USOC CEO Scott Blackmun called the recent antitrust suit filed against his organization “interesting” in an interview yesterday and said its tactic of using a business instead of an athlete as plaintiff has raised new questions. In the organization’s first public reaction to the suit filed Jan. 20 by runner Nick Symmonds’ startup company Run Gum, Blackmun did not opine on the substance of the complaint but briefly discussed its innovative attack. Run Gum wants a judge to rule that the USOC's and the USATF's rules against on-uniform advertising at the Olympic Trials violates the Sherman Antitrust Act. The case was brought by Hausfeld LLP, which previously successfully sued the NCAA on antitrust grounds. “If this were a claim being brought by an athlete, what I would say is, ‘We have been working with the IOC and with the athletes to try to find more ways to develop new revenue streams for the athletes that don’t cannibalize our existing revenue streams,’” Blackmun said. “Our job is to generate as much revenue as we can to support of a large population of Olympians and Paralympians and hopefuls. This is different. This is a claim being made by a non-sponsor saying I want to have visibility at the US Olympic trials." More Blackmun: "This is a commercial issue, and we need to make sure that we understand their theory of the case, and our theory of the case before we make any public-facing statements. We’re not in a position to do that yet." Blackmun said he was not aware of any comparable suit in the past, though the general issue of limits on athletes’ individual sponsorship has been a long-standing Olympics flash-point. “I can’t think of one off the top of my head,” he said. “It’s an interesting suit, in that it’s being brought by a company that wants to sponsor an athlete." The USOC has not filed a formal response to the complaint.
