Sports

Brattle economists prepared a report for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of the Governor of Massachusetts, President of the Senate, and Speaker of the House evaluating Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. The report detailed the components of the bid, tested its assumptions to examine potential risks, evaluated who would have borne the responsibility if any adverse risks had been realized, and estimated the potential economic impacts of the Olympic Games on the Commonwealth.

Using input-output modeling, the report estimated that pre-Olympic Games expenditures would have generated approximately 29,250 job-years and $5.67 billion of output over the six years leading up to the Olympic Games; expenditures during the event would have generated approximately 30,300 job-years and $4.63 billion of output during the year of the Olympic Games. To put these figures into perspective, the number of jobs would have been less than 1% of Massachusetts residents employed as of June 2015, and the contribution of the Olympic Games to Commonwealth GDP would also have been less than 1%. The report also analyzed the risk of overruns and found that such risk would inevitably be borne by Massachusetts taxpayers.

Analysis of the Boston 2024 Proposed Summer Olympic Plans

In an employment contract dispute in which the owner of a start-up professional football league terminated its commissioner at the beginning of COVID-related lockdowns, the commissioner engaged a Brattle accounting and damages expert to determine lost compensation. In response to the owner’s allegation that the commissioner’s decision to employ a former NFL wide receiver was – among other actions – due cause for termination, Brattle’s expert also analyzed the materiality of that decision. Our expert opined that the decision was immaterial. The parties settled after expert depositions and prior to trial.

Determining Lost Compensation in Employment Contract Dispute

In a dispute between a major European football club and a new sponsor, several Brattle experts were retained to assess the value of sponsorship rights over the club’s stadium. The dispute arose when the sponsorship contract – which had been signed together with the plans for the redevelopment of the stadium – fell through. The Brattle team also calculated the damages suffered by the club when it had to proceed with stadium redevelopment plans without the sponsor’s support.

Breach of Sponsorship Contract    

On behalf of a North American professional sports league, a Brattle team is providing a fair market valuation of a privately held investor group in order to assess its owners’ ability to use their ownership interest to acquire further interests in a team in the league. Brattle was asked to review financial information provided by the owner and base the independent valuation of the group on publicly available information – including that provided by third-party data vendors – and information provided by the league, and summarize its findings and valuation methods used in a report.

Valuation of Ownership Interest

A major sports-related nonprofit retained Brattle when it restructured a joint venture with a private capital provider. Per the terms of the joint venture, the nonprofit received licensing fees and royalties from the joint venture, and the nonprofit’s for-profit subsidiary also took a substantial equity interest in the venture. Brattle modeled the restructuring transaction – which included the exit of the founding for-profit investor, the entry of a new investor, and the issuance of new debt and classes of equity – and provided economic analysis of the new debt and equity instruments in support of the nonprofit’s tax positions.

Modeling a Joint Venture Restructuring

Brattle was engaged to assist a major sports players’ union seeking to refund dues collected from its members. These dues included cash as well as non-exclusive rights to the name, image, and likeness (NIL) of each player. The union licensed the NIL to third parties – both on an individual basis and as part of collective licensing agreements covering all union players. Brattle was requested to examine the group licensing arrangements and determine the relative value of players’ NIL in that context, with a particular focus on the incremental value (if any) generated by the NIL of high-profile players. The Brattle team conducted an econometric analysis to estimate the value generated by high-profile players’ NIL within the group license and developed a methodology to attribute that additional value to individual players.

NIL Licensing Valuation for Major League Sports Union