Page 5 - Delaware Lawyer - Winter 2023

EDITOR’S NOTE
Sports, like music, provide a path to health and self-image for youth, an environment for productive coop- eration among the proficient, and delight for spectators.
Unlike music, though, most sports are founded on competition. In any match, half or fewer of the participants are considered winners. Skills erode by mid-life. Creativity is usually discouraged.
As competitive athletics have grown over the past 150 years, with the onset of leisure time and discretionary income, they have formed community spirit and created drama that breeds legend, literature and cultural icons. Sports have been a staging ground for racial equality, and for the past 50 years, a springboard for women’s rights and power.
Competition means defeating an oppo- nent, but also raises the ideals of scholarship (think Bill Bradley), character (Hank Aaron), social action (Roberto Clemente, Billie Jean King) or versatility (Jackie Joyner-Kersee).
As with music, though, sports can be con-
torted by greed, a force that can be a healthy motivator or a vehicle for excess, cheating or corruption. As rewards grow for successful athletes, the culture in which they compete is altered.
Two recent Supreme Court decisions have accelerated the changes, by shredding the rules that restricted state-sponsored sports gambling and collegians’ sports- related income.
Meanwhile, youth sports have become increasingly professionalized, as parents pur- sue advantages for their children’s college search. “Travel teams” proliferate — good business for their promoters — while producing bored siblings, frayed marriages and depleted family budgets, with actual improvement in skills as an optional feature.
A significant sector of the younger gen- eration has turned to a different form of competition involving strategy and hand-eye coordination: esports.
This issue of Delaware Lawyer welcomes two authors from the University of Delaware
and two accomplished Delaware lawyers who have taken their skills to other states. Prof. Matt Robinson describes the past and future issues involving name, image and likeness income to college athletes. Steve Kramarck, station manager of WVUD and an electronic gaming leader, explains the dynamics under- lying the explosive growth of esports.
Joe Asher sketches the future of sports gambling, whose dynamics he has observed since his youth and whose technology he now implements. Jeff Schlerf, who has also migrated from a successful Wilmington prac- tice into the sports business, reminds us of the Delaware angle in sports betting, in which this state has been a pioneer.
And did you know that a member of the Delaware bar was briefly the Phillies’ top pitching prospect? I hope that you find Harry Hoch’s story as fascinating as I did.
Chuck Durante
Chuck Durante
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WINTER 2023 DELAWARE LAWYER 3