Mr. NFL, meet Mr. MLB. Mr. MLB, meet Mr. NFL. Despite your obvious differences, you have sooo much in common! For example, you both have federal antitrust exemptions that allow you to exploit your respective games and their broadcasts and use unfair business practices to keep competitors out of the market. Sure, Mr. MLB’s exemption stems from an early 20th Century Supreme Court decision that declares (get this) that baseball is an exclusively local affair, and not "interstate commerce." And Mr. NFL’s exemption stems from the AFL-NFL merger in the late 1960s-1970s and a congressional action exempting the NFL from antitrust penalties on the back of several promises made by then-Commissioner of the NFL Pete Rozelle.
What result? Mr. MLB and Mr. NFL are now acting in predictable ways to abuse their exemptions to the limit. Enter: Mr. DirecTV. First the NFL broke its promise to Congress - to use its antitrust exemption in broadcasting to make sure that fans generally will have access to games - by signing an exclusive deal with DirecTV for its Sunday Ticket package. It also moved Monday Night Football from network TV to cable and started its own cable network that now carries live football games. The vast majority of broadcast games now are no longer available to fans generally. Congress, particularly Senator Arlen Specter (apparently a big fan), has noticed, and is making noises about removing NFL’s exemption.
Now Mr. MLB has sold exclusive broadcasting rights to its Extra Innings package - formerly available to cable subscribers - to DirecTV for $100 million dollars. This is only $30 million more than the cable providers were willing to pay, and with the proceeds split among the 30 teams, the difference amounts to less than the ticket revenue from a single game at Yankee Stadium. The whole deal wouldn’t even pay Alfonso Soriano’s salary over the next few years. The cost for MLB? 750,000 former Extra Innings subscribers that now have to subscribe either to DirecTV or get their games over the internet from MLB.com. Or not get games. Way to tick off tens of thousands of fans, MLB. Here’s to hoping both leagues lose their antitrust exemptions. Sports are now just as big a business as any manufacturer or retailer, but are the only ones not subject to these federal laws. What’s in the public interest? Less bargaining power for these monoliths so that we get more access. This is certainly not a pressing issue compared to other things on the minds of Congress, but definitely more important than holding time-wasting hearings on steroids.
