Bloomberg on watching your team out of market.
"--------Each league is made up of competing businesses that, under normal circumstances, would be barred from setting prices together. But the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act established an antitrust exemption that let the major sports leagues negotiate media deals on behalf of their members, rather than having each team strike its own contracts. It came with a condition: They could only pool broadcast rights for "sponsored telecasting" — programs supported by advertisers and shown for free.
"Congress believed that joint television agreements would help make games more widely available to the public," Representative Scott Fitzgerald, the Wisconsin Republican in charge of antitrust issues in the House, said at the June hearing. "Sixty-five years later, it's fair for this body to ask whether the professional sports leagues have kept up their end of the bargain. In my opinion, they have not, and sports fans are paying the price." ---------
"--------Each league is made up of competing businesses that, under normal circumstances, would be barred from setting prices together. But the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act established an antitrust exemption that let the major sports leagues negotiate media deals on behalf of their members, rather than having each team strike its own contracts. It came with a condition: They could only pool broadcast rights for "sponsored telecasting" — programs supported by advertisers and shown for free.
"Congress believed that joint television agreements would help make games more widely available to the public," Representative Scott Fitzgerald, the Wisconsin Republican in charge of antitrust issues in the House, said at the June hearing. "Sixty-five years later, it's fair for this body to ask whether the professional sports leagues have kept up their end of the bargain. In my opinion, they have not, and sports fans are paying the price." ---------