The NFL Players Association recently lost a multimillion-dollar arbitration claim over a trading-card deal gone bad. Now, the NFLPA is doing the suing.
The lawsuit, via ESPN.com, argues that DraftKings intends to terminate a deal that gave it the ability to use player names, images, and likenesses for a non-fungible token business that has gone belly up.
The case appears to seek roughly $65 million in damages. Although the specific number in controversy has been redacted from the final page of the civil complaint, the lawsuit separately points out that five DraftKings executives have earned $261.1 million since 2021, characterizing that number as being approximately four times the amount the company owes to the NFLPA. (Divided by four, $261.1 million becomes $65.275 million.)
The union accuses DraftKings of devising phony reasons for getting out of a deal that went bad after the NFT fad — which always seemed to be more than a little fugazi — fell apart.
Several years ago, someone explained to me that an NFT is the digital version of having an original painting. Anyone can have a print; only one person possesses the original.
The difference, of course, is that every digital copy of an image or video looks identical to the original. An original painting is the tangible canvas on which the art was created, by hand.
Rarely are my business instincts accurate. I knew from the get-go that NFT was a load of BFS. DraftKings apparently didn’t, and now there’s a bill to be paid that, per the NFLPA, DraftKings is trying to avoid.