How Did Prodigy Get out of Their Contracts?

Recently, both Kevin Jones and Väinö Mäkelä announced they would be leaving their Prodigy Disc contracts mid-season to join Team Innova. Both players still had time left on their agreements and, as of today, neither has publicly discussed the circumstances surrounding their premature departure.

We analyzed the facts of the situation, examined Prodigy’s recent activities, and used our relevant legal expertise to explain a few potential ways these contracts could have been terminated.

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CHAPTERS
0:00 KJ & Väinö Leave Prodigy
1:43 The “Term” of a Contract
2:22 How Contracts are Terminated
4:23 What is Up with Prodigy?
6:33 Online Discourse
7:14 What Do You Think?

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Chris Clark | PDGA 16694
Matthew Clark | PDGA 143565

Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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hello everybody it’s Chris Clark with disolf toaw recently Kevin Jones and Fino MCA parted ways with their primary sponsor Prodigy discs these announcements made news for several reasons Kevin and Vino are well-known well-liked successful veteran players it’s rare to see a player’s primary sponsorship relationship change midseason it’s rare to see player contracts end when there was still so much time time left Kevin Jones’s Prodigy contract would have run through the end of 2025 and Vino MCAS would have run through the end of 2026 and neither Prodigy nor Kevin nor Vino have given much explanation of what’s going on it’s no secret that many segments of the disc golf industry have been in Decline and manufacturers are no exception were these money saving moves by a cash strapped prodigy or was Prodigy disappointed with Kevin’s and Vino’s performances on tour this year Kevin’s best finish so far was 20th Place at Music City open and Vinos was 13th at the chess.com Invitational however both players remain in the PDGA world rankings top 35 so was there some other reason or even different reasons for the two players and maybe the time timing was a coincidence I don’t know the answers to these questions our Law Firm doesn’t represent Kevin or vino or Prodigy but we do write contracts for a living and have worked on lots of disolf sponsorship contracts we can make some educated guesses and share some basic information about how contracts are typically terminated now almost every contract has what we call a term the term of a contract is simply how long the contract is or will be in effect sometimes contracts have a fixed term after which the contract ends sometimes at the end of a fixed term the contract renews automatically sometimes contracts give an effective date on which the contract starts and there is no fixed end date the contract simply continues until it’s terminated but how do you do that if you’re a party to a contract how do you terminate it that mostly depends on the language of the contract but let me give you four of the most typical examples there’s almost always the option to end a contract through a mutual termination if all parties to a contract want the contract to end regardless of what the termination Provisions in the contract say in every situation I can think of the parties can agree usually in writing to terminate the contract that very well could have been what happened with Kevin and Vino a player and a sponsor can always have a conversation and agree that for whatever reasons the relationship isn’t working anymore and they both think that it’s the right decision to terminate many contracts provide that either party can terminate at any time for any reason by giving the other party written notice of their intent to terminate this notice usually has a time frame attached to it such as 30 days for example if Kevin or Vino contract contained this type of provision their contracts could have been terminated simply by one party giving notice to the other party in situations that I mentioned previously where a contract has a fixed term that automatically renews a common way contracts like this can be terminated if one party or the other gives a notice of termination a certain number of days before the contract is set to renew sometimes contracts can only be terminated if one party or the other breaches the contract depending on the type of breach a party might have a period of time in which they can cure the breach correct whatever issue that was causing them to be in violation of the contract if they cure the breach within the amount of time specified in the contract the contract is not terminated if they don’t the contract ends these are just four of dozens or maybe even hundreds of ways contract termination can be structured in Prodigy’s case I think the first option I described which was Mutual termination both parties agree to terminate is the most likely but I also wouldn’t rule out the fourth option where one party or the other breached the contract it could even be a combination of these two reasons let me tell you what I mean contracts can have targets or Milestones that a party must meet in order to remain in compliance with the contract’s terms theoretically a sponsor could require a player to make the podium at a disc golf pro Tour event once a month and if they don’t the sponsor could have the option to terminate the contract that’s an absurd example and I’ve never personally seen a disc off contract this demanding using your imagination you could probably come up with some more realistic criteria that a sponsor would require a player to meet especially in some of the larger contracts we’ve seen in recent years keep in mind this goes both ways one obvious way that Prodigy could breach a player’s contract is by not paying the player if Prodigy is in a cash crunch or anticipates that it might be soon it might have struck a deal to release Kevin and Vino early in order to save money understand that regardless of what your written contract says the parties can negotiate a change at any time what we know for sure is that something happened to to bring about a premature end of these two Prodigy contracts the fact that they happened so closely in time to one another and the fact that both Kevin and Vino immediately announced that they were joining team eneva suggests to me some behindth scenes discussions among everyone involved and likely an agreed to settlement with Prodigy to avoid the potential public embarrassment and expense of litigating one or more breach of contract cases this news brought out a wave of social media speculation hell Camino wrote in many contracts that cover multiple years there are often stability Clauses that say the terms of the agreement can be renegotiated if certain criteria are met in my experience it’s rare for a disc golf sponsor contract to contain these types of Provisions but in my opinion they often should several other people theor Ed that Prodigy is dumping some of its big dollar contracts either in preparation for getting acquired some speculated by house of discs or offering big money contracts to other players such as Isaac and Ezra Robinson so my question for you what do you think is most likely did Kevin and Vino somehow breach their contracts was Prodigy running out of money is Prodigy about to get Acquired and if so by what company let us know in the comments please like and subs subscribe and as always thanks for watching [Music]