Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in what some media outlets are billing as the most important case in the history of professional sports.

Nine years ago, the National Football League agreed to a deal with Reebok wherein Reebok would have the exclusive benefit of producing licensed NFL apparel. In 2004, American Needle, one of the former official team apparel manufacturers, sued the NFL. American Needle claimed that by brokering this exclusive deal with Reebok, the NFL had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, restricting competition between the 32 teams. American Needle has appealed the decisions of the trial and appellate courts.

Both American Needle and the NFL want this case to appear before the high court. The NFL would like the antitrust issue settled as much as the company that is suing them. With a Supreme Court ruling that the NFL is one business, not a group of 32 competing businesses, the NFL will function exactly as Major League Baseball does. MLB has been exempt from antitrust legislation since shortly after the first World War. The MLB is a monopoly where the owners have control. The players union (MLBPA) exists as a counterpart to that monopoly, accepting or rejecting the decisions that affect the players.

Drew Brees is slated to testify as a representative of the NFLPA. His recent editorial in the Washington Post spelled out a grim future in the event the NFL wins this suit. The NFL operating as one business will mean increased league leverage in player salary negotiations. American Needle’s success in its quest to define the league as a group of competing businesses means each team will be able to operate within its own framework, giving players maximum contract control. However, the union exists to protect the players. The labor concerns of the current players fall on deaf ears, because players don’t have to agree to any contracts they do not want. Additionally, the current collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and NFLPA gives the players 60% of all league revenues, including proceeds from licensed products. It boggles the mind why current players would want the manufacturing of apparel to go back to the individual teams without the larger platform of the NFL to maximize revenues from sales. It’s because they don’t – they just want to make sure they have the ultimate power over where they play and for how much.

Somehow this case has departed from what it is really about: who can produce NFL team apparel. American Needle was one of many businesses that manufactured licensed apparel, sold it, and enjoyed a profit. Now only one company gets to do that. The NFL controls the prices, the outlets, and anything else they choose. Defining the NFL as a single entity is not a precedent. The precedent was already set in 1922 with MLB. The fans need to keep their eye on the ball – what does a ruling in favor of the NFL mean to us? If the NFL is declared a single entity, will this apparel price point control stretch to ticket prices and concessions?  Stay tuned.

In tomorrow’s Washington Post, Drew Brees makes the case for American Needle in a landmark case before the Supreme Court to be heard this Wednesday.  While this may come as a surprise to many, athletes have brains and often show courage even after they remove their pads and helmet.

The New Orleans Saints Pro Bowl Quarterback serves on the Executive Committee for the NFL Players Association, and through writing this op-ed, is serving his fellow players and sports fans by supporting American Needle, a small merchandise manufacturer based in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.  This relatively small company decided to take on the NFL, and Brees has their back.

What does that have to do with sports fans, you ask?  Well, let’s start from the beginning.

After the NFL signed a league-wide contract with Reebok, this small hat maker concluded that it had been unfairly excluded from the entire hat market serving the League.  Therefore, American Needle sued both Reebok and the NFL for restricting competition and in turn violating antitrust laws.

While the SFC will cheer on the proverbial David in any David & Goliath scenario in the world of sports, this case potentially could change this country’s most popular sport in a variety of facets. Attorney Mark Greenbaum wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle article that ‘an overly expansive decision could adversely affect not just football, but all the leading professional sports leagues, potentially leading to the scrapping of free agency, protracted work stoppages and higher ticket prices’.

On the surface, all of that is hard to believe, but it’s true.  The NFL has used this tiny law suit to it’s power-hungry benefit, requesting that its victory in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago be heard in the Supreme Court.

The best analogy explaining this is summoned by Tulane University sports law professor Gabe Feldman repeated in the LA Times. “This is like scoring a touchdown and then asking the officials to review the replay.”

A ruling in their favor at the highest level will not just allow the National Football League to flick the flea that is American Needle, Inc. off  its Gorilla-sized shoulder, but it will forever more be treated as a single entity, rather than 32 separate businesses.  That ruling would trump the League’s tax-exempt status, making franchise owners exempt from collusion, exempt from any limits on lowering players’ and employees’ salaries, not to mention raising prices of sports fans’ tickets, jersees, hats, you name it!

Higher prices for tickets, merch, and the increased possibility of work stoppage?  Sounds like this case is clearly in the interest of the sports fan. According to Mike Freeman of CBS Sports, this case of American Needle v. National Football League is the ‘most significant sports legal case in history’.

