Spotlight on Law Library Resources: Award Winning BLASE – Sports and Entertainment Law Database

Back in October 2019 we highlighted a new (at the time) database hosted at HeinOnline: Business and Legal Aspects of Sports and Entertainment (“BLASE”).

Since then, this database has received industry acclaim by receiving the Joseph L Andrews Literature Award for 2020.  The Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award recognizes a significant textual contribution to legal literature.

HeinOnline makes heavy use of the LibGuides platform to provide detailed explanations of their databases and they have a guide for BLASE.

What does it contain?

  • 1.3 million pages of sports and entertainment related content.
  • 120 landmark sports law cases.
  • 65 landmark entertainment law cases.
  • A collection of important articles on both of these topics, curated by the editors, after reading over 8,000 scholarly works. 

When would I use it?

Essentially any time you are starting research in these bodies of law.  This is a great place to start your research since it is a curated databased, created specifically for these two topics.  It can help you ensure that you’re not missing any big cases or articles.  It can also help you interpret complex statutes.  You can build your research on the foundation laid by two experts in these areas

This database also has a useful topic index for the categories that it covers – so that you can weed out the irrelevant hits you might receive if you did a keyword search (or if you simply don’t know which terms to use).

How to I get to it?

Please see the video below.  Soon many of these titles will be integrated into the ASU catalog.  Until then, you must access them through HeinOnline:

(Pro-Tip: if you click the image box, it will convert the .PDF original to a text format so you can cut-and-paste.  This works for nearly all HeinOnline .PDFs.)

And take a look at the Law Library’s Sports Law LibGuide.

Sean Harrington, Electronic Resources Librarian