All-Star 👩‍💻 NEWS: New Varsity lawsuit, Andy’s channel is back & have you seen these AI-generated uniforms?

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Sep 12, 2020
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New lawsuit against Varsity, USASF & others​

Another week, another lawsuit… (See our coverage of previous ones here) Who’s surprised?

Who filed the lawsuit? the ‘Open Cheer & Dance Championship Series’ (owner of the Open Championship Series), ‘The Open Cheer and Dance’ (hosts the annual Allstar World Championship) & ‘Deep South Cheer’.

Who is it against? Varsity, the USASF, IASF, ICU & USA Cheer. Learn more about those organizations here: The USASF, IASF & ICU - What Are They and What’s the Difference?

Why? They're accusing these companies/organizations, especially Varsity, of having a monopoly on cheerleading and using unfair tactics to maintain their power.

What tactics, you ask? The lawsuit states things like:
  • “Varsity controls the All Star Cheer industry.“ (…) “Over several decades, Varsity acquired about 90% of All Star Cheer competitions by buying up any actual or potential rivals that could possibly threaten its dominance in the All Star competition market.”
  • “In addition, to further gain control, Varsity gave cash rebates to All Star gyms based on how many Varsity competitions they attended and how much apparel they bought. Varsity also used exclusionary contracts with All Star gyms.“
  • “While the USASF and IASF hold themselves out as independent “not for profit” corporations designed to help all their members, USASF and IASF favor Varsityand have taken actions to help Varsity controls the majority of competitions awarding bids to championship competitions.“
  • “In an effort to destroy the Open Series’ and Open Cheer’s All Star competitions
    and championships, Defendants (…) agreed to boycott (a) the Allstar World Championship; (b) Open Cheer and the Open Series (because of their affiliation with the Allstar World Championship); and (c) any other event producer that produces qualifying events for the Allstar World Championship, such as Deep South.“
    • “To further the boycott, the governing bodies began threatening their members and consumers with punitive measures if they chose to do business with Open Series and Open Cheer. For example, USASF began sending letters to event producer members of the organization that chose to do business with Open Cheer, threatening to kick any event producer out of the USASF if it did not stop doing business with Open Cheer. If an event producer continued trying do business with both Varsity and Open Cheer, then there would be severe consequences. An event producer would lose its ability to award bids to major championships and be unable to fairly compete against other event producers.“
And a lot more, which you can find by reading the full lawsuit document here.

Andy Simon’s YouTube channel is back​

Back in June this year, the popular YouTube channel was deleted after the USASF made copyright claims, which we wrote about in this newsletter.

We have amazing news because the channel is now back! Under some specific conditions though:
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