With California becoming the first state to enact a legal right for college athletes to gain compensation for the commercial use of their identities, the college sports industry is about to enter a volatile and transformative era. Legislators in other states—including New York, Florida and Illinois—have already proposed similar legislation while legislators in a half-dozen other states plan to do so as well. Meanwhile, members of Congress eye a federal statute as the more appropriate vehicle to address the commercial use of college players’ names, images and likenesses.
The sequence in which these complementary, yet also complicating, developments play out will have a significant impact on whether, and when, college athletes reap financial gains.