Following the school’s selection to formally re-enter a fresh 15-year multimedia rights deal with rival Playfly this quarter, Learfield and its former spouse Penn State settled a legal dispute.
The parties filed a restriction of departure with prejudice last week in federal court, claiming that the dispute had been “amicably resolved” and that the claims could not be re-litigated in the future.
It is not obvious how the edges settled the prosecution, which Penn State initially filed in December. A Learfield spokesman declined to comment, and a Penn State rep did not respond to an email Sportico sent.
Before the Big Ten university made the decision to re-join Playfly, Learfield had been the video right owner at Penn State for more than 20 ages. Despite making attempts to offload some of its university agreements in recent years, it may appear based on its new actions that it was still hoping to sustain its foothold in Happy Valley.

In anticipation of Penn State’s recently terminated Learfield deal, Penn State released an RFP for its sports multimedia rights agreement in late 2022. According to Penn State’s complaint, Learfield made a fast pay in advance of the college’s Dec. 22, 2022, date. About ten months afterward, in November of 2023, Learfield submitted a subsequent RFP charge that was deemed inconvenient and non-compliance with the RFP process.
After being informed that Playfly had received the charge, Learfield’s main legal official, John Raleigh, wrote repeated letters to Penn State informing them of their intention to publicly oppose the Pennsylvania law-enforced RFP process and request copies of the company’s records related to the choice.
In the first rally letter dated Nov. 28, 2023, Raleigh claimed that Penn State was legally prohibited from entering into a deal with Playfly, a determination he called “arbitrary”,” unpredictable” and” contrary to the RFP”.
Raleigh remarked that” Learfield values its connection with the University and wants to stay there for many years as its partner for multimedia right.” According to Learfield,” the University may determine that Learfield is the best partner in a good and visible evaluation process.”
Learfield insisted it was entitled to evaluate a slew of Request- relevant documents, including “score sheets for each evaluator” and with domestic email communications, based on the commonwealth’s people disclosure statutes.
For years, Pennsylvania’s thus- called Right to Know Law generally exempted the state’s four biggest universities—Penn State, Penn, Temple and Pittsburgh—which are deemed state- associated entities, since they are n’t government- owned but also receive millions of dollars each year in open funds.
But, two days before Learfield’s opposition email, Pennsylvania Gov. A expenses requiring greater revelations from those institutions was signed into law by Joseph Shapiro, but it is not clear how much of it may apply in this instance. However, Learfield’s attempt to exploit people reporting laws, given its past positions on keeping records secret, added an humorous twist to the situation.

In response to Learfield’s complaints, Penn State filed a constitutional activity in federal court on December 5 to ask for a ruling in favor of Playfly and that Learfield was n’t required to provide Learfield with its RFP components. Learfield was required to respond to the problem by June 17 after receiving an improvement. Instead, six weeks before that date, the events informed U. S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann that they had reached an unknown solution.
Including Penn State, Playfly’s sports components division now serves as the video right owner for 25 Division I institutions. In 2022, the company inked a 15- year agreement with Nebraska, another Big Ten Learfield defector, which was reportedly worth$ 300 million.