North America: Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment

Arbitrage betting — commonly called surebetting or arbing — is a wagering strategy that exploits discrepancies in odds posted by competing bookmakers to lock in a guaranteed profit regardless of the outcome.

Prediction markets have emerged as one of the fastest-growing areas of online speculation, forecasting, and information-based trading.

Former Senator Christopher Dodd and former CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler have filed amicus briefs challenging the Third Circuit's ruling that federal commodities law preempts New Jersey's regulation of sports event contracts. Their central argument contends that Congress enacted Dodd-Frank to regulate financial derivatives, not to transfer sports-betting oversight from states and tribes to the CFTC, raising fundamental questions about whether sports contracts qualify as swaps and the scope of federal preemptio

Division I schools spent nearly $2 billion in direct compensation and benefits for college athletes during the first year of the House v. NCAA settlement, with 307 schools (85% of Division I) participating in the new compensation system. The data reveals thousands of new athletic scholarships and a fundamental transformation in how college sports revenue is shared with athletes.

The U.S. Senate has passed the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, legislation that would fundamentally reshape college athletics by establishing federal rules governing NIL compensation, athlete representation, transfers, and eligibility while granting the NCAA significant antitrust protection. This comprehensive framework could provide universities with greater regulatory certainty but may substantially limit the legal tools athletes have used to challenge NCAA restrictions...

The U.S. Senate has passed the Protect College Sports Act with overwhelming bipartisan support, establishing a potential national framework for college athletics that addresses NIL compensation, antitrust protections, and revenue-sharing. Key amendments include raising the power-conference cap to 20 members, shortening the conference realignment lookback period, and requiring foreign funding disclosure.

Highway Contract Route carriers and brokers operating in the USPS surface transportation network face critical legal developments in 2026, including the Supreme Court's Montgomery v. Caribe decision eliminating federal preemption for negligent-selection claims and the ongoing nuclear verdict crisis with jury awards exceeding $10 million. These developments demand heightened attention to compliance, documentation, and risk management strategies to protect against significant liability exposure in today's tru

The Department of Justice’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division (“NFED”) has told the market exactly where it intends to focus: (1) public trust and financial integrity, (2) health care, (3) internal revenue, (4) global trade and commerce, and (5) corporate misconduct. NFED plans to target these five priorities in parallel under one roof with a shared data infrastructure, compounding the risk to companies that operate at the intersection of multiple priorities and raising the stakes for any company considering a voluntary self-disclosure of potential misconduct.

When a legal research startup trained its AI on lawyer memos derived from Westlaw's editorial summaries, it sparked a landmark copyright case that exposes how artificial intelligence extracts not just content, but the accumulated judgment and authority publishers spent decades building. As Google referral traffic plummets and AI-generated content farms proliferate, the question shifts from "was a copy made?" to "was the expert ever hired?"

The Federal Communications Commission has eliminated the National Television Audience Reach Cap, which previously prevented entities from owning broadcast TV stations reaching more than 39% of U.S. households. The agency will now conduct case-by-case public interest reviews of transactions that would have exceeded this threshold, fundamentally changing how broadcast television consolidation is evaluated.

FEMA and the FCC will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System on November 17, 2026, requiring participation from all radio and television stations, cable systems, and satellite services. EAS Participants must file three separate forms through the EAS Test Reporting System, with specific deadlines ranging from October 30, 2026, through January 2027. Certain translator and repeater stations are exempt from the registration and filing requirements.

As entertainment lawyers, we are often asked a deceptively simple question by creatives, producers, and studios: “Can we use this trademark in our project?”