You should know that I don’t normally respond to each and every news article. But it just so happens that I find this to be particularly interesting. The NFL lost its Supreme Court battle for broad antitrust protection. You can read the full story here.
The gist of this is that, however cool football is, and powerful the NFL is, the sport just does not have the level of pull Major League Baseball did when it gained broad antitrust protection, or rather exemption, in 1915. (Really good background on the history of baseball’s exemption can be found here.) And while this exemption has been challenged, it has been upheld repeatedly. The latest appeasement of baseball’s single entity trust was in 1995, during the 234-day strike that almost killed the game professionally.
What does this new judgment mean?
That the NFL is 32 separate entities, operating solely toward each franchise’s own benefit and providing contracts separate unto themselves (which is how this issue came to the courts). That means your favorite team can have a contract with Nike, and your rival can have a contract with Addidas — without the approval of the league.
So because American Needle lost its rights to sell and make NFL hats because it wasn’t an official sponsor with the league, the company, which had no intention of falling into this Supreme Court suit that NASCAR, the NBA, NHL and other sports became interested in, has held off what could have been a serious fight against free enterprise for sports marketing. This is David and Goliath type stuff.
Why should you and I care?
Color me crazy for wanting to bring this up, but I think this is good for all sports — and baseball should have its exemption reexamined. This is one area of American culture where monopolies have continued to strengthen their death grip over each individual sport — until now. In no other aspect of business culture is this considered the norm. However, collectively — between the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL and all the rest of the alphabet soup — sports can be viewed as an oligarchy of niche entertainment peddling corporations.
But seriously, who cares how they’re classified? All people want to see is their game played well, cheap tickets and a home win. A championship every now and then would be nice. But it’s not mandatory (Warriors anyone?). Bang for your buck? I would hope. What’s more realistic is that nobody wants to care about business integrity, ethics. Morals. Leadership. Etc., etc.
There’s a principle here, and it was upheld. But I just continue to wonder why it needed to be challenged in the first place.
I'm a sports producer for Boston.com, originally from San Francisco. I was the second place winner for "columns" in the California Newspaper Publisher's Association Better Newspapers contest in 2008. My favorite teams are the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants and Golden State Warriors. For more information about me, go to ZuriBerry.com. 
