Why Olympic Figure Skaters Struggle With Music Licensing

Music industry professionals already know song copyrights can be a complex headache. But at this year’s Winter Olympic Games, some professional figure skaters are learning that lesson the hard way.

American gold medalist Amber Glenn had to tweak a licensing deal mid-Olympics after being publicly accused of skating to the CLANN song “The Return” without the artist’s permission. Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté almost didn’t get to perform his Minions movie-themed routine after realizing just days before competition that the soundtrack hadn’t been cleared by the franchise’s studio. And Russian skater Petr Gumennik reportedly had to change his short program once he was already in Milan due to clearance issues with the score from the film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Copyright issues have been plaguing figure skaters since 2014, when the International Skating Union began allowing music containing lyrics in competition. Since then, many skaters have embraced the chance to eschew royalty-free classical music accompaniment in favor of pop hits – but even if they’re willing to pay sync fees that can run up to thousands of dollars, licensing contemporary songs is no easy feat.

For starters, skaters cannot simply rely on a competition venue’s blanket licenses from performing rights organizations (PROs) like ASCAP or BMI. There are a few different technical reasons for this, one being that music accompanying choreography is considered part of a “dramatic public performance” rather than background entertainment.

This means that in many cases, athletes themselves are responsible for securing licenses from rightsholders. Just like when an artist samples an existing track for new music, the use of a song in athletic competition requires licenses for both recorded (master) copyrights and publishing (composition) rights. It’s a complicated process that involves getting clearance from labels and publishers (often more than one, if a song has multiple writers). Many artists also have sync approval rights baked into their contracts, while movie studios own a piece of the pie for music that originates in a film.

“Depending on the song, you may have to reach out to one, five, 20 people,” says lawyer Avi Dahan, who runs Dahan Law Group and specializes in entertainment transactions. “It’s a clearance nightmare. Unless athletes know what they’re getting into, they could definitely run into issues.”

As seen in the cases of Glenn, Sabaté and Gumennik, failure to properly clear music can add stress to an already-high pressure Olympic run. In the worst-case scenario, an athlete could end up facing costly copyright infringement litigation after the games.

This is what happened to U.S. pairs figure skaters Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier after they competed to Heavy Young Heathens’ cover of “The House of the Rising Sun” at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The duo was sued by the band for allegedly failing to license the track, and the case was later settled for an undisclosed figure. 

As attorney Bradfield Biggers, who runs the music practice at Halloran Farkas & Kittila, puts it, “It’s a scary thing for a big company like Universal or Warner to be knocking on your door with a lawsuit with potentially huge damages.” The majority of athletes aren’t household names with lucrative endorsement deals, and litigation comes with hefty costs that can put a serious damper on one’s Olympic memories.

So how can elite athletes avoid facing legal trouble after the biggest competition of their lives? One option is to choose pre-cleared music from a service like ClicknClear, which now has blanket licensing deals with all three major record labels and their publishing arms after striking a deal with Universal Music Group last week.

“I started ClicknClear as a way to solve problems for athletes so there was no grey area,” founder Chantal Epps tells Billboard. “The system pieces together the complex jigsaw puzzle of music rights.”

Of course, not every song that an athlete might want to compete to is available on ClicknClear. Epps explains that artists who’ve negotiated strict sync approvals with their labels are held back from the library, including major stars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Adele.

For music that’s not pre-cleared, athletes can submit licensing requests through ClicknClear or other third-party services. But some experts still recommend doing it the old-fashioned way – that is, hiring a lawyer who can leverage their relationships in the music business to negotiate on their behalf with rightsholders.

“Vendors are a quick fix and they’re cheap, but I can promise you they’re not the same as someone sitting down and carefully going through the process,” says Biggers. “Having someone that you trust is going to give you a lot more comfort. You’re going to the Olympics – this is your entire life, this one moment that you’ve built up to; you better be damn sure.”