The dispute pits a network of regional distributors of Sport Court flooring products against Connor Sport Court International, LLC — the manufacturer behind sports surfaces used by the NBA, USTA, NCAA, USA Volleyball, FIBA Basketball, Futsal, U.S. Soccer, and USA Pickleball — along with its parent Gerflor USA and affiliated entity Snap Lock Industries, which manufactures sports flooring under the SnapSports brand. The distributors, operating across territories from the Carolinas to Nevada to the Midwest, allege that Connor Sport Court wrongfully terminated their agreements and assert claims for breach of contract, tortious interference with contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and violations of the Lanham Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act.
The underlying friction traces to a series of grievances the distributors organized around in May 2025, when they formed an entity called Sport Ventures, LLC to press Connor Sport Court on issues including lack of transparency about the SnapSports relationship, trademark infringement, product delivery problems, warranty disputes, decreased national support of the distributor network, and a ban on distributors selling acrylic surfaces. Connor Sport Court responded on or around June 27, 2025, by sending cure letters to multiple distributors citing failures to meet contractual performance requirements and giving them 60 days to schedule and complete a meeting with managing director Ryan Day.
The distributors' counsel replied on July 3, 2025, canceling all then-scheduled individual meetings and proposing instead a meeting between Gerflor/Sport Court and the full membership of Sport Ventures, LLC, together with counsel. Connor Sport Court later extended cure deadlines, but the parties never met. Connor Sport Court terminated the contracts of seven distributors on November 7, 2025, after concluding they had failed to cure their breaches.
Judge Howard C. Nielson, Jr. of the District of Utah denied the motion for preliminary relief, concluding that the distributors failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of their breach-of-contract claims — the sole basis for the preliminary relief request. The court's analysis turned on the performance element of a Utah breach-of-contract claim, which requires a plaintiff to show substantial compliance with its own contractual obligations. The court concluded that the requirement to meet with Connor Sport Court to discuss sales shortfalls and identify corrective actions clearly appeared to be a covenant — a mutual obligation bargained for in the agreements — not merely a condition, and that the July 3 letter canceling all scheduled meetings likely constituted an anticipatory breach under Utah law, which occurs when a party manifests a positive and unequivocal intent not to render its promised performance. See Cobabe v. Stanger, 844 P.2d 298, 303 (Utah 1992).
The distributors offered no justification for the July 3 cancellations and identified nothing in their individual contracts requiring or permitting a collective meeting in lieu of the individual meetings they had covenanted to attend. The court rejected the distributors' argument that a breach for missing sales targets cannot occur until year-end, reasoning that failure to comply with covenants — particularly when coupled with repudiation — independently constitutes a breach regardless of whether the sales-target provision was separately triggered. Because failure to substantially perform any material provision bars a plaintiff's own breach-of-contract claim under Utah law, the court denied the motion without reaching irreparable harm, the balance of equities, or the public interest.
The terminated distributors had sought reinstatement of their contracts with full exclusivity. The non-terminated distributors had sought to prevent termination of their own contracts. All plaintiffs subsequently expressed willingness to narrow the relief sought to reinstatement of access to Connor Sport Court's dealer portal for the duration of the litigation.