Photographer Sues Fanatics Betting and Gaming Over Social Media Copyright Infringement
Professional photographer Robert Sabo filed suit in the Southern District of New York on Monday.
Sabo is alleging that Fanatics Betting and Gaming used a copyrighted photograph on its X account without permission or payment. The photograph, taken by Sabo in September 2022 and commercially licensed to the New York Post, depicts baseball player Max Scherzer on the field in a Mets uniform. According to the complaint, Fanatics posted the image on April 19, 2023, on an account identified as fanaticsbook_pb, using it to promote its sportsbook services without licensing it from Sabo or obtaining his consent.
Sabo first noticed the unauthorized use in March 2024, sent a cease-and-desist through counsel the same month, and followed up in April 2024. The complaint does not indicate that the post was removed to his satisfaction following those communications. Having apparently exhausted the informal route, he filed suit on July 7, 2026, more than two years after first discovering the infringement.
The complaint seeks statutory damages under the Copyright Act, which, for willful infringement, can reach up to $150,000 per work, along with attorney’s fees and injunctive relief.
The Ask-Forgiveness Model Comes With Risks
Sabo’s decision to skip the standard escalation sequence and go straight to a lawsuit after the cease-and-desist went nowhere is the most commercially interesting element of this case. The dominant practice in social media content departments across most industries, including gaming and sports betting, has for years been a version of what the internet calls the ask-forgiveness model: grab the image, post it, and if someone complains, take it down and grab something else instead. The model works because the vast majority of rights holders who discover unauthorized use either do not notice, do not know they have a legal remedy, or find the cost and effort of enforcement not worth pursuing against a single post.
The gambling industry has had a specific and recurring version of this problem with influencer content rather than photography. Multiple companies, including prediction market platforms, have faced scrutiny over paid influencers posting promotional content without proper disclosure, violating FTC advertising rules. Just a few weeks ago, we covered Kalshi’s situation when it had to ask influencers to remove posts about the LA mayoral race that were labeled as paid partnerships but contained content the company could not stand behind. In that case, the problem was not copyright infringement but the absence of editorial control over branded content, a different failure mode with similar structural roots: a social media operation moving faster than its compliance function.
The Sabo case is the copyright version of that pattern. The complaint makes pointed allegations about Fanatics’ internal processes, arguing that the company either had no adequate copyright-verification policies or systematically ignored them, and that its personnel were sophisticated enough to know that professional photographs used in commercial social media content require licenses. The argument for willful infringement, which triggers the higher statutory damages range, rests on the claim that Fanatics should have known better, given its scale and media sophistication.
Fanatics Had Multiple Chances to Act and Balked
The part of this that brings a bit more intrigue is whether Sabo’s choice to litigate rather than simply demand a takedown yields a materially better outcome for him, and whether that trend will grow in sports betting platforms.
Statutory damages for copyright infringement range from $750 to $30,000 per work for non-willful infringement, and up to $150,000 for willful infringement. A single unlicensed photograph used in a social media post would typically be licensed for somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars. Sabo’s actual damages in a licensing sense are probably modest. The copyright lawsuit is not really about recovering the value of one unlicensed post. It is about extracting a settlement payment that reflects the cost Fanatics would incur defending the case, which can be significant regardless of the underlying license value.
That calculation has been the engine behind a cottage industry of copyright infringement suits against media companies and brands over the use of social media images. Sanders Law Group, the firm representing Sabo, has filed dozens of similar cases. The typical resolution is a confidential settlement for a sum the defendant finds preferable to the cost of litigation. Occasionally, these cases go to trial, and occasionally, plaintiffs win substantial statutory damage awards. But more often than not, they settle.
What is slightly different here is that Fanatics had two formal opportunities to resolve the dispute in 2024, through the March cease-and-desist and the April follow-up, and apparently did not. That is either a negotiation that broke down over the settlement amount or a decision to wait and see if Sabo would actually file. The July 2026 complaint answers the latter question, and here we are with a formal suit. Whether Fanatics’ litigation calculus looks different now that a federal court docket is involved will be determined over the next few months.
Players trust our reporting due to our commitment to unbiased and professional evaluations of the iGaming sector. We track hundreds of platforms and industry updates daily to ensure our news feed and leaderboards reflect the most recent market shifts. With nearly two decades of experience within iGaming, our team provides a wealth of expert knowledge. This long-standing expertise enables us to deliver thorough, reliable news and guidance to our readers.
Latest News
