & Security lawyers work closely with the world’s largest e-commerce industry leaders, social media platforms and search engines—as well as businesses large and small. We have helped audit, secure and address data breaches nationwide. No business, and certainly no professional sports franchise, can avoid confronting vulnerabilities. Our team can help.

Our attorneys have extensive experience helping sports teams enforce their rights to insurance coverage. Notably, we have worked with sports teams in reviewing and enforcing their Athlete Disability Insurance and Event Cancellation Insurance due to natural or man-made disasters such as terrorist attacks.