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    Cyber (eSports)

 

  • Drafting and negotiation of esports contracts and issues, such as appearance scheduling, behavior expectations, endorsement deals, equipment agreements, indemnification and insurance issues, lodging, payment amounts and schedules, player, sponsorship and endorsement parameters, team participation agreement (TPA), transportation.

 

  • Consultation regarding potential alleged antitrust issues involving collectives (a group of individuals, not working for the same company, or associated with each other through any formal legal agreement, who collaborate with each other based on their shared interest in independent game development), leagues, multi-channel networks (MCNs) (basically, a marketing collective or formal organization that works with video platforms to offer assistance to a channel owner in areas such as audience development, cross-promotion, digital rights management, funding, monetization, partner management, product development, programming, sales, in exchange for a percentage of the advertisement revenue from the channel), players, teams, that may be avoided through drafting and negotiation of fair contracts and agreements, such as behavioral expectations and related violation punishments, individual branding rights for merchandise and related revenue splits, intellectual property rights of publishers with regards to player and team activities, parameters regarding termination restrictions, rights, and severance, personal streaming rights and related revenue splits, salary payment scales and schedules, tournament requirements and flexibility, tournament revenue splits, and compliance with the California Talent Agencies Act (TAA).

 

  • Consultation regarding issues involved in drafting and negotiating contracts and agreements MCNs and players, such as the allocation of revenue percentages (so players can tap into several revenue streams including streaming media and sponsorships), flexibility (MCNs will try to exert much control over players), intellectual property (the player might want to develop their own brand independent of any brand forced upon them by the MCN), sponsorship restrictions, and standard areas of concern such as indemnification and insurance, non-competition, non-disclosure, termination, tournament revenue splits.

 

  • Compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for players who are employees (rather than independent contractors) of some MCNs or other legal entity, and particular attention to all applicable child labor laws (since many players are under 18, in which case parents must sign all contracts as legal guardians of their children unless some other adult holds a power of attorney, and recommendation for the parents to establish a trust for the player’s earnings), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) (allowing collective bargaining between employees and employers), drug testing laws, gambling laws, travel laws (immigration and visa restrictions).

 

  • Consultation on restrictions on a player’s tournament earnings due to local gambling laws, and how to possibly structure the funding of tournaments (for example, granting licenses to players, rather than relying on player registration fees, or having non-developers furnish the prize funds, as opposed to the developers who sponsor the tournament).

 

  • Drafting and negotiation of typical contracts and agreements related to esports participation, such as league rules and team participation agreements (TPAs).

 

  • Typical TPA clauses, such as non-compete, a prescribed time period between the tournament season ending and free agency beginning where teams are allowed to negotiate with the pending free agents on their team and also with free agents from other teams (the “right of first refusal” period), roster composition deadlines, set free agent signing period (generally only 24-72 hours) where the majority of signings and team-building occurs, special stipulations for reserve players (such as a minimum compensation at some lesser amount than the regular team players), term (generally, 3 years, with no automatic renewal), termination (automatic if the entire team is ever banned from competition, or the franchise under with the team played is revoked), trade deadlines.

 

  • Consultation during the off-season (much the same type of yearly cycle of activity and off-time as in professional sports, although not on the same seasonal schedule, since esports are played indoors online so no adjustments for weather are necessary) for player transfers between collectives, franchises, leagues or teams, free agency and issues regarding appearances (in-person, social media and online), endorsements and promotional events.

 

  • Consultation regarding special free agency issues (similar to such issues in professional sports negotiations), such as during the right of first refusal period (during this period, a team may have an exclusive period to negotiate with their own player, but other teams may make requests to the team to request permission to also negotiate simultaneously with the player, generally for situations involving contract buyouts are being negotiated; the team is required to notify the player that another team wants to negotiate with the player, so that the player knows whether he or she has a value in the free-agency market before re-signing with the current team), regional composition (international teams are generally composed of 5 players, 3 of which must be local to the main location for a team, and 2 may be imported from anywhere outside that area, but such imported players may gain virtual residency within that area by playing for that team for at least 3 years).

 

  • Compliance with the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA) declaring several methods of competition as illegal and unfair or deceptive transactions, intended to result in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer, such as advertising goods without having the expected demand in stock, misrepresenting the authority of a salesman as having authority to close a deal, misrepresenting the source of the goods or services, representing a repair is being needed when it is not needed, offering rebates that have hidden conditions, representing reconditioned goods as new.

 

  • Compliance with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), prohibiting gambling businesses from knowingly accepting any form of payment related to another person’s participation in a bet or wager using the internet, and that is unlawful under any federal or state law (excluding fantasy sports that meet certain criteria, legal intrastate and intertribal gaming and skill-games).

 

  • Compliance with the Interstate Wire Act (also known as the Federal Wire Act), prohibiting operation of certain types of betting or wagering businesses within the United States from knowingly using a wire-related communication device or media for transmitting bets or wagers in interstate or foreign commerce, or any information that facilitates the placing of such bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest, or any wire communication which entitles the recipient to receive money or credit as a result of such bets or wagers, or for information assisting in the placing of such bets or wagers.

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    Last updated 200617_1601

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