In this week’s Film Room, we provide an update on:
- Recent reporting regarding the College Sports Commission
- A Video Privacy Protection Act lawsuit against Chess.com that survived a motion to dismiss
Recent reporting regarding the College Sports Commission
Recent reporting suggests frustration with the College Sports Commission (CSC), both on campus and in the collective community.
On October 5, Sports Business Journal published anonymous responses by numerous Power Four and Group of Five athletic directors to a series of questions regarding initial experiences with the CSC. Notably, several Power Four athletic directors provided the responses below to the following question: “What are your biggest questions or concerns related to the CSC?”
- “Not knowing what the penalties will be for cap circumvention and deals that are clearly direct payments from donors or collectives to athletes.”
- “Ability to enforce!”
- “The sooner we can get to some kind of transparency on what’s real and what isn’t real, the better. … We’re still operating in this twilight zone of fantasy land where agents are pretending like nothing has changed, which is causing assistant coaches to assume nothing has changed, which is causing some real anxiety and uncertainty. The sooner we can resolve that the better.”
On October 3, Front Office Sports published an article noting apparent responses to CSC activity from the collective community. Anonymous sources quoted in the article indicated that long approval wait times have led some to violate rules, including by not submitting future deals. The CSC provided a statement to Front Office Sports, which included:
“Pay-for-play deals are not allowed under the rules and will not be approved in NIL Go. There is no safe harbor for breaking these rules and there will be eligibility consequences for student-athletes who do not follow them.”
The current third-party deal review system is hamstrung by a lack of detailed procedures and an authorized penalty structure. Notwithstanding that uncertainty, student-athletes and their institutions would be well served to support compliance with the evolving system via appropriate advocacy that shrinks the risk of current and future disputes.
Plaintiff survives motion to dismiss in Video Privacy Protection Act lawsuit against Chess.com
On September 28, a federal district court in Illinois denied defendant Chess.com’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s proposed class action alleging violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).
The court noted plaintiff’s allegation that Chess.com account holders “are not asked to consent to the disclosure of information that identifies the videos they watch” and that Chess.com nonetheless “collects and discloses information that identifies each user: all users must provide an email address or phone number (or both) to create a Chess.com account” (at 2).
Citing to Seventh Circuit precedent, the court found that plaintiff alleged it was a “consumer” under the statute, rejecting Chess.com’s argument that one needs to have purchased something to be a consumer—it was enough that plaintiff was a subscriber to the site (at 7). The court also found that plaintiff pled the other two elements for a claim: that Chess.com was a “video tape service provider” (at 8–9) and that it knowingly disclosed personal identifying information (at 11).
[View source.]
