If you didn't hear on SportsCenter or CNN, today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the NFL consists on 32 seperate teams and is not one single entity. This stemming from a lawsuit against the NFL by a former hat company which was dropped by the NFL a few years back.
I don't have all the specific details on the lawsuit itself but the ruling definately changes a lot of things concerning sports as a whole. Only baseball has anti-trust exemptions. This means that the NFL, NBA, NHL, NASCAR, etc. can not control the respective teams in their league. If all 32 NFL teams want to work as a whole and only produce Reebok hats, they can. But say the Cowboys or Steelers (probably the 2 most popular NFL teams) want to sell Steeler or Cowboy hats made by Nike or some other company, then they are allowed by law to do this. It will be interesting to see what this leads to in the future but needless to say, today is a huge loss for everyone major sport in this country (except for baseball of course)
Here is the link to the ESPN story
Here is the official ruling for the Supreme Court
1 comment:
Well you have a typo in this post and it is not a major loss for sports leagues. This is a victory for free enterprise in this country. To allow the NFL to make all licensing decisions for individual teams leaves out the opportunity for small business to benefit. This also benefits the fans. The cost of a hat went up $10 when Reebok was awarded the exclusive license.
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