From left: Attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - Prominent plaintiffs lawyers who led the lawsuit that resulted in the landmark settlement which will require colleges and universities to directly share with their athletes billions of dollars in revenue from college football, basketball and other sports should themselves receive more than $484 million in fees and costs right now - with potentially hundreds of millions more coming their way over the next 10 years, a California federal judge has ruled.
On July 11, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken signed off in full, with no changes or concerns, to the fee request filed by the lawyers for the college athletes who argued they were owed a cut of the money raked in annually by the National College Athletic Association, the so-called "Power Five" Division I conferences, and all of the member schools.
The approval of the attorneys fees comes, in turn, about a month after Wilken granted final approval to the nominally $2.8 billion settlement.
The legal action initially landed in federal court in Oakland in 2020, when attorney Steve W. Berman and others with the firm of Hagens Berman Sobol & Shapiro, of Seattle, filed their class action lawsuit, led by named plaintiffs Grant House and Sedona Price.
House was a member of the men's swimming and diving team at Arizona State University, while Price was a member of the women's basketball team at the University of Oregon.
The Hagens Berman attorneys were joined in the litigation on behalf of the athletes by attorney Jeffrey L. Kessler and others with the firms of Winston & Strawn, of New York and San Francisco; and Spector Roseman & Kodroff, of Philadelphia.
The lawsuit essentially argued the colleges, universities, conferences and the NCAA were annually pocketing billions of dollars in revenue, driven by the performance of the athletes competing in their sports' programs, and were improperly refusing to allow those same athletes a share of the money their work was generating.
Specifically, the lawsuit claimed the athletes should be able to earn their share, based on the amount of money the schools, conferences and NCAA were receiving from using those athletes' "name, image and likeness" (NIL) to promote their events, television broadcast deals, schools and merchandise, among other revenue generators.
In late 2024, the parties agreed to settle for an eye-popping $2.8 billion in damages, primarily as payment allegedly owed to athletes since 2016.
Under the deal, the NCAA and its top conferences, including the Big 10 Conference, PAC-12 Conference, Southeastern Conference (SEC), Big 12 Conference, and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), also agreed to new college athletics rules governing NIL payments, team roster size and more.
For instance, the so-called House settlement will also require that NIL deals can be audited to allow players to make certain the deal accurately reflects the value of the compensated players.
Wilken approved the settlement on June 6.
The first payments under the House settlement were scheduled to be distributed on July 1. However, those payments were already put on hold after a group of female athletes appealed the settlement, arguing the distribution of the money unfairly benefited male athletes participating in the two biggest revenue generating college sports, football and men's basketball.
The payments, for now, will remain paused pending appeal.
Even as the final outcome of the settlement remains somewhat in doubt, Berman and his fellow plaintiffs' attorneys asked the judge to give them their cut of the deal.
Under the fee request, filed in December, the lawyers sought 20% of the so-called NIL Settlement Fund, or $395.2 million; 10% of a so-called Additional Compensation Fund, or another $60 million; an additional $20 million as "an upfront injunctive relief award;" plus $9 million in costs they claimed they spent on prosecuting the case.
Additionally, the lawyers requested the right to apply annually for a percentage of the amount schools included in the settlement will pay athletes.
Those additional annual fees could be worth more than $237 million in additional fees paid to the lawyers over the next 10 years, using calculations based on information and figures included in court documents.
In granting the fees, the judge offered no pushback against the attorneys' requests.
The judge said she believed the fees were reasonable and fair, because of what the judge called the "extraordinary results" she said the lawyers had achieved for the college athletes. She also asserted the amount was considerably below the "25% benchmark" typically awarded to plaintiffs' lawyers under settlements in California federal courts.
Should the lawyers receive the additional $237 million over the next 10 years, however, their total take could yet amount to about 25% of the $2.8 billion settlement funds.
