Saturday, January 5th, 2008...3:12 pm
The NFL - Hoisted on Its Own Petard
I meant to write about this earlier this week…but…pfaw…
Anyhoo, some of you may remember that last week, the National Football League was cajoled into showing the historic New England Patriots victory on not one, but two broadcast networks. Originally, they wanted the game broadcast exclusively on their own NFL Network, but political pressure (particularly from John Kerry) forced them to allow the networks to broadcast the game.
I haven’t yet heard about anyone from the NFL complaining about governmental interference. You’d think you would have heard a hew and cry from these folks about the nanny state once again interfering with commerce. Well, for so many reasons it would have been silly for the NFL and team owners to moan about big government, what with their anti-trust exemptions and state-funded stadia.
But, they also couldn’t because it was only a couple of months ago that here and in several other states they called for state action on behalf of their NFL Network. Yep, these guys were trying to get legislatures to force local cable operators to broadcast their games. Kinda left them without a reason to complain now, didn’t it?
2 Comments
January 6th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Ted, I think it is only baseball that specifically has an anti-trust exemption.
Baseball was specifically given an antitrust exemption in a case called Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs in 1922 and was subsequently upheld by the United States Supreme Court in another case, Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc., in 1953. The court ruled that baseball as a ‘unique institution,’ could only have this anti-trust exemption revoked by an act of Congress.
In contrast, in the 1957 case Radovich vs. National Football League that the NFL IS subject to anti-trust laws.
There have periodically been attempts made to revoke baseball’s anti-trust exemption (which among other complications, gives Congress direct oversight of baseball unlike any other sport) but none have been successful.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Ooops…well…many of them do play in publicly funded stadia and enjoy tax breaks.
The Star regrets the error.
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