Covering Your Ads : Advertising & Marketing Lawyer & Attorney : Sheppard Mullin Law Firm : Entertainment, Sports, Publicity

Successful athlete endorsements can enhance consumer recognition of a brand and increase the relative perceived value of the products being endorsed. But securing a high-profile endorsement often requires lengthy negotiation and certainly comes at a high cost of entry. For example, Nike reportedly paid Tiger Woods over twenty million dollars for his endorsement, and Peyton Manning reportedly raked in over thirteen million dollars from endorsement deals with Sprint, MasterCard, Gatorade and Reebok. With the current state of the global economy and an unprecedented contraction in (and internal and external scrutiny of) marketing and advertising budgets, major brands are becoming even more selective about the quantity and quality of the athletes they engage in endorsement deals. Fundamental supply and demand principles have, in turn, given major brands greater leverage in negotiating contracts that give the brand broader rights and greater protections in the event the endorsing athlete’s image suddenly takes a turn for the worse.

The following article by Ben Mulcahy and Gina Reif Ilardi was originally published in the Sports Litigation Alert. To read the article please click here, or visit the Sports Litigation Alert website.

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When Citigroup (“Citi”) announced its unprecedented $400 million dollar deal for naming rights to the new Mets Stadium in late 2006, sports marketing experts assumed that Citi was breaking new ground in naming rights deals for sports venues. Shortly after Citi announced its deal for “Citi Field,” British banking giant Barclays agreed to pay a reported $400 million dollars over twenty years for naming rights to the future home of the New Jersey Nets, and experts predicted that companies would offer even more for the naming rights to the new Cowboys and Giants stadiums.

In recent weeks, however, Citi has accepted $45 billion dollars in funding from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”). As a result, Citi’s deal with the Mets has undergone intense scrutiny, with certain members of Congress proclaiming that Citi should be forced to back out of its deal with the Mets. Although there is some visceral appeal to that position, requiring Citi to back out of its deal would have far-reaching financial implications for the entire sports industry and would raise complex legal issues under the Contracts Clause and the Takings Clause of the United States Constitution.

The following article by Ben Mulcahy and Gina Reif Ilardi was originally published in Sports Litigation Alert. To read the article please click here, or visit the Sports Litigation Alert website.

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Although the WGA strike is reportedly near an end, the strike has naturally made it harder to find paid acting jobs in film and television, causing a greater number of Hollywood celebrities (and their agents and other reps) to pursue endorsement opportunities and the money that follows.  The money, however, doesn't just go to the celebrities and their reps.  It also goes to the trustees of the applicable guild's Pension and Health Plan.  The amounts being claimed by the trustees, and in some cases the threshold issue of whether the trustees are entitled to ANY amounts, are increasingly being challenged.  This blog entry briefly discusses the allocation issue and the jurisdiction issue.

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