Sports & Entertainment

Counsel to athletes, performers, creators, and the companies that work with them. We negotiate the endorsement and NIL agreements, protect the name and the intellectual property behind them, paper the film, television, and media deals, and keep the whole arrangement pointed at a career rather than a season.

Begin a conversation What the work covers

Scope

Five parts of one career.

NIL & Endorsements

Collegiate NIL · Endorsement Agreements · Ambassador Deals

An endorsement agreement decides how much of a name a brand gets, for how long, and on what terms it ends. We negotiate the grant of rights so it stays narrow enough to leave the next deal possible, watch the exclusivity and category language that can quietly foreclose an entire industry, and read the morals, termination, and renewal clauses that matter far more than the headline number. Collegiate NIL adds school, conference, and state rules on top of the contract, and both have to work.

Brand & Intellectual Property

Trademarks · Name and Likeness · Licensing

The name is the asset. We register and defend the marks behind it, structure licensing so a brand can be exploited without being given away, and put ownership where it belongs when a logo, a nickname, or a phrase becomes worth something. Rights that were never cleanly held are hard to license and harder to enforce.

Film, Television & Media

Motion Picture Agreements · Talent Deals · Production & Distribution

Production is a chain of agreements, and a break anywhere in it stops a distribution deal cold. We handle talent and appearance agreements, option and rights documents, production and service contracts, and the releases and clearances a distributor's counsel will read line by line.

Representation & Career Structure

Agency Agreements · Marketing Deals · Team & League Documents

Athletes and performers are asked to sign agreements about their own representation before anyone explains them. We review agency, management, and marketing agreements for the terms that outlast the relationship: commission on deals signed after a departure, term and termination, scope of authority, and what happens to the contracts already in place.

The Business Behind the Career

Loan-Outs · Entity Structure · Long-Term Planning

Income that arrives in a compressed window needs a structure built for the years after it stops. We form the loan-out and holding entities, put ownership of brand assets where it can be held for the long term, and connect that structure to the planning work the firm already does for families.

A career outlasts every deal in it, and the paper should be written that way.

Approach

Negotiated for the long arc.

The deal in front of an athlete or a performer is almost always the best one they have been offered, and that is exactly what makes it dangerous. The terms that cost the most later are rarely the fee. They are the exclusivity that closes a category for three years, the rights grant written broadly because nobody pushed back, and the option that lets the other side renew on the original terms after the leverage has moved.

We read for those. The question is never only what a deal pays, but what it makes impossible. That perspective comes from a career spent in this work: teaching sports law at the University of Denver, an LL.M. in sports law, years writing on the business of sport for Forbes, and earlier work with U.S. Olympic national governing bodies on athlete selection procedures and anti-doping policy.

Lake Legal stays selective for the same reason the approach works. A career is a long relationship, and the counsel who negotiated the first endorsement should be the one who recognizes the pattern when the fourth arrives with familiar language buried in it.

Who This Serves

Careers worth protecting.

Athletes & Collegiate Talent

From a first NIL agreement to professional endorsement and marketing deals, where the terms signed early quietly set the ceiling on everything negotiated after them.

Performers & Creators

Talent whose name, likeness, and catalog are the business. Ownership and licensing decide whether that value can ever be sold, and to whom.

Brands & Producers

The other side of the table needs clean paper too: clearances, releases, and a rights chain that survives a distributor's diligence.

Questions

What talent asks first.

What should an athlete look at first in an endorsement agreement?

The grant of rights and the exclusivity, before the money. Those two clauses define what the brand may do with your name and what you are barred from doing for anyone else. A generous fee attached to a broad category exclusive can cost more than it pays.

How does collegiate NIL differ from a professional endorsement?

The contract law is the same. What changes is everything around it: school policies, conference rules, state law, and disclosure requirements a professional athlete never deals with. A deal can be perfectly enforceable and still create an eligibility problem, so both sides of it have to be checked.

Do you handle trademark registration?

Yes. Registering the marks behind a name, a logo, or a brand is usually the first structural step, because licensing something you do not clearly own is where value quietly leaks out.

Should I set up a loan-out or holding company?

Often, though the timing depends on where the income is coming from and what your accountant advises. The legal reasons are ownership and continuity: a company can hold brand assets, sign agreements, and outlast any single deal. We form it and coordinate the tax side with your accountant.

Can you review an agreement I have already been sent?

Yes, and that is a common way the work starts. Reviewing what is in front of you is straightforward. What we are usually looking for is what that agreement does to the ones that come after it.

Where is Lake Legal licensed to practice?

Ryan Lake is licensed to practice in Colorado and the firm is based in Denver. Sports and entertainment agreements routinely name another state's law, and a matter that turns on another jurisdiction's law is handled together with counsel admitted there.

Begin a conversation

We would welcome hearing from you.

We work with a select number of athletes, performers, and companies over the long term. If you are facing a situation where discretion, structure, and experienced counsel matter, reach out.

inquiries@lakelegal.co Meet your counsel

Denver, Colorado • By appointment