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Senators Threaten To Rescind NFL Antitrust Exemption
An anonymous reader writes In response to the FCC's discontinuation of rules that support the NFL's blackout policies, the NFL issued a statement indicating that it would nevertheless continue to enforce its blackout policies through its private contract negotiations with local networks. On Wednesday, however, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) announced a bill that would rescind the antitrust exemption that enables the NFL to demand blackouts in the first place and formally warned the NFL to abandon blackouts altogether. The antitrust exemption gives sports leagues "legal permission to conduct television-broadcast negotiations in a way that otherwise would have been price collusion" and further allowed the formation of the NFL from two separate leagues. Meanwhile, the NFL enjoys a specialized tax status and direct monetary support from taxpayers to build arenas and stadiums.
The NFL obviously paid off some group of politicians to achieve their non-profit status. Now a new set of politicians have their hand out for another sweaty envelope filled with cash.
This is obviously a payback to Comcast...
The point of having the blackouts to begin with is AGREED upon by the very cities that McCain is claiming to "protect". It brings foot traffic into the cities and increases sales to nearby restaurants and bars and let's not even go into ensuring that the stadium (which shares profits with the towns) is as near capacity as possible.
Now, if we want to completely privatize the stadiums I'm all for letting the free market do its thang. But, as McCain oddly points out, these are NOT private entities but basically defacto public partnerships.
The NFL also gets nonprofit status on top of this. Could we do more to support them?
I dunno. Let's rename them to the Israeli Football League and see what happens.
You charge too much for tickets/parking/hot dogs/beer, people don't go see your games. Threatening to not allow fans who won't bend over and lube up see the game is IMHO seriously bad business practice. Want to entice fans to games? Don't charge $500 per game for a family to go.
// prefer watching it on TV
/// except for the damned commercials
//// then again, when I went to the game they had "commercial timeouts".
/ haven't been to a game in 15 years
Don't confuse "nonprofit" with "charity". While virtually all charities are nonprofits, not all nonprofits are charities.
The NFL being nonprofit is simply a reflection of how the league is organized and equity and earnings are allocated. In this case, most of the equity in the NFL is held by individual teams and the teams' billionaire owners, and all the earnings are targeted to those same teams. The league acts as just a vehicle for the teams to coordinate functions like marketing, scheduling, and league matters. So when the league gets $10 billion in TV contracts, all the profit is distributed to the teams, which then pay taxes on it. Being structured as a nonprofit, the NFL league has trustees and beneficiaries. It could reincorporate as a for-profit, in which case it would have owners and shareholders. In that case, each team owner could be granted one share. If that were to happen, Paul Allen instead of receiving one tax bill for $100 million for the Seahawks, would get two tax bills for $70 million (for the Seahawks) and $30 million (for the NFL share). From the taxman's point of view, it's pretty much the same.
There's nothing sneaky about the NFL being a nonprofit. It's just reflects how the league was originally set up.
The same could be said about pretty much everything. The things you like are incredibly boring and stupid to a lot of people.
Yes, but I'm sure that no one spends huge amounts of their tax dollars supporting his boring recreational activities...
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Football is *REALLY* *REALLY* stupid. I can't get my head around the overwhelming exuberance that people feel over this brief period of watching people chase a ball around a field.
Tell me, is it more or less stupid than watching a bunch of people dress up in spandex and pretend to fly a spaceship?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The same could be said about pretty much everything. The things you like are incredibly boring and stupid to a lot of people.
Yes, but I'm sure that no one spends huge amounts of their tax dollars supporting his boring recreational activities...
National parks, PBS, National Endowment for the Arts, etc. There are plenty of was the government funds recreational activities.
According to Grantmakers in the Arts, public funding in the arts comes to about $1.14 billion per year. With the NFL receiving $146 million per year, the NFL is still getting a sizeable amount of money in comparison. But with about 1 in 3 Americans watching at least some football each year, football probably entertains at least as many people as the entire NEA funding does, so perhaps it is money well spent.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke