Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law Volume 15 Issue 3 Issue 3 - Spring 2013 Article 1 2013 Decertifying Players Unions: Lessons from the NFL and NBA Lockouts of 2011 Nathaniel Grow Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/jetlaw Part of the Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons, and the Labor and Employment Law Commons Recommended Citation Nathaniel Grow, Decertifying Players Unions: Lessons from the NFL and NBA Lockouts of 2011, 15 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 473 (2020) Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/jetlaw/vol15/iss3/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law by an authorized editor of Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND TECHNOLOGY LAW VOLUME 15 SPRING 2013 NUMBER 3 Decertifying Players Unions: Lessons from the NFL and NBA Lockouts of 2011 Nathaniel Grow* ABSTRACT This Article analyzes the National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA) lockouts of 2011, focusing in particularon the role union dissolution played in each work stoppage. Although the existing academic literature had generally concluded that players unions in the four major US professional sports leagues were unlikely to disband during a labor dispute, the unions in both the NFL and NBA elected to dissolve in response to lockouts by ownership. This Article provides an explanation for why the prior literature misjudged the role that union dissolution would play during the 2011 work stoppages.