Sports: Broadcasting & Baseball

Sports Law: An Overview Cornell's Legal Information Institute has collected a number of resources related to sports law, including Antitrust issues affecting professional sports leagues.

Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 Congress enacted SBA as a statutory exemption to the antitrust laws. The Act (cited as 15 USC 1291) makes the federal antitrust laws inapplicable to any agreement transferring broadcasting rights made by an organized professional league involving the sports of football, baseball, basketball, or hockey. The Act was amended in 1966 to exempt the combining of any professional football leagues.

Is a League a Single Entity? This casenote from the Villanova Sports & Entertainment Law Journal (1998) discusses whether a sports league should be considered a single entity or a combination of competitors under the antitrust laws, and includes a description of the Sports Broadcasting Act and its history.

Clarett v. NFL Decision Former Ohio State player Maurice Clarett had claimed the NFL was violating federal antitrust laws by blocking Clarett's entry into his profession with a rule barring eligibility until players are three years out of high school. On May 24, 2004, The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that NFL teams can collectively set criteria for potential employees to meet in accordance with federal labor policy and antitrust law.

The Federal Base Ball Case Professional baseball's unique exemption from the antitrust laws was created when the Supreme Court held in Federal Base Ball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, 259 U.S. 200 (1922), that baseball is not interstate commerce. The Court's opinion can be found at this link. No other professional sport has been granted this court-made exemption, and Congress has not extended the blanket exemption to other sports.

Baseball's Three Antitrust Exemptions The history of baseball's antitrust exemption is described in this 1995 law review article by Joseph J. McMahon, Jr. (2 Vill. Sports & Ent. L.J. 213). The author argues that there are actually three different antitrust examptions for baseball: the "whole business" exemption, the "reserve system and league structure" exemption, and the "reserve system" exemption.

Why the Antitrust Exemption is Important This short article from USAToday (12/06/01) describes the importance of an antitrust exemption to the issue of moving major league teams, and links to stories covering congressional attempts to repeal baseball’s court-made exemption.

Keep Baseball's Antitrust Exemption Narrow In this Amicus Brief filed by Stephen Ross of the University of Illinois Law School, on behalf of AAI and Consumers Federation of America, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is urged to keep the baseball exemption narrow in a case involving a proposed contraction of the number of teams in Major League Baseball. In a related study on the The Economics of Baseball Contraction (Nov., 2001), for the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), AAI Advisor Roger G. Noll examines whether a proposed reduction in the number of teams makes sense financially to both the owners that would fold their teams and the remaining owners who would pay for the contraction.

11th Circuit's Crist Descision Reviewed Here is a quick case review and prognosis from the principal author of aai's brief in Major League Baseball v. Crist, Professor Stephen F. Ross. He concludes that it is a modest setback for consumers and a competitive economy and suggests avenues for again attacking the aberrational Baseball Exemption.

Baseball's Privileged Antitrust Exemption In this Washington Lawyer (Oct. 2005) article, Bruce Fein calls for an end to the "indefensible judicial error perpetrated many long innings ago" in the Federal Baseball case. Fein looks at the history of the exemption, with particular focus on the damage caused to Washington, DC, baseball fans.