Sports Law

Sports Law is a richly engaging, multidisciplinary area of expertise that encompasses a spectrum of business and transactional disciplines, including intellectual property, antitrust, and labor law as well as civil rights concerns like gender equality. The Sports Law Program at Temple University Beasley School of Law offers a comprehensive curriculum, wide variety of experiential opportunities, and extracurricular activities including competition teams and participation in student organizations through which students can test and hone essential skills, build confidence, and create professional networks. Students in Temple’s Sports Law Program will gain important professional skills like research and writing, business planning, transactional skills, and negotiation and drafting. The knowledge and skills acquired by students in the Sports Law Program are essential to the sports industry and easily transferable to other industries as well.

The Sports Law Program at Temple University Beasley School of Law offers a comprehensive education about sports law both in the classroom and through experiential learning. Students will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience through internships within sports organizations, agencies, law firms and our very own Name, Image and Likeness Initiative in conjunction with Philadelphia City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas. Students will also have the opportunity to compete in various national sports negotiation competitions.

The Temple Sports Law department offers core courses including Sports Law, International Sports Law and Advanced Sports Contract Negotiation and Drafting as well as adjacent courses including Antitrust Law, Labor and Employment Law and Intellectual Property.

  • Negotiation Competition Team: Students compete in national sports and entertainment competitions. Previous competitions have included the Tulane Professional Football Negotiation Competition and the Baseball Arbitration Competition at Villanova.
  • Sports and Entertainment Law Society: The Sports and Entertainment Law Society is a student-run organization that provides guest speakers, mentorship, career workshops and alumni connections for law students interested in sports and entertainment law. Previous speakers have included player agents, general counsels from professional teams, lead contract negotiations from professional teams and outside counsel for teams or players. If you have any questions please email lawsels@temple.edu.
  • Intellectual Property Law Society: The Temple Law School Intellectual Property Law Society (IPLS) promotes the discussion of the legal challenges presented by technological advances through speakers and events.
  • Business and Tax Law Society: The Temple Law School Business Law Society (BLS) is a collaborative group offering resources, information, advice, and support to all members as they seek to develop a successful full-time career in business law.

Internships and externships are valuable opportunities to gain perspective and practical experience in the field, build a professional network, and identify potential career paths. Previous placements have included the Philadelphia Eagles, Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, Philadelphia Phillies, CAA, MLB, Buzz Sports and within the Sports and Entertainment divisions of law firms including Law Offices of Lloyd Z. Remick, Pillar + Aught and Jeff Fannell & Associates.

*This is a representation of previous experiential opportunities in which Temple Law students have been placed and not an exhaustive list.

NIL Initiative

The Name, Image and Likeness Initiative establishes a suite of services designed to help local student-athletes and their families navigate the ever-changing landscape of high school and collegiate sports and more specifically NIL.

One of those services is an advisory hotline for students and their families with questions related to NIL or who have been approached with an NIL offer. The hotline, which launched on Jan. 25, is staffed by Temple Law students under the supervision of Professor Jacobsen and other practicing attorneys with expertise in NIL.

The partnership will also produce and distribute educational materials including handouts, public service announcement videos and a webpage, which will contain easy-to-understand, graphically rich information about the rights of student-athletes in NIL negotiations. 

FAQ

Yes! Students can earn credit for internships or hands on experiences through practicums with law firms, teams, agents, charitable foundations and related organizations. Students can apply to participate in the school designed Sports Law Practicum which focuses on the Name, Image and Likeness Joint Project with the City of Philadelphia through Councilmember Isaiah Thomas’s office. In this Practicum, students will develop program material, engage in outreach and advocacy with and for student-athletes in Philadelphia area high schools, and work with City Council to further their mission set forth in the “Youth Name, Image and Likeness Protection” bill authored by Councilmember Thomas. Additionally, students may have the opportunity to assist in both writing and ushering through future legislation at the city government level.

Sports law is an inter-disciplinary field of law that governs amateur and professional sports leagues and clubs, athletes, and other sports-related individuals and entities. It encompasses many areas of the law, including:

  • Contracts, Antitrust, Labor, Intellectual Property, Criminal , Civil Rights (e.g., race and gender issues in sports), International Law (e.g. the Olympics, FIFA), Agents, Media and Broadcasting rights and many other areas of the law.

