Sports & Entertainment Beat

• With crypto investment frauds on the rise, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sent a warning to investors and published an investor alert listing out possible signs of a scam. Along similar lines, a Bloomberg article discusses the critical need for financial regulators to provide investors with tools to protect themselves when investing in NFTs and cryptocurrencies.
• NFTs further infiltrate Hollywood and now the hospitality industry. The Dream Hollywood Hotel, located in Los Angeles, built The Crypt Gallery inside the hotel, featuring one of the city’s first collections of NFT art that’s also open to the public.
• Music Business Worldwide’s analysis of Spotify’s streaming numbers for Drake’s latest album debut, “Certified Lover Boy,” tells the tale of the fickle minds of the modern music fans and the challenge to attract their attention, even for a blockbuster album.
  
  

• • "Whose job is in Jeopardy?" Mike Richards may be an appropriate answer. Sony announces that he will be dropped as Executive Producer of the program on the tails of stepping down as a host. He joins a number of celebrities who have made similar exits from their posts as a result of questionable past actions and comments. The iconic gameshow continues its search to replace Alex Trebek.
  • In a blast from the past, the 'Nirvana Baby' is back in the headlines raising issues of right of publicity, emotional distress and child pornography laws. This seems to be a flip-turn from his past reenactments of the photo (albeit not nude) that he previously did for the album's key anniversaries. The 30-year old Spencer Elden has filed a federal lawsuit against the estate of Kurt Cobain and other band members.
  • With the NFT market showing no signs of slowing down, a new trend may be fractional ownership of the NFTs. The Doge meme which holds the crown as the most expensive meme NFT will be split into 17 billion pieces for auction. Now anyone can own a piece of history.
  • In the realm of sports and entertainment, how far is too far when it comes to hero worship? Following in the tracks of Lil Nas-X, Tony Hawk collaborated with a water company to produce limited edition skateboards that contained of all things: his blood.

As a friendly reminder, if there are topics you’d like to see featured, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com.

• • With celebrities continuing to pad their bank accounts through endorsement deals, some questions remain: What makes them an icon? Is it their initial rise to fame or their brand? (See the Roger Federer story below)
  • And a follow-up question: Do the celebrities make the brands or do the brands make the celebrity, and just how much influence do they have? For instance, can Kevin Durant’s new partnership with cannabis marketplace Weedmap destigmatize marijuana like the Kardashians did for CBD? This could help vindicate Sha'Carri Richardson after her Olympic dreams were dashed.
  • Speaking of brands, what do Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Tiffany & Co. and Basquiat have in common? Well, they share an ad and a controversy. The power couple recently unveiled their ownership of the late artist's painting in an ad for Tiffany & Co. Social media has been questioning as to how the notoriously anti-capitalism Basquiat would weigh in on this choice.
  • Finally, "I think we'll need a bigger boat" (or bandwagon that is) as the NFT craze continues adding names like Visa, eSports, and the late, great Kobe. But with all the hype, the hackers are circling the waters.

As a friendly reminder, if there are topics you’d like to see featured, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com.

• • Beyoncé’s announcement of building a hemp farm (together with a honey farm) brings the perceived health benefits of CBD even further into the mainstream. Could this momentum ultimately lead to positive conversations around the FDA approving the cannabis-derived compound as legal?
  • Scarlett Johansson’s escalating fight between her and Marvel Studios and Disney about the release of “Black Widow” highlights the issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later between studios and talent: how to compensate star and filmmakers fairly as more movies are being shown increasingly on major streaming platforms?
  • The world of NIL continues to turn rapidly, as even prep athletes such as quarterback Quinn Ewers of Southlake, Texas, is leaving high school early to enroll in Ohio State to pursue his football career and potentially rake in thousands of dollars in endorsement deals.
  • The dismissal of a copyright suit against 2 Chainz, Offset and UMG Recordings Inc. in a Manhattan federal court over the use of lyrics, “I’m tryna make my momma proud,” goes to show that copyright law doesn’t protect general ideas and themes.
    
    

• • As the pandemic continues, the question arises: Could celebrities be the key to getting the country vaccinated?
  • Seemingly everyone is coming up a winner in the music business with the top three major companies bringing in record amounts and streaming services are booming.
  • The NFT craze continues to grow with everyone from star athletes and sports leagues to fashion brands and now IBM jumping on the bandwagon.

