Speaking of sports: In Texas, as you know, everything’s mu-u-u-uch bigger. That includes NCAA-power-school IP thuggery, explains Eric Johnson, as well as the standard of what is and isn’t chump change:
UT has been very aggressive about trademark issues.
So with all that, how many millions of dollars has UT actually brought in to pay faculty and help students? You might be surprised. Annual royalty payments are only about $800,000.
That is a triffling amount of money. And, of course, there are expenses. UT maintains an Office of Trademark Licensing to manage the branding operations. Let’s assume that the office employs only the equivalent of two full-time employees. Salaries, benefits, and overhead would likely be a minimum of $200,000. Add to that a share of the in-house counsel’s budget and legal fees incurred for waging litigation warfare on hapless t-shirt makers, and that’s got to be at the very least about $250,000 annually. Thus, it is hard to believe UT clears more than $450,000 from trademark licensing. And it might be much, much less.
To put that in perspective, that doesn’t even cover a quarter of the gratuitous $2 million annual bonus that UT has recently started guaranteeing for football coach Mack Brown.
See what I mean? Now Texas, that’s a place where $2 million can be “gratuitous”! Don’t get me started.
I think your cost estimates are low. If they have any ongoing litigation at all, you can bump that figure up x 2 to 10 times.
They must have a lawyer doing their budgets.