Another professional sports players union is taking sportsbook operators to court.
This week, MLB Players Inc., the players’ union for Major League Baseball, filed two separate lawsuits against four different operators claiming that the sportsbooks are illegally using player likenesses to promote their products.
Two separate suits accuse four sportsbooks of wrongdoing
One lawsuit, filed in the Eastern Pennsylvania District Court, names DraftKings and bet365 as the plaintiffs. The other is a state lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court against FanDuel and Underdog.
Both suits essentially make the same allegations across the quartet of operators. The union takes issue with the use of individual player images both within the apps and within external marketing and social media posts featuring individual player props. The suits did not clarify why they were separated and why they are taking both state and federal approaches to the issue. In the case of Underdog, the examples given were from the company’s fantasy product, not its sportsbook, which is live in North Carolina.
The four operators all feature the image of the player users can wager on next to betting options. Fanatics also utilizes player images in-app but was not named in any lawsuit.
Three operators have league-wide partnerships with the MLB
Underdog has no formal partnership with the MLB but the other three defendants are all authorized gaming operators with partnerships with the MLB itself as well as partnerships with individual MLB teams.
There is no mention of these partnerships in the DraftKings/bet365 lawsuit but in the FanDuel/Underdog complaint MLBPI did acknowledge FanDuel’s deal with the league but reiterated that MLBPI did not approve of these particular uses of player images.
Both complaints feature several in-app examples and social media posts that include an image of an MLB player along with a mention of a promotion or wager regarding that player.
Suit part of a broader conversation about the rights of athletes
The lawsuit comes a couple of weeks after the NFL Players Association took DraftKings to court for what the group said was an intention to violate a contract. The NFLPA and DraftKings signed a multi-year agreement leasing player likenesses to the operator for its NFT products in DraftKings Marketplace. DraftKings abruptly announced the closure of its NFT Marketplace and Reignmaker contests after a judge denied the operator’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against them challenging the legality of the product.
MLBPI has retained the services of Winston & Strawn law firm, a group that has been behind several of the name, image and likeness lawsuits filed on behalf of athletes against the NCAA, including Alston v. NCAA, which was upheld in the Supreme Court in 2021.
