ASU’s Inaugural Sports & Entertainment Law Conference and Journal

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of speaking at a Sports and Entertainment Law Conference hosted by Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law in Tempe, Arizona. The conference, entitled A-Rod to Jay-Z: Sports and Entertainment Law in the 21st Century, was the launching point for the school’s new sports and entertainment law journal. The first edition of the journal is scheduled for an early 2011 publication date.

The ASU College of Law students organized and funded the conference. They did a fantastic job. The conference and journal are the students’ preliminary steps towards bringing an entertainment and sports law curriculum to the school.

In terms of “usable information”, it was one of the best entertainment conferences I’ve attended. Most of the 21 conference speakers are also writing articles on their respective topics for the ASU journal. That prior research and writing effort made their presentations very focused and substantive. My topic for the presentation and for the journal is Mixing Contests and Sweepstakes with Entertainment Programming. The full list of conference speakers and topics is available online.

Incidentally, it was my first trip to the Phoenix area. I was thrilled to have time to visit several local attractions including the Desert Botanical Gardens (pictured), Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, and the Tempe Marketplace.