Law Commons^™

What's In A Name Or, Better Yet, What's It Worth?: Cities, Sports Teams And The Right Of Publicity, Mitchell J. Nathanson

Working Paper Series

This article examines the harm that accompanies real and threatened in-market relocations of professional sports teams and proposes a federal statutory remedy that will protect the interest of city residents given the reality that city governments have demonstrated their inability to adequately protect their electorate through contract law alone. Although, as this article discusses, there have been myriad bills proposed by Congress in response to several high profile out-of-market sports franchise relocations (mostly those involving NFL teams and mostly during the 1990’s), in-market relocations have historically occurred much more frequently, inflicting similar harms to the spurned city residents. Moreover, as …