The Sport of Cybersecurity: How Professional Sports Leagues Can Better Protect the Competitive Integrity of Their Games

Abstract

From an MLB scouting director using a cyber attack to break into a competitor’s records, to an NBA franchise being compromised in a phishing scheme, U.S. professional sports leagues are waking up to the fact that cybersecurity is no longer just a problem for the government or tech firms—it’s now reached into the playing field, locker room, and boardroom. But leagues have been slow to react to this change with often outdated policies on issues like trade secrets protections, Internet of Things (IoT) availability, and critical infrastructure security. This Article breaks new ground by focusing in on how well the four major U.S. professional sports leagues—Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL)—are mitigating these cyber risks as they relate to the competitive integrity of their games, and proposes a way ahead to get owners, players, and fans more engaged in these issues in an effort to proactively ward off worst-case scenarios.

Keywords: sports, cybersecurity, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, trade secrets, critical infrastructure