Run Gum sues United States Olympic Committee and USA Track & Field!

Edward teach wrote:

Any Which Way But Loose wrote:

I think a big issue with this is that adidias, Nike, Brooks, New Balance all make/market apparel (i.e. the uniforms).

Run Gum is a gum.

If the suit is upheld, look for Nascar type sweats/uniforms/ etc.

What's wrong with that? Professional runners should have lots of money from many competing sponsors.

YES! Nick is doing a great job as a spokesman for himself, his company, and his other sponsors. Perfect? Maybe not, but that's not a fair comparison. Does Max Seigel speak for USATF? No, he uses a spokeslawyer who delivers carefully crafted messages.

Nick is doing a great job for himself and his cause serves all track and field athletes well.

This could open the door to athletes having title sponsors like McDonalds, Ford, Chevy, etc. Would be VERY good for the athletes, especially in an Olympic year. Hope it works.

WalkGum wrote:

Everything NS does is a very calculated publicity stunt. I don't mean this in a bad way necessarily, this is exactly why he is more marketable to sponsors, but absolutely every move is planned out ahead of time through a thorough cost/benefit

This is my biggest problem with Nick. Even when I agree with what he is saying it is off-set by the knowledge that any benefit is secondary to how it helps NS.

Precious Roy wrote:I would assume that USATF enters into sponsorship agreements that obligate it to restrict participants from displaying anything other than sports apparel companies. BMW does not want to have Emma Coburn show up with a Mercedes Benz logo on her top, but does not care if she has a New Balance logo.

It might be that Nike (the USATF's biggest sponsor) feels like it can compete with all the other apparel companies since Nike is the 800 lb gorilla in US track apparel but it doesn't want to have to compete with Coke, Geico, Ford, and all the other potential advertisers out there.

Hmmm Nick announces this lawsuit a couple of days after the fresh Phenom goes sub 1:46 indoors.

Nick knows he's old news and won't may the Olympic team. So he still needs to pub to sell his crappy product. He teams with an equally publicity driven law firm and Boom- he sues.

He will lose

Gold Medal LLC....considering Nick has never come close to a gold i'd say it's false advertising.

Any Which Way But Loose wrote:

I think a big issue with this is that adidias, Nike, Brooks, New Balance all make/market apparel (i.e. the uniforms).

Run Gum is a gum.

If the suit is upheld, look for Nascar type sweats/uniforms/ etc.

NASCAR is an example of a completely free market doing its' thing.

Pro Skiing, Snowboarding etc., have this freedom in their sport and in the Olympics they do as well.

Nick Symmonds, the William Wallace of Track and Field...

Old farts, Nick is correct on this one.

My thoughts pt wrote:

Gold Medal LLC....considering Nick has never come close to a gold i'd say it's false advertising.

Looked like he was pretty close in the 2013 WC.

run gum newbie wrote:

Never heard of Run Gum before. It worked. I may order some now.

The logo was all over athletes at the nationals last year, but few people probably recognized it. It's crazy expensive, just buy pills.

If this lawsuit succeeds there's no reason an advertiser should have to be commercial. They could sell headband space, temporary tattoo space, all kinds of stuff to regular people for 50 bucks.

Good for Nick. Though it should be the athlete union fighting this battle. Any other company that doesn't have a world class athlete at the helm would ever fight this battle. Why on earth would they care?

Can we have our sport act like all the other professional sports? Put the administrators of the events on one side of the table and the performers/athletes on the other side of the table and have a healthy structured conflict. USATF cannot simultaneously represent the sporting body and the athletes.

Korviev wrote:

Can we have our sport act like all the other professional sports? Put the administrators of the events on one side of the table and the performers/athletes on the other side of the table and have a healthy structured conflict. USATF cannot simultaneously represent the sporting body and the athletes.

This is where the USOC Ombudsman comes into play.

My thoughts pt wrote:

Gold Medal LLC....considering Nick has never come close to a gold i'd say it's false advertising.

He won silver, missing gold by .24.

... He will lose

To have thoughts you have to have a brain. You obviously don't have one. Actually, the suit is almost certain to prevail. Don't be surprised if some very large corporations jump in on the action or file their own suits.

I side with the athletes for a sport like T&F. But shouldn't there be some type of protection for a primary sponsor provided the team or leadership feels that a single sponsor is their best option? Why would the team be obligated to represent multiple industries on their jerseys? Taken to the extreme, your secondary sponsor argument could mean that every industry has a right to get a logo on the jersey. Wouldn't the sponsorships be nearly worthless if there were hundreds of logos on the jersey?

The USA T&F team isn't a privately owned business, so maybe the following doesn't apply, but look at the jerseys of the NFL teams this weekend. There will be one apparel logo on the jerseys. Surely lawyers from some of these mega companies throwing sponsorship money at the NFL have already considered this issue.

I don't quite understand the point of the lawsuit. If he's trying to get his gum logo on the uniform, he's going about it in an interesting way by pissing off a company he wants to sponsor. If he wants more money for the athletes, he's apparently suing for the right to give money to leadership of the the very organization that he famously blasted for not paying athletes a fair share. Maybe he could directly sponsor some athletes instead (provided he's not only interested in getting attention for himself)? That's how athletes in other sports make sponsorship money.

the other side wrote:

Maybe he could directly sponsor some athletes instead

As I already mentioned, the run gum logo was tattooed on lots of people at last year's nationals. You don't have to put the logo on the jersey.

NFL players are employees of a team that provides them with uniforms. Track athletes at the Olympic trials are not employees of the USATF. They are self-employed and they try to get sponsors to pay them in return for wearing advertising, just like NASCAR except they are only allowed a few square inches of advertising space and the USATF bans advertising that's not by an apparel company. It's completely different from the NFL system.

NFL allows PEDS, so Payton Manning, Carson, etc. all use HGH and Steroids.

Try not to think too hard, you will only hurt yourself.

It takes at least a couple of months to prepare that type of lawsuit. Some new athlete running fast has nothing to do with an established international law firm deciding when to file a complaint.

Go put an ice pack on your head now to prevent injury.

Try not to think about things wrote:

Try not to think too hard, you will only hurt yourself.

It takes at least a couple of months to prepare that type of lawsuit. Some new athlete running fast has nothing to do with an established international law firm deciding when to file a complaint.

Go put an ice pack on your head now to prevent injury.

A couple of months? Hardly. Maybe a couple weeks. Nick's been washed up for a while now.

Not sure what 4th tier law school you failed out of.