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Realities of Contemporary Television Production, Distribution & Exhibition
MODERATORKaren Ell, NBCUniversal, Senior Counsel, Production Legal
PANELISTSBernard Gugar, Senior VP and General Counsel, Harpo, Inc.
Lance McPherson, Senior VP and Senior Counsel, Viacom Media Networks, Business and Legal Affairs
Ana Salas Siegel, General Counsel, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises
American Bar Association Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries
International Legal Symposium on the
World of Music, Film, Television, and Sports
April 7‐8, 2016 University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL)
Realities of Contemporary Television Production, Distribution & Exhibition
The Television Wars (Part I) By Peter Dekom The Entertainment and Sports Lawyer Winter 2015 / Volune 31 /Issue 4 The Television Wars (Part II): There’s No Neutrality in My Net By Peter Dekom The Entertainment and Sports Lawyer Volune 32 /Issue 1 The Television Wars (Part III): Sports By Peter Dekom The Entertainment and Sports Lawyer Fall 2015 / Volune 32 /Issue 3
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The Television WarsPart III: Sports—The Final Chapter
BY PETER J. DEKOM
In the first two segments of this series, we looked at the new worldof television through the twisted eyes of the Aereo debacle andtangled viciously with FCC battles wrapping into merger mania,local municipalities muscling out cable competitors, and the ugliestof the vile, the net neutrality wars. Which brings us to what maybe a very critical, if not determining, television content segment:Sports programming may just be the ultimate decider of the futureof “television.”
THE REAL MUSCLES OF SPORTS PROGRAMMING
NBC got $4.5 million per 30second spot (sold out!) for the 2015Super Bowl. They got halftime performers to pay them for theexposure. Thank you Katy Perry! Sports! NBC Universal agreed “topay $7.75 billion for the exclusive broadcast rights to the sixOlympic Games from 2022 to 2032, highlighting with thatstaggering sum the supreme value that media companies areplacing on live event programming in a market disrupted bymodern viewing habits.”[1] A third of consumer cable dollars comefrom sports. Onethird!
“NBC’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ remains the champion of ‘C3,’ butCBS’s new ‘NFL Thursday Night’—eight weeks of NFL games thatare new to the Eye—is projected to be the secondmost fertileground for ad viewers in the 2014–2015 TV season[.]”[2] Thesports industry was stunned in early October when the NBAbasically doubled its former license fees in new deals with TimeWarner Cable (TWC) and Disney’s ESPN.
March Madness, which rolled well into April this year, pretty muchtells you that not only are sports the driver of so much television,but unlike Oscar telecast ratings (which dropped 18 percent in
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2015 from 2014), more people are watching athletic events thanever. The April 6, 2015, NCAA basketball championship gamebetween Duke and Wisconsin “delivered the event’s top overnightrating in 18 years, surging more than 30% above last year’snumber and dominating the primetime ratings race for CBS.”[3]Overall, “the 2015 NCAA Tournament coverage across CBS, TBS,TNT and truTV averaged a 7.8/16 in the overnights, up 13% fromlast year and the best in 22 years (7.9/17 in 1993 [when therewere a tiny fraction of the viable channels we have today]).”[4]What’s going on here?
Sports may be the real “decider” as to the future of just about anyform of “television.” “‘For many many consumers, the decisionwhether to become or remain a paytv subscriber indeed maylargely turn on highvalue sports programming,’ said Jeffrey Silva,a telecom and media analyst. ‘It’s gold, just huge.’”[5] Sports isimmediate, television in the now, in real time, where a recordingisn’t remotely as exciting as watching the competition live. Mostcompetitive sports consume hours of continuous programming, theeasy button for too many telecasters. Entire channels are devotedto a single sport or even a single league.
And even if the individual sports don’t pay for themselves in termsof ad sales, the ability to promote the rest of a network’sprogramming within popular sports event programming cannot beunderestimated. After all, skipping commercials and recording forlater viewing simply are not issues: 98 percent of all sports arewatched live! Bathroom and snack breaks maybe . . . but not somuch!
