A regional professional sports organization signing its largest sponsorship to date with a sports-betting operator, integration rights across broadcast and venue signage, and a compliance regime that touched three separate state regulators. We built the paper and the compliance stack so the deal could go live without the operator or the organization stepping on a wire.
The operator was regulated in the three states covered by the organization's home region and required specific placement, disclaimer, and audience-verification obligations across every channel. The organization's prior category deals had never touched a regulated category.
The compliance stack did not exist. Broadcast talent had no on-air disclaimer script. Venue operations had no responsible-gaming placement checklist. Digital had no audience-gating standard.
We negotiated the sponsorship agreement to allocate regulatory risk correctly across the operator, the organization, and third-party rightsholders. We built compliance addenda tied to each state's regulator, including specific disclaimer language, responsible-gaming placement, and audience-verification standards.
We drafted a broadcast talent script package and an on-air disclosure requirement, coordinated with the venue on placement and signage, and set the digital gating standard against the operator's own audience-verification protocol. We wrote a category exclusivity provision narrow enough to preserve tangential fantasy and daily-prediction sponsors and broad enough to protect the operator's category investment.
We built an activation-approval workflow so the organization could approve creative in-house without running each unit past outside counsel. We standing-authorized a quarterly compliance review across the three regulators.
"Regulated categories punish teams that guess. Brandon built us the paper so we did not have to."
— Chief Revenue Officer, Professional Sports Organization
Signing a regulated sponsorship deal is the easy part. Operating one across a broadcast, a venue, and a digital platform, each with its own regulatory exposure across three separate states, requires a compliance program that most sports organizations have never built because they have never needed one.
The categories that pay the most, gaming, alcohol, and other regulated verticals, are also the categories where a placement mistake or a missing disclaimer creates real regulatory exposure. The organization does not need to become experts in gaming law. It needs a checklist, a script, and an approval workflow that lets its own people execute correctly without outside counsel on every unit.
We negotiate regulated-category sponsorships and build the compliance stack that goes with them, so the deal that made the headline does not become the deal that draws a regulator's attention.
Most engagements are flat fee, quoted before the work begins — and most matters resolve without litigation. Start with a free consultation.