Could antitrust laws breakup D* exclusive NFL ST rights?

[ckhalil18]

Apparently, a Juris Doctor Candidate at Indiana University's law school believes so and has written a 24-page pdf article about it in the federal communications law journal. Note that it's not as long as you think and that you can skip to page 15 to get to the details. The rest of the stuff in the first 14 pages just summarizes the NFL's broadcasting history.

http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs...07_Bublick.pdf

[JohnL]

I very much doubt any anti trust judgement would do anything to DirecTV's exclusive rights to the NFL O(out)O(f)M(arket) package. DirecTV paid Billions for the exclusive rights. If there was a future judgement against the NFL, there would be years of appeals. Its more likely any current contract between DirecTV and the NFL would expire before the legal process would come to any resolution. The NFL is the most powerful corporation in the United States with their hands in Federal government and local government of all of their independent franchises.

John

[juan]

The idea of a satellite exclusive contracts a huge possible subscriber fan base that can't get a los. I think the NFL should consider those fans needs too

[mikew]

The idea of a satellite exclusive contracts a huge possible subscriber fan base that can't get a los. I think the NFL should consider those fans needs too

They did. They allowed the package to be purchased online with a PS3.

[Iceberg]

Could antitrust laws breakup D* exclusive NFL ST rights?

nope
Directv had the highest bid and I guess other companies are crying. The NFL set the rules on how the bidding worked.

[juan]

nope
Directv had the highest bid and I guess other companies are crying. The NFL set the rules on how the bidding worked.

true..but that doesn;t mean they cant be charged with antitrust violations..try charging someone 200% interes and see how far u get

[adkinsjm]

I'm glad a law student has the smarts to see what others have missed. [/sarcasm]

[robjlevin]

I can't believe this keeps coming up. Sunday Ticket does not affect any in market team at all. No local fan has ever been hurt by the lack of Sunday Ticket.

Nobody involved in this wants Sunday Ticket set up any other way. DTV is happy with the exclusive, the NFL is happy with the money and the networks are happy to have limited distribution so the affiliates are happy. Comcast isn't happy? Tough! They should have bid higher when they had the chance.

[robjlevin]

Wow...I love this paragraph:

Furthermore, DirecTV is not a high-quality product. Besides
DirecTV’s well-known inability to transmit signals during bad weather,
the company has also recently received a “D+” grade from the Better
Business Bureau. A large portion of DirecTV users subscribe merely
because they are the only provider of Sunday Ticket; this disincentivizes
DirecTV from making any adjustments to its quality since it knows it will
always have a guaranteed subscriber base. By making Sunday Ticket
available to all carriers, each carrier would have to raise its quality of
product and service since each Sunday Ticket consumer would have a
greater choice, as opposed to being forced to cope with DirecTV’s
deficiencies.

This guy obviously has never tried DTV. Those statements may be been true 6 or 7 years ago, but I would have to argue that they are not true anymore.

[bobvick]

He obviously does not know very much about DBS. Since the get go, down time due to rain fade has been very minimal. This is going back 17 years ago. Doesn't sound like he did a lot of research. Most multichannel video providers do not have an excellent BBB rating. For instance Comcast has a C rating, which is certanly not the best. Further more, DirecTV is not even a BBB member, so evidently they do not put very much stock in the agency's rating.