Crowdfunding and Sport: How Soon Until the Fans Own the Franchise?

Jamaika-BobThe latest issue of the Marquette Sports Law Review is now available online.  This is a faculty symposium issue.  I am proud to have my article, “Crowdfunding and Sport: How Soon Until the Fans Own the Franchise?,” included in this issue.  Here is the introduction.

The Green Bay Packers football team operates as a nonprofit corporation that has been publicly-owned since 1923.  Since that time, the franchise has raised capital by selling shares of stock in five different stock offerings, and there are currently over 350,000 individual members of the public who are shareholders of the team.  These shareholders are the joint owners of a sports franchise that is currently valued at $1.375 billion.

The public ownership of the Green Bay Packers is often noted in the media, and it is generally praised for contributing to the team’s strong tie to the surrounding community.  However, it is highly unlikely that any other N.F.L. team will follow in Green Bay’s footsteps.  Public ownership of franchises is actually prohibited under the current N.F.L. Constitution, and Green Bay’s ownership structure persists solely because of a grandfather clause that excludes the Packers from the prohibition.  Moreover, the unique nature of the Packer’s public ownership structure extends beyond the boundaries of the N.F.L.  The Green Bay Packers are currently the only wholly publicly owned franchise among all of the four major sports leagues (football, baseball, basketball and hockey) in the United States.

There is no reason why publicly owned professional sports teams cannot thrive and succeed at the same level as privately owned teams.  While public ownership of professional sports teams is relatively rare in the United States, it is common overseas.  Notable examples of publicly owned soccer teams are Real Madrid and Barcelona FC, both of which play in Spain’s Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, commonly known as “La Liga.”  These teams are operated as “socios,” a form of nonprofit organization where fans of the club pay an annual membership fee for the right to buy season tickets in a special section of the stadium and the right to vote on certain management decisions.  Another team that plays in La Liga, Real Oviedo FC, has maintained consistent and significant numbers of public owners despite the relative disadvantage of being based in the region of Asturias, far from Spain’s major population centers.

It is not just that the United States lacks more than one example of a major league team that is wholly owned by the public.  It is also uncommon for American major league sports teams to have a minority ownership stake comprised of public shareholders.  In recent decades, the private owners of several major league franchises have experimented with establishing and maintaining a publicly owned minority stake, seeking to inject additional capital into their team whilst still maintaining control over the enterprise.  However, in each instance the private ownership group used a stock offering in order to create a minority interest, only to subsequently abandon the structure and negotiate the sale of the entire team to new owners.  For example, the Cleveland Indians baseball team held a public offering of shares in 1998 but went wholly private again in 1999.  The Boston Celtics basketball team had a longer run with minority public shareholders, holding a public stock offering in 1986 but eventually reverting to wholly private ownership in 2002.

Today the ownership of major league sports teams in the United States remains almost exclusively the province of large corporations, wealthy individuals or ownership groups comprised of these same two actors.

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New Law School Poll Results Generate Great Interest Quickly

The passage of time was one of the reasons why the release of a new round of Marquette Law School Poll results on Thursday drew such strong interest. It was the first round of Law School polling since shortly before the general election almost six months ago.

But the passage of time since the last poll was only one factor driving the rapid dissemination of  the results across Wisconsin and well beyond. A governor who has emerged as a leading all-but-announced candidate for president, controversial proposals connected to the state budget being shaped currently, a first look at a likely US Senate race in Wisconsin in 2016, a proposal for public funding for part of the cost of  a new arena in downtown Milwaukee — there are a lot of hot subjects  where finding out what the public as a whole thinks is both interesting and potentially influential.

To mention a few of the broad themes of the results:

— Job approval of Republican Gov. Scott Walker dipped to lower levels than seen previously in Law School Polls in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

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Enhancing Credibility in Brief Writing by Using Oral Argument Techniques

This semester in Professor Susan Bay’s Advanced Legal Writing course, Rhetoric and Persuasion, our class discussed the means of persuasion: logos, pathos and ethos. Ethos immediately intrigued me because I could not grasp how to employ ethos in brief writing. One legal scholar, Professor Kirsten K. Davis, explains ethos as “classically considered the ‘persuasive force of a person’s character.’” In one word, ethos can be defined as credibility. Reading articles from legal scholars like Professor Davis helped, but I still was missing a connection. And then it occurred to me that I had been familiar with credibility, just in a different branch of advocacy: oral arguments.

My understanding of oral arguments stems from my participation in Moot Court. I am proud to be a Moot Court enthusiast. I did not know about it until Professor Rebecca Blemberg recommended that my 1L Legal Writing, Analysis and Research classmates and I attend the semi-finals and finals of the Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition. I was awestruck by the oralists. I vividly recall standing with Professor Blemberg, telling her that I could never recite law or formulate an oral argument the way those students did. To my great surprise, one year later, I competed in the Jenkins Competition.

Through participating in the Appellate Writing and Advocacy course as a student and as a student coach, the Jenkins Competition as a competitor and a student coach, and the National Moot Court Competition as a competitor, I have received and shared advice about how to be a credible advocate at the podium. Here are some ideas about credibility that transcend oral arguments, and that you can apply to your own brief writing.

Respect Your Audience.

Respecting your audience is one way to earn credibility. Just as an oralist does in oral arguments, use proper form when addressing courts in your brief (i.e. the court you are writing to is written as “This Court should,” and a court you are writing about should be written as “The court in Smith”). You can also show respect for your reader and earn your reader’s respect by being respectful to others. Address strong counterarguments or, if you are responding, then the opposing counsel’s strong arguments, and provide specific reasons why those arguments are flawed whether it be because of logic, fact, or policy.

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