Sports Law

Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook on Casebook Connect, including lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities. Access also includes an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your undergraduate and law school classes.

Four of the nation’s leading sports law scholars have merged their expertise to produce this problem-based sports law and governance text for undergraduate and graduate students. Drawing on their work developing the field’s leading sports law casebook for law students, the authors present this text in the traditional law school case method style, but with an eye toward accessibility for non-law students. Whether students are interested in careers in professional or amateur sports law, this text will equip them with the foundational knowledge necessary to identify legal issues, minimize risk, and become a generation of problem solvers within the sports industry. Contracts, torts, agency, labor and employment, racial and gender equity, antitrust, and intellectual property law are all addressed, as are health and safety issues and high school, college, and international/Olympic/regulatory concerns. Moreover, the text explores the sports industry with an appreciation of its dynamism, examining topics from cutting edge issues in athlete representation to the uncertain future of big-time intercollegiate athletics. Sports Law: Governance and Regulation (Fourth Edition) is a must for undergraduate and graduate students interested in the sports industry.

 New to the 4th Edition:

• Changes to the NCAA’s governance and enforcement structures, and updated bylaws and cases related to student-athlete scholarships, transfer rights, and name, image, and likeness opportunities.
• Updated college sports antitrust materials, including Alston v. NCAA and new Notes and Questions.
• New discussion of whether student-athletes should be classified as employees.
• Inclusion of the first judicial opinion interpreting provisions of the Revised Uniform Athlete Agents Act.
• Recent developments related to First Amendment free exercise, establishment clause, and free speech in the high school context.
• New sections on participation rights of transgender and intersex athletes, and the obligation of organizations to protect athletes from sexual misconduct.
• Professional sport developments regarding the appropriate breadth of commissioner authority, updated MLB, NBA, WNBA, NFL, MLS, NWSL, and NHL collective bargaining agreement summaries, and an expanded discussion of professional sports leagues’ personal conduct, disciplinary issues, and domestic violence policies.
• Revised Olympic and international sports issues, including recent revisions to the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and a new 2021 World Anti-Doping Code case.
• A unique look at negotiating sport industry contracts, including coaches’ and players’ contracts.

Professors and students will benefit from:

• Materials that present actual problems that develop the skills of students to be creative problem solvers
• A legally authoritative textbook, written by the authors of the top law school casebook in the field of sports law who are leading lawyers and educators in the field of sports law and governance.
• Interesting and insightful cases and examples from the authors’ wealth of sports law and governance experience, which help facilitate discussion directly related to problem solving.
• The potential to “flip the classroom” and help students develop their analytical skills by using class time for problems provided in the book.
• The book’s organization that gives students who want careers in sports law a good background in this field, as well as helping students develop critical thinking, analytical, and problem-solving skills that will serve them well in their work and life.
• Terms and legal vocabulary that are set out in the body of the text and defined immediately for better comprehension, as well as being listed in a comprehensive glossary at the end of the book.
• The book’s problem-based approach allows students to learn to recognize and solve the problems that arise in each of the areas covered.
• A shorter and more succinctly written text than the standard undergraduate sports law titles, giving students more time to explore real-world problems.