From Transgender Inclusion to Transmeridian Travel: AB Magazine's Top Ten Stories From 2024

Transgender inclusion controversy. Conference realignment consequences. Costly court cases. Pickleball's noise problem. These were the topics covered by Athletic Business magazine that drew the most reader attention in 2024.

Our own Chris Stevenson's look at the Planet Fitness locker room controversy ranked third to our runner-up feature, Andy Berg's deep dive into the biggest problem facing the nation's fastest-growing activity: the noise a pickleball makes when hit with a paddle. Our top story of the year featured an enormous payout to an injured plantiff — just one of four entires on our Top Ten list secured by AB's regular Legal Action column.

Here's the full list, and here's to our readers for paying close attention to issues that matter in the athletics, fitness and recreation industries:

10. How College Recreation Departments Are Designing Facilities to Include Outdoor Fitness Space

College recreation departments across the country have made student wellbeing a foremost concern, with efforts to provide students holistic support permeating every aspect of the school’s mission. From offering mental health services to the creation of wellness spaces in new and existing facilities, rec directors are looking at myriad ways to help students deal with the stresses of college life in a healthy manner.

9. Fan Injured in Dodger Stadium Security Confrontation Collects Percentage of Negligence Claim

When fans purchase tickets to attend a sporting event, they have one simple expectation — that the facility owners and operators will provide a safe environment for watching the game. While facility owners and operators are not obligated to guarantee the safety of fans from every possible injury once fans come into the facility, the owners and operators are liable for those dangers that are known or that they should have discovered through reasonable inspections.

8. How Colleges Are Rethinking Weight Rooms Through Design and the Implementation of New Technologies

In the not-so-distant past, college weight rooms were cavernous spaces filled with clanging iron, sweaty athletes and coaches armed with clipboards and stopwatches. Fast forward to today, and you’ll find a dramatically different scene: high-tech hubs where computerized vision equipment tracks every rep, force plates measure explosive power and nutrition stations fuel athletes for optimal performance. 

7. Jury Concludes Baseball Prospect Mostly Responsible for Own Rhabdo Case

As anyone who works in the sports and recreation industries should know, the number one cause of lawsuits is negligence. In most of these cases, the facility or its employees failed to act with the level of care that was required of them under the circumstances.

6. The Growing Impact of Social Media Influencers on Gym Etiquette

In a TikTok post last November, two female fitness influencers mocked the movements of “the weird man” working out in the corner of the gym, and then doubled over in laughter at their own imitations. Once alerted to the situation, the gym’s manager expelled the duo.

5. Stanford’s H. Craig Heller Helps Sound Alarm on Athletes and Transmeridian Travel

Nothing puts the folly of collegiate conference realignment into sharper focus than Stanford University football players being forced to travel 2,831 miles due west across four time zones to play North Carolina State this fall as first-year members of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

4. Transgender Student’s Lawsuit Over Locker Room Access Costs District Millions

One of the most debated issues facing school and athletics administrators today involves the rights of transgender athletes. To some administrators, gender is binary, and based on the gender assigned at birth. People are either female with two X chromosomes or male with an X and a Y chromosome. 

3. What Can Be Learned from the Planet Fitness Locker Room Controversy?

A much-publicized incident involving a gym patron who recorded a transgender woman using the women’s locker room at the brand’s Fairbanks, Alaska, location highlights the challenge of weighing the comfort and privacy concerns of gym users against the rights of transgender individuals to utilize facilities consistent with their gender identity.

2. How USA Pickleball and Others are Attempting to Mitigate the Sport’s Noise Problem

Nearly 3,500 pro and amateur pickleball players took part in a total of 6,928 matches over the course of the USA Pickleball National Championships in early November. The tournament, which took place at Brookhaven Country Club in Phoenix, Ariz., brought in more than 50,000 attendees, and 390,000 viewers tuned into ESPN during the hour-long broadcast of the final event.

1. Injured Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Student Awarded $46 Million in Negligence Lawsuit Against Facility

Negligence is the most common type of lawsuit that recreation and fitness facilities — and the professionals who manage them — will face. It seems like every time someone is injured at a recreation or fitness facility, a lawsuit is filed. The law, however, does not require that owners and operators ensure everyone using the facility is safe from every conceivable injury.