Prodigy seeks to block Buhr from leaving endorsement contract early, wants monetary damages

February 19, 2023 by Charlie Eisenhood and Christopher Wiklund in News with comments

In a stunning development in professional disc golf, Prodigy Disc (PDI) has filed a lawsuit in US District Court against Gannon Buhr for attempting an early termination of his endorsement contract with Prodigy. The Georgia-based manufacturer’s lawsuit seeks to bar Buhr from working with or promoting a competitor, require Buhr to fulfill his Prodigy contract through the end of 2023, and also asks for Buhr to pay monetary damages to Prodigy.

The dispute appears to have developed in the past few months and swiftly accelerated into legal maneuvering earlier this year. Buhr and his mother, Michelle Nesheim (who co-signed his endorsement contract), reached out to Prodigy in November 2022 requesting that Buhr be released from his endorsement contract.

According to PDI’s own filings, PDI responded to Buhr by expressing a willingness to restructure and renegotiate Buhr’s deal. Then, on January 13th, Buhr delivered an email notice to PDI that he was invoking a 30 day clock to terminate the endorsement contract on the basis of multiple material breaches. PDI’s attorneys denied these breaches, but Buhr’s lawyers followed-up with a February 13th letter claiming that all cure attempts had failed and termination was effective immediately.

Ultiworld Disc Golf has reviewed the court filings made from PDI, which include purported copies of email communications from Buhr and his mother; at the time of publication, no substantive filings from Buhr were available for our review on the court’s website. Buhr and Nesheim declined to comment on this story; Prodigy did not respond to a request for comment.

The Alleged Contract Breaches

The dispute appears to have escalated after a January 13th email from Buhr to Prodigy management. In that email, Buhr alleged five items that he said constituted a material breach of the endorsement contract:

1. Buhr didn’t receive a PDGA Rookie of the Year commemorative disc, despite promises that he would get one.

2. Buhr did not receive regular sales reports to verify royalty payments on disc sales. “My Mom and I were told that we could see those at any time, but they had never been sent to us, even though Prodigy knew that was very important for us to have,” he…