THE BREAKDOWN
Welcome back to Court Vision.
Two stories this issue, and they're secretly the same story: who gets paid when your work builds someone else's empire?
Wisconsin says athletes. Five very large publishers say authors. Meta says "it's called fair use, look it up."
Let's get into it.
🏀 FAST BREAK
1. Wisconsin just tied sportsbook money to paying athletes
Governor Evers signed bills expanding sports betting beyond in-person bets at tribal casinos (the only legal option since 2021) and sending $14.6 million a year toward debt service on UW-Madison's athletic facilities.
Fun constitutional wrinkle: the servers that manage the bets have to physically sit on tribal land, because Wisconsin's constitution puts legal gambling in the hands of the state's federally recognized tribes. Yes, the law cares where the computers live.
And the facilities money isn't really about buildings. Paying down debt frees up budget the university can point at NIL opportunities for athletes.
My take: ignore the dollar amount, watch the precedent. A state legislature just drew a straight line from gambling revenue to athlete compensation. Every state with a stalled NIL bill now has homework to copy. The question isn't "is Wisconsin's deal big?" It's "which state copies it next?"
2. The AI copyright wars just got institutional
Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage (plus author Scott Turow) filed a proposed class action against Meta in Manhattan federal court. The claim: Meta trained its Llama models on millions of copyrighted books and articles using pirated datasets and unauthorized scraping instead of, you know, licenses.
Meta's response: bring it. They're betting the case on fair use.
My take: individual authors suing AI companies was a story. Five major publishers with real litigation budgets is an industry. Courts will take years to answer the fair use question. Your contracts can't wait years. Every deal you sign should now say whether your content can be used to train AI models. Silence is not neutral. Silence is a gift to whoever drafted the contract. (Spoiler: you didn't draft the contract.)
⚖️ COUNSEL’S CORNER
One thing to check before your next brand deal: usage rights.
The brand's lawyers wrote the contract. So guess who the contract protects.
A license to post your content on their Instagram is NOT a license to:
Run it as paid ads
Put it on a billboard
Feed it into an AI model
Those are separate rights. If the contract doesn't limit them, the brand may end up with all of them.
List the channels. Cap the term. And after that Meta story above, say the words "AI training" out loud in your next negotiation and watch the other side's face.
👀 COMPANY TO WATCH
Opendorse (Lincoln, NE)
Series B platform connecting brands with college and pro athletes to run social media deals at scale.
The product isn't the story. The legal environment is. The College Sports Commission is ramping up oversight, the definition of "associated entities" is being actively challenged, and platforms sitting between brands and athletes are suddenly part of the regulatory conversation.
Every deal on the platform has to clear fair market value expectations, school affiliation restrictions, and eligibility standards that keep evolving. Two years ago, almost none of that scrutiny existed.
Why I'm watching: the platform that turns compliance into a feature wins this market. Everyone else will treat it as a cost and lose.
📝 FINE PRINT
This issue's clause: exclusivity.
It blocks you from working with competitors during the deal. Sometimes after it ends, too. It's the most underestimated clause in creator and athlete contracts, and it fails quietly.
Three questions before you sign:
How broad is the category? "Fitness brands" can mean three direct competitors or the entire wellness industry.
How long does it run?
Does it survive termination? A dead deal can still block live money.
Define the category narrowly. Define the duration specifically. Confirm post-term restrictions cut both ways. Otherwise you find out a door was closed when your next deal knocks on it.
🕑 WORTH YOUR TIME
Rutgers Athletics + Rutgers Law: a new externship putting law students inside NIL and college sports law while the rules are still wet cement.
J.T. Rogan: The State of NIL in Layman's Terms: the title delivers.
That’s the issue.
If a contract hit your inbox this week and something felt off, that feeling has a good track record. Forward this to one person who signs things without reading them. They need it more than you do.
👋 I'm Drew Jacobs, founder and managing attorney at Jacobs Counsel. We're the firm for founders, athletes, creators, gaming companies, and hospitality groups building in the AI age. Full business, brand, and wealth protection. Senior judgment on every matter, AI-augmented workflows, fixed fees whenever the work allows. Built different. Billed different.
Licensed in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. This newsletter is general information, not legal advice.
P.S. If your brand deal grants rights "in perpetuity, throughout the universe," that's not boilerplate. That's a land grab. Negotiate it.