NFL team owners are considering a new joint venture proposal by ESPN, FOX and Warner Bros. that would combine three of the biggest traditional competitors in the sports rights buying market into a single joint venture, according to various reports. He is said to be furious. buyer. However, given the potential for increased consolidation in the sports broadcasting field, the actions of sports broadcasters only tell half the story.
Indeed, on the surface, concerns that this new venture would reduce the NFL's bargaining power seem justified. If these companies work together to acquire the NFL rights as part of a joint venture, the number of bidders will naturally decrease and the price of the NFL could fall. Teams can jointly sell broadcast rights. Some might argue that FOX and ESPN, which is primarily owned by Walt Disney Company, are the strongest and closest competitors in the bid to broadcast NFL games. Adopting this view would make the new joint venture even worse from a competitive perspective.
But broadcasters are not the only parties to sports broadcast negotiations that have sought to bring together independent business interests. The NFL is said to be concerned about the combined interests of broadcasters, while at the same time individual NFL teams themselves have long had the option of selling rights at the league level rather than allowing competition between individual teams. In order to do so, we have combined independent business interests in match broadcasting. Sell broadcasting rights to various broadcasting entities. One could therefore argue that both sides of the NFL game rights negotiations have anticompetitively combined with their so-called rivals.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 provides limited antitrust immunity for the league when individual NFL teams jointly sell broadcast rights to television stations. Sports broadcasters themselves have no such exemption.
However, when it comes to the NFL's joint sales to cable providers and over-the-top (OTT) media networks, the Sports Broadcasting Act literally does not apply to any party. Therefore, the NFL's league-wide broadcast rights license, as well as the combined interests of broadcasters, may naturally be subject to antitrust scrutiny.
It's very likely that these two collective interests cancel each other out in NFL broadcast rights negotiations, but neither of them has much to do with the fan base, perhaps the most important component of this whole. Doesn't seem to help fate. As consumers of broadcast professional football games, the convergence of interests at both the league and broadcaster levels will inevitably lead to higher prices for games, fewer viewing options, and a shift in the variety of television broadcasts. It may be less.
Even if the NFL, ESPN, FOX and Warner Bros. find an outcome that resolves their concerns, NFL fans may still consider themselves subject to collective action by both teams and broadcasters. So perhaps it's time for someone to look at all of this integration from the perspective of fans as consumers.
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Marc Edelman (Marc@MarcEdelman.com) is a professor of law at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, director of sports ethics at the Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity, and a Fulbright Scholar.He is also the founder of edelman lawprovides legal consulting services related to the sports and gaming industry.
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