No sports and you might expect cable/satellite services to losecustomers faster than the Titanic took on water. Sports are theglue that holds a huge pile of customers to their angry world ofoutrageous monthly cable bills. For years, the major college andprofessional sports teams—and their leagues and conferences—entered into television licensing agreements with all kinds oftelecasters. Local teams were usually available (but not always) onbasic cable services or broadcast stations, but outofmarketgames required specific subscription from consumers who wantedthat extra. And license fees, generally renegotiated every three orfour years, generally rose at the top end of inflation numbers plusa bit.
You can see how important sports are today in AT&T’s requirementthat DirecTV lock down NFL rights as a condition to their proposedmerger, a combination that was finally approved by the FCC in lateJuly 2015. And while the NFL cannot currently step on itscontractual telecasting/streaming rights to present entire gameslive online to consumers (including deals with CBS, Fox, NBC,ESPN, and even its own network), like many leagues, it is tiptoeing
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toward webdelivered content, which may eventually include thegames themselves. The NFL has “taken to the digital field” with thekickoff of NFL Now, “an Internetvideo service offering gridironfans hundreds of hours of free content and a $1.99permonthpremium package with access to even more. But while NFL Nowwill include highlights from inprogress games, it won’t stream livebroadcasts over the Internet[.]”[6]
And make no mistake, while NBA (yeah, the league that doubledits license fees!) and NHL ratings are not remotely thiscompetitive, the fall 2014 broadcast ratings were dominated byMonday and Thursday night NFL games, taking nine out of the 10highest spots over the initial weeks of the season. What’s thatworth to advertisers and a network trying to promote its entire fallpremiere season?
Traditional telecasters have to balance the huge costs that sportsfranchises are demanding for carriage against the harsh realitythat without sports, their grip on content delivery to the Americanpublic would slip quickly away. But so far, with the exception ofbattles like the one over the Los Angeles Dodgers discussed below,the incumbents are still writing the big checks, and some (but notall) of the biggest major sport franchises are staying put. For now.The NFL won’t go for more than online “highlights” as noted above,but why are they being so limited?
With the start of the NFL regular season, television gets back itsbiggest audience. But don’t expect to see any live games online,without having to pay for cable or satellite, anytime soon.
Even as traditional television adapts to the Internet, the NFLdoesn’t feel the rush. They don’t have to: their biggest audience ison broadcast, cable and satellite TV, and they are making around$9 billion each year to license the rights to broadcast their games.That figure could reach $25 billion by 2027, predicts NFLCommissioner Roger Goodell. The league has contracts with cableand broadcasters, worth billions of dollars, that will last the nextseven years.
Still, NFL executives are trying to figure out how to grow theirdigital business. They’ve made trips to Silicon Valley where they’vemet with Google chief executive Larry Page and other industryexecutives. Some tech execs have expressed interest inpartnerships to bring games online direct to consumers, similar toMajor League Baseball’s MLB.TV [or the National Hockey League’sNHL.TV].[7]
Does the fact that even the NFL is talking to the digital alternativeproviders suggest that it knows that the web is likely the longtermwinner? Fox Sports has even figured out how to make local marketgames available over the web . . . with a huge catch: “Gridironfans must subscribe to a participating cable or telco TV provider to
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access the Fox Sports Go service; DirecTV and Dish Networkcustomers are, for now, out of luck. Moreover, because of theleague’s exclusive rights deal with Verizon Wireless the Fox Sportsservice won’t be available on mobile phones.”[8]
Not to mention a few bumps along the road that the NFL doesn’tseem to have addressed sufficiently in the eyes of too many actualand potential viewers. How do league reactions to player spousalabuse and Super Bowl deflategate impact consumer loyalty? TheNFL has already begun to detect a slow disconnect with youngerviewers that does not augur well for the longer term.
And what about other new sports leagues that have formed inresponse to the obvious increase in the value of sportsprogramming or existing teams? Are they smelling the bloodmoney in the water?
