Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Sports Broadcasting Act

Established in 1961, the Sports Broadcasting Act allows professional football, basketball, hockey, and basketball to pool and sell their rights in sponsored telecasts of games. This act allows the pooling of these television rights to be exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act. This enables teams to put their separate rights together in a single package so the league can sell that package to a single television network such as FOX or ABC. This is designed to protect home ticket sales and allow teams to share the revenues. It also has been interpreted to include what are called “blackout rules” which protect the home team from competing games broadcast into its home territory on days when it is playing at home. The focus on “sponsored telecasts” has been interpreted to ensure free local and national broadcasts of games. However, paid broadcasts on cable and league agreements with cable broadcasters are not covered by the antitrust exemption.

In recent years validity of the NFL’s antitrust exemption under THE Sports Broadcasting Act has been called into question. The issue occurred when the NFL began to run live games on its own NFL Network. They then sell the rights to carry NFL Network to cable and satellite providers at a high cost. This has angered cable companies such as Comcast and they feel that the NFL’s antitrust exemption should be repealed. The NFL counters that they are the only professional league that broadcasts all of its local market games on free over-the-air broadcast. The NFL claims they do not run afoul of the antitrust laws because they are “pro-competitive” and expand choices for consumers.


LINK:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6384863

Reds pitcher Mike Leach was arrested for shoplifting in downtown Cincinnati and accused of stealing six shirts. The obvious reason this is interesting is because it is a player who makes over 450,000 per year and is stealing shirts. There has to be something more to the story that is not being reported, or maybe he is just not very smart.

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