On Wednesday, the playoff-bound quarterback of the New Orleans Saints will take time out of his rigorous schedule preparing for the winner of this weekend’s Wild Card game to testify before the Supreme Court (which is set to make a decision about the case this summer).

No matter what team we root for on Sundays, rest assured we here at the Sports Fans Coalition are rooting for Brees on Wednesday.

Read the letter below and click on the link to sign the petition.

Dear President Obama and Members of Congress:

We represent a broad group of industry, labor and public interest organizations that are gravely concerned about Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBC-Universal. We believe that a merger of this size and scope will have a devastating effect on the media marketplace. It will result in less competition, higher consumer costs and fewer content choices. It also will give one company unprecedented control over innovative new media that offer news, information, entertainment and cultural programming through emerging technologies.

A combined Comcast/NBCU would control a major television network and film studio, the nation’s largest cable company and its largest residential broadband provider. The merged giant would have strong incentives to discriminate against other multi-channel video providers in granting access to its wealth of programming, including all of its broadcast stations and “must-have” national and regional networks that air live or same-day sporting events, as well as the market power to enforce anticompetitive “bundling.” The proposed deal could make it even harder for diverse and independent voices to find an audience, as Comcast would have the incentive to prioritize NBC channels and programs over others. Control of NBCU programming also would give Comcast the opportunity to prioritize its own online video products over those of its competitors – or sharply reduce online video distribution altogether – pushing independent producers out of the picture.

Comcast has proposed to voluntarily agree to a handful of commitments in an attempt to avoid the imposition of more effective, and competitively essential, conditions on this merger. While these “commitments” purport to address concerns about localism and program diversity, and would extend the current (and arguably ineffectual) program access rules to broadcast and HD programming, they are mere window dressing. Moreover, they do not mitigate the competitive danger of the vastly increased vertical integration that would result from a Comcast/NBCU marriage, and they do not address the competitive issues raised by the merged company’s control over online video distribution – an increasingly important platform for television distribution. To prevent a disastrous impact on competition and consumer choice, any approval of the merger must include meaningful conditions that extend well beyond those previously imposed on less significant mergers.

The proposed deal raises the most basic antitrust and public policy issues for an administration that has declared both the importance of media diversity and an intention to be more vigilant against anticompetitive conduct and abuses of market power. We ask that you take a hard look at this merger and take the necessary measures to prevent harm to both consumers and competition.

Signed,

American Cable Association

Center for Media Justice

Common Cause

Communications Workers of America

Concerned Women for America

Consumer Federation of America

Consumers Union

Free Press

Kids First Coalition

Media Action Grassroots Network

Media Access Project

Media and Democracy Coalition

Morality in Media

National Association of Independent Networks

National Consumer League

National Organization for Women

National Telecommunications Cooperative Association

Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies

Parents Television Council

Public Knowledge

Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association

Sports Fans Coalition

U.S. PIRG

Writers Guild of America East

Writers Guild of America West

On December 3rd, Comcast announced its plans to merge with NBC Universal. The Sports Fans Coalition immediately raised questions about how the merged company will treat consumers given its history of forcing Philadelphia sports fans to buy cable to watch their local games. In Philly, Comcast owns the local sports network, cable system, broadband internet service, plus sports teams and the local arena. If the merger is approved, that raises a lot of concern for trouble in 11 TV markets, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston, Miami, Denver, Hartford and Fresno. Without penalty, Comcast currently uses local sports exclusives or the ‘terrestrial loophole’ to block its competitors from broadcasting sports games leaving many sports fans out in the cold without access to their games.

The pressure is coming to bear on the BCS to change their ways. Momentum is building from fans and sports media and it is reaching the point where it is very likely that College Bowls will be “flushed” and playoffs will be instituted.

We are at a real tipping point. It has been said that there are 3 types of
people in the World; those people who make things happen; those people who watch things happen; and those people who never knew what happened. SFC needs people who make things happen and we need you now.

Together with your help, SFC can help put a stake in the heart of the BCS. We
need you to join SFC to help us help you make this happen. We are so close
to bringing equity and fairness to college football. A success in killing
off the bowl system will empower the fan to realize many more
accomplishments in areas like blackouts of games, ticket pricing, stadium
funding, etc.

Let’s double up our efforts today to help bring real change to college
football.