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OT: The Official Toronto Raptors Thread

MindzEye said:
Yeah, this was amazingly lazy, no arguments there. I do think that you're missing the likeness rights bit though in your explainer. To piggyback on your hollywood example (which was about the relationship between studio, actor and SAG...so similar to the relationship between team, league, player and union). Imagine Brad Pitt signs onto a new movie, knows it's getting a big marketing push, and he piggybacks on that to sign a number of personal endorsement deals where he allows brands to use his likeness, but he doesn't actually want to do anything new (photoshoots, etc) for them. But he allows them to use images of his likeness that he owns or they otherwise license for use. That is a completely viable business deal and if one of them is a fucking photo copier manufacturer, no one cares that it's a weird business to use Brad Pitt's likeness.

The defence for Kawhi here is basically that. No show or limited involvement likeness licensing deals aren't novel, and this was that. Without a clear paper trail to Ballmer/Clippers paying for it all, it's kind of unprovable.


To use Kawhi's likeness.



Agreed entirely, and that's kind of the crux here. Without that, everything else is just conjecture. Us porting over our assumptions about their business onto them. Businesses make bad business decisions all of the time. Now, I'm not supporting that at all. These fucking guys clearly did this shit. But what you know and what you can prove are not the same thing. Without a clear and direct financial line from Baller to Daktronics and then on to Kawhi, I don't see how they prove anything to the point that severe punishment is a reasonable outcome.
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I didn't know about the likeness rights here. I thought the story was that he gave them nothing. I still don't know what his likeness rights would do to advance their business, or how they'd even use it since they are not advertising their products in any traditional way. When pitching or doing test screenings on the jumbotron, to have his face on the pitch deck or screen?

Even in your Brad Pitt example, I struggle to think of a brand that wanted to pay an actor to use their image to endorse a product without having the actor do something to personalize it for them. I guess there must have been deals like that, using stock footage and then putting the brand's name on it, but it would be odd, because if you're going to pay a guy millions, you want more than just his head shot to superimpose on images. Something original and new. Even the photocopier manufacturer would want him to pose with the copier or say something about it. That said, I just negotiated a deal last week that contemplates the celebrity creating/training an AI model for them which they can then use with permission to have him say what they want him to say, dress how they want him to dress, etc., without him actually having to do anything other than the initial model set up. So, it is now easier than ever to get paid a lot of money for your endorsement and let them just create it with your minimal involvement and full approval rights.
 
LeafOfFaith said:
I didn't know about the likeness rights here. I thought the story was that he gave them nothing. I still don't know what his likeness rights would do to advance their business, or how they'd even use it since they are not advertising their products in any traditional way. When pitching or doing test screenings on the jumbotron, to have his face on the pitch deck or screen?
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Yeah, I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is Kawhi was giving them, but I would imagine than an endorsement deal at it's bare minimum would come with the ability to use his likeness to market their product. How, why and to who they market is none of anyone's business after that. Again, business mistakes aren't really something you can litigate over. There is value is associating your brand with well known people. There's 100's of billions of dollars a year spent internationally doing exactly that. Those aren't work for hire deals, you're not paying Kawhi hourly for sitting on the set of your commercial. You're paying for the value of having your brand associated with his and the real value of that is amorphous and insanely subjective.

To be clear...these motherfuckers did this thing to circumvent the CBA. But it comes down to what is provable not what we think is conventionally true.

LeafOfFaith said:
Even in your Brad Pitt example, I struggle to think of a brand that wanted to pay an actor to use their image to endorse a product without having the actor do something to personalize it for them.
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I mean, just for current example:


1786132574487.png
Or...I could have just kept reading:
That said, I just negotiated a deal last week that contemplates the celebrity creating/training an AI model for them which they can then use with permission to have him say what they want him to say, dress how they want him to dress, etc., without him actually having to do anything other than the initial model set up. So, it is now easier than ever to get paid a lot of money for your endorsement and let them just create it with your minimal involvement and full approval rights.
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Yeah, this.

Again, I'm not saying this is what happened, I'm saying that this is going to be their defence of what they did, and it will work.
 
MindzEye said:
Yeah, I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is Kawhi was giving them, but I would imagine than an endorsement deal at it's bare minimum would come with the ability to use his likeness to market their product. How, why and to who they market is none of anyone's business after that. Again, business mistakes aren't really something you can litigate over. There is value is associating your brand with well known people. There's 100's of billions of dollars a year spent internationally doing exactly that. Those aren't work for hire deals, you're not paying Kawhi hourly for sitting on the set of your commercial. You're paying for the value of having your brand associated with his and the real value of that is amorphous and insanely subjective.

To be clear...these motherfuckers did this thing to circumvent the CBA. But it comes down to what is provable not what we think is conventionally true.



I mean, just for current example:


View attachment 35845
Or...I could have just kept reading:


Yeah, this.

Again, I'm not saying this is what happened, I'm saying that this is going to be their defence of what they did, and it will work.
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Yeah, you can't rest the case on what a dumb decision this company made to pay him millions for nothing tangible that we can see.

But the thread needed to link everything together is money leaving Ballmer's hands, directly or indirectly, and getting to Dak for nothing, which then paid it to Kawhi for nothing. Ballmer would never be so stupid to pay it directly or through his companies, but maybe he makes a $10m loan to the owners of some stadium that needed some jumbotron, and those guys paid $8M to Dak for the jumbotron, and Dak paid $5M to Kawhi or some shit like that. And then Ballmer never collects on the loan, thereby creating a taxable event for the stadium owners, who are okay with it because they got a jumbotron plus a couple mill for free, and if ever actually called to task to pay up, then probably have their tax bill mysteriously paid by some fat guy who sweats a lot in public who shall remain nameless.
 
Sorry guys didn't see this, been on the phone all day

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