In 2013, a class of former collegiate athletes settled with Electronic Arts Inc. for more than $40 million in a dispute over the use of likenesses in video games without permission or compensation. A similar suit against EA brought by retired NFL players remains pending in California. 

The protection of broadcast rights, by far the most lucrative aspect of modern athletics, has also ballooned since the middle of the 20th century. The protection of these rights flows from copyright law, but that was not always the case. Copyright law protects works of authorship which, by definition, does not include athletic contests. 

That changed in 1976 when copyright law was expanded to protect events that were recorded in a tangible medium. 17 U.S.C. Section 102(a)(6). Now, leagues negotiate television contracts through pooled broadcasting rights, with NFL teams receiving more than $5 billion in revenue from television networks alone in 2014. 

Many have argued, with some merit, that the expansion of intellectual property protection in sports has had a deleterious effect, particularly on consumers. See, J. Gordon Hylton, "The Over–Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in Sport in the United States and Elsewhere," 21 J. Legal Aspects Sport 43 (2011). 

The effect of leagues and teams retaining rights to license intellectual property has an indisputable trickle–down effect for consumers, who ultimately pay a higher price for goods and services such as apparel and the right to view television broadcasts of live sporting events. 

Despite criticisms, the concept of broad intellectual property protections seems ingrained, and more recent legal challenges have instead focused on antitrust law, challenging leagues' ability to license collectively. See American Needle Inc. v. National Football League, 130 S. Ct. 2201 (2010). The right to license branded goods in the first place is now a generally accepted norm.

Now, the debate is largely over who owns that right, whether it be the league, the team or the individual athlete. 

Of course, the outgrowth of intellectual property protection has not been entirely deleterious to the sporting landscape. One obvious benefit is the prevention of consumer confusion — the very notion that trademark law is intended to protect. Save for rogue counterfeit merchandise and blatantly pirated game streams, fans can rest assured that the product they put their money down for is authentic. 

The wide availability of broadcast options is another consumer benefit. Live broadcast rights have become an extremely valuable commodity. This value has been driven, at least in part, by the licensing of the on–field product. 

Television networks and providers have recognized the value, and now the options available to consumers are nearly endless. While there is an associated cost, the die–hard sports fan has benefited from the increased promulgation of televised sports. 

The protection of athletes' publicity rights must also not be seen through a purely pejorative lens, particularly in the context of amateur athletes. As the business of college athletics expanded synchronically with the value of broadcast rights, the chasm between the available revenue and the money allocated to the student–athletes grew exponentially.

The aforementioned lawsuit against EA and related claims against the NCAA are fostering significant change to the archaic amateurism structure of the NCAA. Had the right of publicity not been protected by the courts, this might not be possible. 

It will be interesting to see how the landscape changes in the future. The debate over an athlete's right of publicity and "fair use" protected by the First Amendment will assuredly continue. The battle over broadcast rights will rage on as well. The value of live sports programming is only increasing as cable providers attempt to maintain customers in the face of competition from subscription services such as Netflix and Amazon. 

One other development to monitor is the potential impact of real–time live streaming of sporting events on copyright protections of sports broadcasts. It is not unfathomable that copyright protections could be stripped as broadcasts become widely available in real–time. 

In any event, it is clear that the sports world would not be what it is today without intellectual property protection. While it is impossible to predict how demand would change in this alternate reality, it seems clear that the business of sport, from a purely monetary standpoint, would be smaller. Whether this is good or bad depends on perspective.