Professional Sports
Professional sports is a fast-moving industry which demands counsel with real depth and precision. The attorneys on Barnes & Thornburg’s Professional Sports team offer clients extensive experience across the full scope of professional sports law — from commercial transactions, litigation, and regulatory compliance to IP and stadium financing.
Barnes & Thornburg delivers strategic counsel to clients across the professional sports industry. We advise professional teams, leagues, ownership groups, sports governing bodies, venue owners, broadcasters, media networks, and related businesses looking to partner with professional sports organizations.
Our clients rely on our attorneys’ unique industry experience, benefiting from our client-side insights and supported by BT’s nationally recognized entertainment, corporate, labor and employment, litigation, intellectual property, and finance practices. Our collective experience includes:
- Stadium development and finance
- Global venue and events license agreements
- Sponsorship and endorsement, including NIL and social influencer deals
- Brand protection, strategy, and IP licensing
- National and local media rights
- Original programming, production and distribution
- Litigation, crisis management, and internal investigations
- Corporate mergers and acquisitions for teams and leagues (including expansion)
- Technology and commercial agreements
- Music licensing, copyright matters, live event production
Barnes & Thornburg’s Professional Sports team has earned the trust of the industry’s most influential organizations, ranging from professional sports leagues and governing organizations to entrepreneurs and start-up ventures. Our work spans the business of sports, as evidenced by having represented the NFL, the NBA, over 50 teams throughout the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, as well as emerging professional leagues and their teams (such as LOVB, NWSL, the WNBA, Bassmasters and Major League Cricket).