LeBron’s ‘Uninterrupted’ Has Copyright Infringement Concerns For The Alabama Football Program

The University of Alabama is the most successful college football program in the country, and by proxy, are one of the most profitable. In college sports, when a program makes lots of money they have to spend all of that money because they, you know, don’t pay the athletes and have to act as though that money is needed somewhere else.

That means as the Tide keep rolling and raking in cash they keep building newer facilities and beefing up their internal media program to produce videos promoting their players and the program. One of their newest videos is called Shop Talk, in which Nick Saban is joined by Alabama alum Julio Jones and current players in the barbershop at the football facility for a discussion and some laughs.

It’s a pretty great recruiting tool. It shows off Alabama’s facilities, makes Saban appear to be a borderline normal human being, and flaunts Alabama’s incredible track record of creating stars at the NFL level. However, they are not the first ones to do a barber shop video series in the sports world and LeBron James’ media company, Uninterrupted, apparently has some concerns.

ESPN’s Dave McMenamin reports Uninterrupted sent the University of Alabama a letter with concerns about Shop Talk as it relates to copyright infringement and “intellectual property appropriation” from Uninterrupted’s “The Shop” show, which follows a similar model of LeBron and company hanging out in a barbershop telling stories.

“Your continued exploitation of ‘Shop Talk’ infringes ‘Uninterrupted’s’ copyright, trademark rights and other valuable intellectual property rights in ‘The Shop’ and significantly damages ‘Uninterrupted’s’ commercial prospects for ‘The Shop,'” the letter reads, in part.

The letter goes on to invite a conversation with Alabama before “rushing into legal proceedings.”

While the two shows certainly seem to be similar, it’s hardly a unique idea to have people talking about sports on camera in a barbershop, so it will be interesting to see if there are any grounds Uninterrupted has to get Alabama to pull or change its show. I would assume the “conversation” between Uninterrupted and Alabama will be able to put this issue to rest before it gets to any courtroom. There’s also always the chance this is LeBron trying to mess with the Tide on behalf of his beloved Buckeyes.