It’s pretty obvious that teams, leagues, and conferences (noticethat there are few more college conferences these days makingdeals!) have now figured out that they are necessities for cablesystems to survive. Knowing the value of sports today, their “asks”for goingforward renewals or new licenses are now multiples oftheir old license fees. Double and triple even. For DirecTV viewers,wonder why there are no Los Angeles Dodgers games even if youlive in LA? Think this is the fate for Clippers fans as well? Bothfranchises sold for recordshattering prices at or over $2 billioneach, which pretty much mandates huge chargebacks toconsumers. Here’s the trend: “American sports teams in general,since the 2012, have sold, on average, for 55% more than themost recent Forbes franchise valuation of the team.”[9]
Will this backfire, force consumers to buy these sports packages àla carte from the web, and kill the cablecasters who don’t, forgivethe expression, step up to the plate? For those cable providers whohave accepted these new license fees, to moderate the cost impacton their overstretched customers, they have dropped marginalnetworks, lessening the diversity of choices as predicted. TWC,which paid $8.35 billion for a 25year hold on Dodgers telecastingrights, is finding a lot of resistance from other carriers to payingthe associated license fee.
Responding to pressure from Rep. Brad Sherman (DCal.) and fiveother congresspeople, TWC even offered to submit to bindingarbitration, knowing that the arbitrator would have to take intoconsideration that huge payment, but it is precisely that perceivedoverpayment that the other content providers (like DirecTV) objectto. They easily rejected the arbitration offer. Sherman thensuggested that the arbitrators also be able to “take intoconsideration all relevant data regarding regional sports networksnot only in Los Angeles but across the country.”[10] This might liftDirecTV over top and into a resolution? Hmmm!
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FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, in a strongly worded letter to TimeWarner Cable CEO Rob Marcus, said that the agency “will interveneas appropriate” to resolve the dispute that has kept the Dodgersunavailable to some 70% of viewers in the Los Angeles region.
His letter on [July 29] follows calls from members of Congress forthe FCC to mediate the dispute between Time Warner Cable andother multichannel providers, including DirecTV. . . .
But Wheeler’s letter to Marcus appeared to pin the blame on TWCfor letting the dispute linger for so long.[11]
At the very tail end of the 2014 regular season, with a trickle ofgames remaining, suddenly an almost meaningless deal was madewith a local television station—KDOC—to carry those few regularseason Dodger games. There is a war going on out there, and thecombatants want to send their signals loud and clear. Are youlistening to the noise? If no one agrees to take this huge cost tothose consumers, what is going to happen? With the FCCextending the time period for the Comcast/TWC merger review,the 2015 baseball season began with the Dodgers sitting in thesame narrow/expensive TWC cable niche—which still excludedDirecTV—as when the 2014 season ended. Would conditionspermitting a merger, should that occur, require an end to thismisery? Hah! What merger?!
Sensing that FCC scrutiny would never allow TWC and Comcast tomerge, in April 2015, the companies simply called off their deal. Bylate May, another, smaller suiter stepped into the fray as CharterCommunications (which was working out a deal with Bright House)and TWC announced a merger of their operations. A TWC pressrelease stated: “The combination of Charter, Time Warner Cableand Bright House will create a leading broadband services andtechnology company serving 23.9 million customers in 41states.”[12] Not as big as the Comcast combination, but big . . .and Dodger games were clearly part of this mix.
But with all of these combinations, FCC scrutiny, and consumerresistance to rising cable rates, exactly where is this freight trainheading? Are their countervailing forces that might actually reducethe value of sport franchises? Remember the Aereo case?
National Football League games have become some of the mostpopular programming on television; last fall, 34 of the 35 mostwatched TV shows were NFL games. But the league tightly controlsits games, collecting hefty fees from broadcasters, cable andsatellite companies. If you’re a football fan who wants to watchgames livestreamed to your device, good luck finding a waywithout paying for cable or satellite.
. . . .
If Aereo prevails in the ruling [but they didn’t!], the foundation of
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the NFL’s television business could crumble. The league hasalready signed billions of dollars worth of contracts withbroadcasters and cable companies for the rights to air its gamesfor the next seven years. But a thriving Aereo could help fansbypass the broadcasters, devaluing their expensive contracts withthe NFL.