We offer Sports Law (Amateur and Professional Sports), International Sports Law and Advanced Sports Contract Negotiating and Drafting. Adjacent courses relevant to Sports Law include those in Antitrust Law, Labor and Employment Law, Intellectual Property and transactional courses, especially those that involve skills training in drafting legal documents.

Yes, student teams compete in multiple negotiation competitions at various law schools throughout the year. Previous competitions have included the Tulane Pro Football Contact Negotiation Competition, the Tulane International Baseball Arbitration Tournament, the Villanova Baseball Filing Day Competition, the Villanova Professional Football Negotiation Competition,  and the Fordham National Basketball Negotiation Competition. We have also participated in additional sports negotiation competitions that students have entered on their own.

  • Yes! Students can earn credit for internships or hands on experiences through practicums with law firms, teams, agents, charitable foundations  and related organizations. Students can apply to participate in the school designed Sports Law Practicum which focuses on the National Letter of Intent/Name, Image and Likeness Joint Project with the City of Philadelphia through Councilmember Isaiah Thomas’s office. In this Practicum, students will develop program material, engage in outreach and advocacy with and for student-athletes in Philadelphia area high schools, and work with City Council to further their mission set forth in the “Youth Name, Image and Likeness Protection” bill authored by Councilmember Thomas. Additionally, students may have the opportunity to assist in both writing and ushering through future legislation at the city government level.
  • Student also have opportunities to secure internships or opportunities on their own and receive credit. To do so, students must submit a Practicum Approval Form which can be found here.

  • While Temple Law does not have a dedicated sports law journal, many students have written Notes and Comments for the Temple Law Review on sports-related topics supervised by faculty in the Sports Law Program. Students can work with a faculty advisor to create their own guided research project for which they can research and write about a topic of their choosing. Faculty advisors offer guidance in selecting a topic, research strategy, writing style and editorial support, and submitting the final paper to various legal journals and broader media for publication. Student authors also contribute to news stories and developments posted on the Sports Law website.

Who We Are

Khaaliq Van Otoo

khaaliq.van-otoo@temple.edu

Khaaliq Van-Otoo, is a Philadelphia native and 2022 graduate of Elon University, where he majored in journalism and sport management. With an extensive background in writing and reporting, he has written articles, published in various North Carolina news outlets and has participated in journalist programs at WHYY and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Khaaliq interned in the Gun violence task force at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office during his 1L summer. As a second-year law student at Temple University, he took part in a Fines & Costs clinic in The Sheller Center, where he partnered with Community Legal Services to counsel and aid community members file waiver motions for their crippling and un-affordable court debt.

An alum of Abington Friends High School, where he ran track and played basketball, Khaaliq is now most engaged in the sports and entertainment industry. He represents his sister, who is a Division I athlete at Loyola Maryland, in the NIL space and has helped to spearhead the NIL hotline and other initiatives launched by the private-public NIL partnership between Temple and the City of Philadelphia.

Diana Hymowitz

diana.hymowitz@temple.edu

Diana Hymowitz is a current 3L at Temple Law who works as a sports law research assistant for Professor Ken Jacobsen. She serves as the Co-President of the Sports and Entertainment Society after previously serving as the Outreach Chair.

A veteran of both the professional and college athletics worlds, Hymowitz served as Chief of Staff at the University of Pennsylvania football team during her 1L year. She previously worked at Monumental Sports and Entertainment in Washington, D.C., as Manager of Team Operations and Basketball Logistics for the Capital City Go-Go of the NBA G-League for the 2021-22 season. In that position, she also served as a liaison between the Go-Go and the area’s other professional basketball franchises, the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics.

Before that, Hymowitz worked with the NFL’s Washington Commanders as a Football Administrator and Operations Assistant, managing all aspects of team travel and logistics including rooming lists, flight manifests, BEOs and charter contracts. She also was a seasonal assistant in the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers football operations office for the 2019 season, a job that included working with the travel advance team for all away games and aiding in the logistics of workouts for potential and newly signed players.

Hymowitz’ experience also extends to Major League Baseball (MLB), where during the 2020 World Baseball Classic she served as the primary contact and coordinator between the WBC and the baseball federations for South Africa and the Czech Republic.

Hymowitz graduated magna cum laude from the University at Albany in May of 2019, earning a bachelor’s degree in Communication and Rhetoric while minoring in Business. As an undergraduate, she worked as an assistant director for the Great Danes’ football operations and recruiting staffs. Hymowitz was also an executive director of agency operations for Pennsylvania-based NFL agent Kevin Gold.