Some of this week's highlights include:

• • Emerging trends are showing signs of change in the sponsorships and endorsement markets. A segment once largely overlooked, athletes in the LGBTQ+ community are finally ringing in the big endorsement deals. Female athletes are also being wooed by smaller, up-and-coming brands that are willing to be more flexible with the individuals' needs and preferences, including increased involvement with new product development and opportunities for equity in the business.
  • NFTs continue to boom – but is it just a fad? Perhaps not so, as Coca-Cola, MasterCard, NARS Cosmetics and more celebrities continue to jump on the bandwagon. And did we mention that NFTs literally rocketed out of this world?
  • While the Tokyo Olympics is projected to lose record amounts of money, two Hollywood starlets, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Garner, are seeing green after each signing big production and film deals.

As a friendly reminder, if there are topics you’d like to see featured, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com.

Just months after breathing life into to the "Sports & Entertainment Spotlight," I am (well, my wife is) giving birth to a new creation — a baby boy. As such, I will be taking a break from the usual commentary (sleep deprivation isn’t exactly the best for the creative juices), but will keep up with the weekly curated content until my return from paternity leave. In the meantime, you’ll have to come up with your own puns and snarky, yet insightful commentary!

As a friendly reminder, if there are topics you’d like to see featured, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com.

Strange as it may be, with vast majority of the world still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are on the eve of the opening ceremony for the “2020” Tokyo Summer Olympics. Olympic games in “normal” times are logistical feats involving tons of preparation and organization. Pair that with the challenge of trying to prevent a full-blown outbreak of COVID-19 (and potential losses in the tens-of-billion-dollars range) in a densely populated country seeing a new surge of cases, and you have Olympic officials in dire need of Japanese whisky. While these Olympics will be held without the usual crowds in attendance, making for another eerie sight (unless you’re used to watching Mets games), the risks of holding the Games still remain high. Hopefully, the Games go on without a hitch and will highlight their virtues of human resiliency and cooperation on the global stage, but I, like many others, cannot help but wonder about the further propagation of this virus, and whether we would be better served to stay on the sidelines just a little longer. Besides, I generally favor spotlights over torches.

 …Which reminds me, it’s time to dive in to the Spotlight for this week:

Just two weeks into the name, image, and likeness (NIL) era in college sports, and we are already starting to see not only novel and creative partnerships, but also the emergence of legal gray areas and pitfalls for college athletes. This was, of course, to be expected with the NCAA acting with last minute haste (rather than methodical planning) coupled with the euphoria of athletes who could finally make endorsement money without losing NCAA eligibility. Under those circumstances, nuance is out the window — until it isn’t. Case in point: the rise of Barstool Athletes, the fledgling collegiate athlete marketing arm of digital media giant, Barstool Sports. On its face, Barstool Athletes offers a straightforward, merchandising- and social media-driven formula for athletes to market themselves to fans. However, in the rush to capitalize on this opportunity, student-athletes of schools in states that prohibited NIL deals with traditionally vice-oriented businesses, overlooked that Barstool could be construed as a company in the gambling business. Indeed, Barstool operates a sportsbook and was acquired by Penn National Gaming in early 2020. Now some of those who leapt before they looked could be risking their eligibility, after all. Above all, until there is more uniformity and/or stronger guidance across the country, student-athletes are safest clearing deal with their schools’ compliance departments.  

From reference to vices, I shift to celebrating your virtue as you patiently waited for this week’s installment of the Spotlight. So let’s get to it:

Laws — like people — are imperfect. They can be slow to adapt to evolving societal norms, and worse still, their application can yield unjust outcomes. Indeed, look no further than this past week’s developments involving Olympic-hopeful Track & Field athlete, Sha'Carri Richardson. Almost as quickly as Richardson could sprint, we saw her go from Gold Medal favorite to spectator after a drug test administered (after her first place finish in her U.S. Olympic trials) revealed that she had used marijuana, a substance banned by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and still officially illegal at the federal level. Never mind the facts that first, marijuana was legal in Oregon (the state in which she had used the drug) and a substantial plurality of states; second, she had used the drug as a means of coping with the trauma of learning of her biological mother’s abrupt death; and lastly, the drug is not performance-enhancing. To the U.S. Track & Field team, the rules are the rules. Perhaps Richardson’s plight will spur policy change — much like the years of collegiate athletes being declared ineligible for having received compensation, which have led to overdue name, image and likeness (NIL) reforms — but you cannot help but feel for Richardson for all she has lost, personally and financially. I know I will be pulling for her when her chance at Olympic glory hopefully comes back around in 2024 (approximately 150 Spotlights) from now.

With that, here’s what else is making waves this week: