The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is suing DraftKings for unauthorised use of four of the Association’s registered trademarks.
The NCAA complaint filed in Federal Court in Indianapolis on Friday seeks an emergency temporary restraining order to prevent DraftKings’ use of the registered trademarks MARCH MADNESS, FINAL FOUR, ELITE EIGHT and SWEET SIXTEEN.
The suit accuses DraftKings of contravening one of the Association’s most deeply held institutional values: that sports betting must not be associated with, endorsed by, or linked to NCAA championships or the student-athletes who compete in them.
The NCAA says that DraftKings’ continued use of the trademarks “causes confusion among NCAA members and student-athletes that the Association is involved with and/or endorsing sports betting, which is in direct contradiction to its robust education, integrity monitoring, anti-harassment and advocacy efforts to end risky prop bets”.
“The NCAA does not have any commercial relationships with any sportsbooks of any kind and continues to uphold a strict prohibition on advertising and sponsorships associated with betting,” said the Association in a statement Friday, adding that its “complaint is a crucial step in furthering its mission to protect the integrity of competition and student-athlete well-being from the harms of sports betting.”