If Aereo loses [Oh boy, did it! It wound up selling customer lists!],the NFL will be able to continue charging cable and broadcastcompanies billions of dollars for exclusive rights, and the optionsfor consumers who love watching football will remain largely thesame.[13]
And that’s just the NFL, a scandalplagued league that still remainsthe most popular sport on American television. With Aereo’s loss,it’s still as nasty as ever for consumers out there. They are shellingout more and more to get sports.
Stability and predictability in the U.S. major league sports industryis anything but static or stable. In early September 2014, FCCChair Tom Wheeler announced plans to reconsider the 1975 FCCapproved rights of professional sports teams to require localtelecasting blackouts when the physical events were not sold out—he believed these blackout rules were obsolete. After all, the era ofstadia with 40 percent of the seats filled is long past. When selloutsdo not occur, the seat capacity is usually substantially filledanyway. Local businesses had taken to buying out small numbersof remaining seats to prevent the blackout, but today, that rule issimply not serving the general public while only creating a veryminor benefit to the local teams. As September 2014 came to aclose, the FCC formerly killed the blackout rules. It seems a lotthat what once was sacred in professional sports . . . just isn’tanymore.
But wait . . . one more fly in the ointment (pot of honey?) that,this time at least, might augur in favor of consumers and againstunilateral leaguemandated pricing structures for sports consumersin search of better television economics. It seems that thesetelevision pricing structures are themselves under an entirely newattack by angry fans who have had enough with high costs inbuying big “packages” of unwanted sporting events just to seespecific outofmarket teams play.
Some fans were so angry that they took their case (a class action—Garber v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball[14]) to a NewYork federal district court. The dispute involves MLB and NHL fanswho contend that they are “forced to pay high outofmarketpackage fees to watch their favored teams and that leagues’ teamsare an ‘illegal cartel’ that make ‘agreements to eliminatecompetition in the distribution of games over the Internet andtelevision.’”[15] The lawsuit looks at “how clubs contract with
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regional sports networks (RSNs), who then provide telecasts to theleague free of charge for outofmarket packages with inmarketonline territorial restrictions.”[16]
Fox Sports executive Robert Hacker restates the issues with a lotmore clarity:
The central allegations in Garber are as follows: With the exceptionof nationally televised games, a multichannel video programmingdistributor (MVPD) subscriber gets access to their local RSN whichonly televises local “inmarket” games. For a consumer to obtain“outofmarket” games, they must purchase a league package(such as NHL Center Ice and MLB Extra Innings) that includes alloutofmarket games. The leagues (NHL, MLB) control those rightsand license them directly to the MVPDs. The agreements betweenthe RSNs and the teams include the same inmarket/outofmarketrestrictions, as do the agreements between the RSNs and theMVPDs. Plaintiffs allege this is anticompetitive and constitutes anantitrust violation.[17]
The leagues’ response? Antitrust exemption they cried. Huh?
For most sports leagues to function, everyone had assumed thatthey needed strict rules to control not only the participating teamsbut also the players themselves. But that degree of leaguedesiredmarket control—to assure that the teams within a league wereathletically balanced (think draft picks, for example, and bans onsimply buying better players without restriction) to keep the sportinteresting—could easily have been viewed as violative of antitrustlaws. Courts sympathized with the problem and granted thedesired antitrust exemption, and the notion of that exemption hasbeen a basic tenet of American sports, especially baseball, for avery, very long time.
The antitrust exemption dates back to a 1922 Supreme Courtruling, Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League ofProfessional Baseball Clubs, which dealt with a former competitorto the American and National Leagues.[18] The Court held thatbaseball was “purely state affairs” and not interstate commerce,even if players traveled, which was “a mere incident, not theessential thing.”[19] The Supreme Court had more opportunities toaddress the antitrust exemption in its 1953 decision in Toolson v.New York Yankees, Inc.[20] and 1972 decision in Flood v. Kuhn,[21] which dealt with the restriction on player movement andcompensation. “Since then, there’s been debate about the scope ofthe exemption—whether it covers labor matters or more—andfaced with a challenge to its television territory rights system [inthe Garber case], MLB invoked the antitrust exemption to bar theplaintiffs’ claims.”[22] Surely, thought the leagues involved inGarber, we are not going to be forced to change a damned thing.
