{
  "id": "RS21538",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "RS21538",
  "active": false,
  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
  "versions": [
    {
      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 102430,
      "date": "2003-06-09",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-08T14:43:32.838544",
      "title": "Federal Regulation of Sports Agents: Sports Agents Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA)",
      "summary": "H.R. 361 , the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA), would make\ncertain activities of alleged or actual sports agents -- providing gifts or cash, inducing a student\nathlete to sign an agent contract, or providing questionable information concerning the athlete's\npossible professional prospects -- unfair practices to be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission\n(FTC). Witnesses at hearings emphasized the far reaching consequences of frequently \"unethical\"\nor \"unscrupulous\" conduct of sports agents in pursuing and soliciting student athletes; such conduct\ncan subject student athletes to penalties including loss of student eligibility and possible loss of\nscholarship money, and their colleges to sanctions (monetary penalties, forfeiture of games in which\nan ineligible athlete played, tarnished reputations). The agents involved, however, generally face\nno punishment for their offenses because, according to SPARTA's primary sponsor, only 35 states\nregulate agent conduct at all; of that number, 18 have statutes that are considered less than \"tough\": \na federal law would, he says, provide a \"uniform Federal backstop\" to supplement the current\npatchwork of state laws, but \"not supplant\" them.  (1)   H.R. 361  was\nreported favorably\nby both the House Commerce and Judiciary Committees, and passed under suspension by the full\nHouse on June 4, 2003; it is currently pending in the Senate Commerce Committee. This report will\nbe updated as necessary to reflect further Congressional action. \n     1.  \u00a0Representative Osborne, speech on House floor, May 1,\n2003, Congressional Record, daily ed., May\n1, 2003, H3621. The numbers vary from source to source, for either the total number of states\nhaving any,\nor stringent regulation of athlete-agent registration and conduct, or those which have enacted the\nUniform\nAthlete Agents Act (UAAA), but all agree that they are low; some states have enacted the UAAA\nas\nsubstitutes for their own, existing statutes.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORTS",
      "active": false,
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      "topics": []
    }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "American Law"
  ]
}