Appeal of NCAA settlement won’t halt payments
-
Dan Murphy
An appeal of the NCAA’s landmark antitrust settlement won’t stop college teams from paying current athletes starting July 1, but it will pause the NCAA’s plans to begin paying former athletes.
Several college athletes filed the appeal Wednesday, claiming the deal violates Title IX law. Now the roughly $2.8 billion in negotiated back damages will sit while the appeal works through the system.
Attorney John Clune told ESPN he filed the claim in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of several clients who also raised objections to how the back payments would be shared among athletes earlier this year.
The overwhelming majority of the $2.8 billion pot of damages — up to 90% — is expected go to football and men’s basketball players, according to the terms of the settlement. The lawyers and sports economists who decided how to divvy up the funds argued that the money each sport generated through television contracts should be an important factor in determining which athletes deserved the biggest portion of the money.
Clune argues that because the broadcast rights money would have been flowing directly from the school to the athletes if they had been paying them fairly in the past, the schools would have to share that money equitably between men and women to comply with Title IX laws.
“We support a settlement of the case, just not an inaccurate one that violates federal law,” Clune said in a statement sent to ESPN on Wednesday. “The calculation of damages is based on an error to the tune of 1.1 billion dollars. Paying out the money as proposed would be a massive error that would cause irreparable harm to women’s sports.”
Title IX requires schools to provide equal academic opportunities to men and women on their campuses. Playing sports has always been part of that protected academic opportunity during the law’s 50-plus year history, which means colleges have been required to provide roster spots and scholarship dollars in an equitable fashion to men and women. Leaders of the Department of Education during the last few years have disagreed on whether new revenue share payments between schools and athletes should also be considered a benefit that is related to education.
Several attorneys presented arguments similar to the case made in Wednesday’s appeal to Judge Claudia Wilken at a preliminary hearing for the settlement in September 2024 and again at a final approval hearing in April. Wilken decided that the application of Title IX law was outside the scope of the settlement.
“Title IX was deliberately ignored,” Clune said. “The parties and court acted like it was already addressed when it clearly was not. Complying with Title IX was a problem in this settlement, so they just chose to ignore it. That can’t stand.”
More than a dozen groups of athletes filed objections to the settlement before Wilken approved the deal last Friday. Those groups are eligible to appeal her decision to a higher court. A complex appeals process can often take months, if not years, to complete.
The NCAA agreed to pay out the $2.8 billion to athletes over the course of the next 10 years. According to the terms of the settlement, those payments will not start until the appeals have been resolved.
-
Shwetha Surendran
The NCAA sent a letter to Kalshi, a company that offers prediction markets on college basketball and football, expressing its concern about the company’s “commitment to contest integrity and the protection of contest participants,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by ESPN.
In the letter, dated Oct. 30, NCAA chief legal officer Scott Bearby asked Kalshi how it monitors collegiate sports markets for integrity concerns and activity by prohibited customers, who it considers a prohibited customer, whether it will report integrity concerns to the NCAA and whether the company will cooperate with NCAA investigations.
“We welcome Kalshi’s stance on its efforts to protect the integrity of NCAA competitions and to reduce instances of abuse and harassment directed at student-athletes and other participants,” Bearby wrote.
The NCAA also asked if Kalshi would ban prediction markets similar to prop bets, which the company began offering this fall.
Prop betting markets, Bearby noted in the letter, heighten “the risk of integrity and harassment concerns.” In March last year, NCAA president Charlie Baker called for a ban on prop bets on college athletes in states with legal sports wagering.
The NCAA also asked Kalshi in the letter to review language on its website that the NCAA says implies a relationship between them.
“Kalshi has robust market integrity provisions required by our status as a federally licensed financial exchange,” a Kalshi spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN. “We value the NCAA’s feedback and are working on adjusting the language on our site. We are currently reviewing and addressing their additional requests.”
Prediction markets like Kalshi have emerged over the past year and are competing with traditional sportsbooks in the betting market. Kalshi is battling multiple lawsuits by state gambling regulators, who allege that the company is violating state laws by offering event contracts that mimic sports bets. Kalshi argues that it does not fall under state jurisdiction and is instead regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency.
In March, Kalshi announced a partnership with IC360, an integrity monitor used by many collegiate and professional leagues.
The NCAA has faced an increasing number of alleged betting violations by players in recent years. In September, the NCAA announced that a Fresno State men’s basketball player had manipulated his performance for gambling purposes and conspired with two other players in a prop betting scheme. In total, the association has opened investigations into potential betting violations by approximately 30 current or former men’s basketball players.
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024