Okay, there had been a little erosion in the courts, but nothing to
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worry about or so the owners thought. A 2010 Supreme Courtdecision, American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League,[23]took a whack at that sports industry’s antitrustexempt status,striking down an NFL attempt to centralize and control commercialvendor licensing across the 32team league. But American Needlewas not about viewing the games themselves, so most proleagueexecs didn’t lose a whole lot of sleep about their “exemption.”
Folks have been taking shots at that exemption ever since,however, and now the sports industry is facing some seriousassaults. But that Garber case, well, it was the beginning of thebiggest headache for prosports leagues. On August 8, 2014,major leagues were stunned by a preliminary ruling in the Garberlitigation: District Judge Shira Scheindlin (Judge Judy’shusband!) rejected summary judgment motions brought by theMLB, NHL, Comcast, and DirecTV based on the historical exemptioncase. “And in the process, the judge decided that MLB’s nearlycenturyold antitrust exemption doesn’t apply ‘to a subject that isnot central to the business of baseball, and that Congress did notintend to exempt—namely, baseball’s contracts for televisionbroadcasting rights.’”[24] Uh oh! Think about the broaderramifications of that statement.
Relying on the antitrust argument that had prevailed almost acentury earlier, major leagues have argued that controlling andequalizing revenues across teams is the only way to maximizecompetitive balance, preventing one team from accumulating thepower to buy more “better players” than the rest. The thought oflosing that antitrust exemption is and was terrifying to the bigeconomic incumbents. Still, the trial roamed down that dangerouspath.
In early 2015, in a “short” order denying the MLB’s petition for awrit of mandamus, “an appellate panel rejected the MLB’sargument that it must intervene because a New York federal judgeerroneously refused to apply the wellsettled baseball antitrustexemption.”[25] On May 16, 2015, Judge Scheindlin certified thecase to continue as a class action but limited the plaintiffs toinjunctive relief (not money damages).
The Garber case will now move forward towards a trial to be heldat a yettobedetermined date (likely sometime in 2016 or 2017).The legality of MLB’s television practices will be judged under thesocalled “rule of reason,” a balancing test in which the court willdetermine whether MLB’s restrictions are, on balance, pro or anticompetitive, and thus legal or illegal. While the plaintiffs will arguethat the policies are clearly anticompetitive . . . MLB has severalcredible arguments it can assert in defense of the existing rules.Ultimately, then, it is still too early to predict who will prevail attrial.”[26]
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I guess we can see this battle wending its way back up the federalappellate structure for years to come, but the ultimate decisioncould reconfigure the economics of sports telecasting (digital andtraditional) forever.
Seems that Garber (just based on those preliminary rulings) hasbeen scaring folks and inspiring both litigation and even somesettlements. DirecTV settled with consumers in a class action overoutofmarket NHL games where consumers only wanted to followone team.[27] Now it’s the NFL deal with DirecTV that is drawingparticular interest from consumers over its Sunday Ticket profootball package.[28] Same issues. Full package vs. single outofmarket teams.
Even owners of sports bars and other commercial establishmentsfind the exclusive relationship between the NFL and DirecTVabhorrent.[29] The $12 billion class action complaint alleges:
DirecTV’s arrangement with the NFL allows the Defendants torestrict the output of, and raise the prices for, the live broadcast ofNFL Sunday afternoon out of market games. . . . Of the 4 majorprofessional sports in this country—baseball, basketball, hockey,and football—the only one with an exclusive out of marketbroadcasting arrangement is the NFL/DirecTV Sunday Ticket. MajorLeague Baseball (“MLB”), the National Basketball Association(“NBA”), and the National Hockey League (“NHL”) all distribute liveout of market games through multiple MVPDs, including, forexample, DirecTV, Dish Network, Comcast, Cox Cable and TimeWarner. As a result, DirecTV does not charge nearly as much foraccess to MLB Extra Innings, NBA League Pass, and NHL CenterIce, which provide access to more games per week over a longerseason than the NFL.
