Not for the first time, television networks and the NFL have been accused of harming competition and inflating costs in the professional football market.
A new antitrust lawsuit claims that the NFL, CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC are driving up costs of games and hurting their distribution potential.
As it stands, the league sells game rights to TV distributors each year for a profit of roughly $6 billion, resulting in only one being game being available on broadcast television at a time. For more options, football fans have to subscribe elsewhere, like DIRECTV’s Sunday Ticket.
“In a competitive market, up to seven games would be broadcast simultaneously,” states the lawsuit. “This would represent a massive increase in consumer choice — but would give CBS and Fox direct competitors that would reduce their ratings and revenue. By keeping those games off regular television and restricting them only to DIRECTV subscribers who are willing to pay for the supracompetitively priced bundle, the scheme gives CBS and Fox an artificial duopoly over one of the most valuable commodities in all of television.”
Plaintiffs for this lawsuit include the Bounce Sporting Club in New York, the Pedal Haus Brewery in Arizona and an Oakland, Calif., native named Jonathan Frantz, who subscribes to DIRECTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket. The new suit uses the Supreme Court’s American Needle v. National Football League case as precedent, citing that NFL teams are capable of conspiring in licensing deals.
“Fox insisted on and received a commitment that Sunday Ticket be capped at one million subscribers annually,” states another part of the lawsuit. “This cap has increased over the years but, on information and belief, remains a contractual obligation.”
Past lawsuits have targeted the NFL, but this one includes some of those distributors as well: CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC. The new lawsuit also claims that DIRECTV’s Sunday Ticket costs so much (more than $350 per consumer) because of this collusion of the TV broadcasters.
Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.
Image courtesy of the NFL
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