2019 Sports Law Hot Topics to Watch

The annual January tradition I know y’all look forward to is here - my predictions on what will be the hottest of the sports law hot topics! I settled on selecting six topics this year, and I must say, it was wonderfully hard to narrow down the list because there is a lot of meat we will get to digest over the next 12 months. (Disclaimer: I think #1 will be the hottest of the hot, but that may be my bias talking since that is one of my main wheelhouses!)

That said, I would also like to remind those of you who may be newly acquainted with the concept of “sports law” that, in all honesty, there is technically no such thing as “sports law,” per se. Rather, what a handful of attorneys and I do is specialize in understanding and zealously advocate to resolve diverse legal issues that take place within the sports industry because the law often treats sports in a special way relative to pretty much every other industry out there.

Keep reading for a brief descriptions of each topic’s current status, why I am including it on this list, and a few Twitter handles to follow for the latest news and analysis throughout the year:

The Cost of Becoming a Nation of Laputans

In the Jonathan Swift classic Gulliver’s Travels the main character encounters an island in the sky called Laputa. The aristocratic residents of the island were described as being so engrossed in thought that they often required servants to prod them as they were walking so they wouldn’t walk into stationary objects and each other.

All anyone needs to do is look at crowds of United States citizens engrossed in their mobile devices while walking to see how much they represent Laputans in this regard, but the cost of being out of touch with their environment has more serious consequences than needing assistance to navigate walkways.

Governmental bodies, and the individuals with deep pockets who fund their election campaigns, at all levels have taken advantage of citizens’ disinterest and indifference to their activities to turn what was created to be a representative republic into an unconstitutional oligarchy. This has been evidenced at the city level by repeated abuses of “emergency measures” to bypass the need for approval of the populace at large before handing public dollars over to professional sports teams.

Can an Event Host Cancel a Marathon Without Refunding Registration Fees?

I am officially at the end of the final stretch of marathon prep (translation: the "stay loose and rest" part!) because the Detroit Free Press/Chemical Bank Marathon is only a few days away! As it stands currently, the weather for the race looks like "blah" October weather consisting of a sunrise 45 minutes into the race, mostly clouds in the morning, a 60% chance of rain that hopefully stays in the afternoon, 80% humidity, warm, and windy. That being said, this lawsuit is right within the marathon theme, and I figured it was worth discussing.

This year would have been the seventh annual Vancouver USA Marathon from September 15-17 had it not been cancelled a month beforehand. Energy Events, the marathon event's host, claimed it decided to cancel the event, which was supposed to include a full marathon, a half marathon, a 5K, a kids' race, a bike ride, and a beer festival, after "careful consideration for several weeks and reviewing the finances." Typically, the Vancouver USA Marathon has approximately 3,000 registered runners, but at the time of cancellation, only about 65% of that had registered.