Media Outlets Turn to Professor Jodi Balsam for End-of-Year Sports Law Analysis

Professor Jodi Balsam, in addition to directing the new BLS Sports Law Clinic and the Sports Law Externship program, is a regular go-to for media professionals seeking insights on sports law, often discussing how the law affects the business matters that loom large behind the games.  

As 2025 ended and the new year began, Balsam was quoted in numerous digital media site interviews and on podcasts about who might pay the price in cases of celebrity/athlete misconduct, the legalities around sports betting, and key sports law cases of the year.  

Here is a look at Balsam's recent media appearances:  

On the Jan. 6 episode of SERMAPod hosted by SERMA founder and CEO Rich Lenkov, Balsam discussed the recent assault allegations against former NFL quarterback and Fox Sports broadcaster Mark Sanchez. She used the incident as a jumping-off point for discussing a range of issues around celebrity/athlete misconduct, employer vicarious liability for that misconduct, employment contract morality clauses, and the future of athlete branding. 

In a piece that appeared in Law360 on Jan. 2 about the “Top Sports & Betting Cases to Watch in 2026,” Balsam shared her predictions for this year, including on transgender participation in sports, commissioner authority to arbitrate league employment disputes, and college athlete unionization, among other topics.  

On Dec. 18, Balsam was among the LawInSport Editorial and Advisory Board members featured in an article on “Key Sports Law Cases and Developments 2025 – North America” in which she and the other members were asked to identify the most important legal cases and developments from the world of sports law in the preceding 12 months. Balsam cited the erosion of commissioner authority, the settlement of House v. NCAA college athlete NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) litigation, and President Trump’s sports-related executive orders.  

On Dec 16, Balsam appeared on the Hub and Spoke Podcast Sports to discuss antitrust in sports. Topics included the history of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 and potential reforms; the intersection of antitrust and labor reform in college sports; and the NASCAR settlement and its impact on antitrust in sports. 

Balsam spoke to The Journalist’s Resource for a piece that appeared on Dec. 9 titled, “Sports integrity: What is it, why does it matter and how does gambling affect it?” The piece is about sports integrity, the concept that the outcome of any sports contest or game should be decided by the skill of the players, without influence from outside the playing field. 

As Balsam explains, there is no official U.S. government definition of “sports integrity” and the domestic sports industry, like many other private industries, is not closely regulated. That is in stark contrast to other countries, such as Australia, which have regulatory bodies tasked with ensuring fair play.  

"To me, the best practice from the perspective of the U.S. would be to continue to allow sports organizations to self-regulate, to self-govern, but to be more proactive in this era of gambling corruption risk in partnering with law enforcement to detect and deter—and not wait until it's happened before joining forces," Balsam said.  

On Dec. 4, Balsam spoke to the ABA Journal in an article headlined “Rigging the Game,” about the betting scandals have rocked Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association in recent months, with allegations that some players were throwing games to influence wagers.  

Balsam recommends tightening state gambling regulations as one component of repairing the problem of both “match fixing,” or deliberately manipulating a game’s outcome, and “prop bets,” a wager on a specific individual performance or occurrence within a game, which does not necessarily depend on the final score.

“Legalization didn’t cause the problem, but it has normalized it,” said Balsam, referring to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to commercialized sports betting in most states. “It lowered the threshold for bad actors ... and more needs to be done to anticipate incidents like these.”