Have the floodgates opened?
Even municipalities are swinging at the sports antitrust exemptionpiñata. There is one more action before the federal Ninth Circuitwhere the City of San Jose is attempting to lure baseball’s OaklandAthletics a bit farther south, but MLB stands firmly in the way.[30]“‘The city of San Jose steps up to the plate to challenge thebaseball industry’s 92yearold exemption from the antitrust laws,[Ninth] Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski began. ‘It joins a long line oflitigants that have sought to overturn one of federal law’s mostenduring anomalies.’”[31] It’s a longshot, but longshots havedefined our appellate decisions since this nation began.
Even as trends are pushing back against the seeming monolithic“bigness” and domination of professional sports, there are newcombinations that are moving in the opposite direction. With thecost and sophistication of digital telecasting rising, the NHL seemsto have thrown in the towel on keeping up with the digital“Joneses.”
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The National Hockey League and Major League Baseball AdvancedMedia are now teammates, announcing a “groundbreaking” digitalmedia rights partnership between the two organizations. The sixyear deal will look to launch a fully integrated global hub of digitalcontent that includes video, live game streaming, social media,fantasy, apps, along with statistical and analytical content. Inaddition it hands MLBAM the rights to distribute live outofmarketgames, including through the NHL GameCenter LIVE and NHLCenter Ice subscription services. Through the agreement, MLBAMwill now take over NHL.com, including the League’s seven nativelanguage sites, Club websites and operate NHL apps. On the TVfront, MLB Network will now offer studio space and productionresources for the NHL Network for distribution in the United Statesand certain international markets. MLBAM expects to fully launchits NHL presence in January 2016.[32]
Any antitrust ramifications? Hmmmm.
But as much as companies, courts, and regulators think they arecontrolling this new digital content universe, it really is consumerbehavior that sets the pace . . . and if consumers don’t like aruling, it seems that they simply will ignore it.
CONCLUSION OR ONLY THE BEGINNING?
In the end, everything in the morass of competing interests andoverwhelming complexity is completely linked to every other part.Go lawyers!
Where does this all end? It doesn’t! Where will the little guys go toreach an audience? Everywhere. What will television look like infive years? Not remotely what it looks like now. And exactly howmuch will consumers bear as the biggest baddest boyz turn themupside down to shake every nickel and dime they can? It seemsthey know that consumers are stuck on content; the deliveryplatform may change, but the addiction to “connectivity” continuesto grow. Especially sports. The priority of the “stuff” thatconsumers cannot live without has changed radically and augurswell for those bad boyz. According to a Pew study released onFebruary 27, 2014:
· 53% of internet users say the internet would be, at minimum,“very hard” to give up, compared with 38% in 2006. That amountsto 46% of all adults who now say the internet would be very hardto give up.
· 49% of cell phone owners say the same thing about their cell,up from to 43% in 2006. That amounts to 44% of all adults whonow say cell phones would be very hard to give up.
· Overall, 35% of all adults say their television would be veryhard to give up, a share that has dipped from 44% who said that in2006.
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· 28% of landline telephone owners say their phone would bevery hard to give up, a major drop from 2006 when 48% oflandline owners said it would be very hard to give up their wiredphone. That amounts to 17% of all adults who now say theirlandline phones would be very hard to give up.[33]
Read dem tea leaves! Oops, gotta go. My home NHL team, the LosAngeles Kings, are on television right now . . . and I don’t want tomiss the game. Oh, but one more little story as they warm up:
I’d like to end this seemingly endless series of articles with thestory of one New Mexico cable TV consumer who may just be themost angry of the lot: “Unanticipated Comcast fees made oneAlbuquerque woman so angry she pulled a gun on a worker for thecable company . . . . Gloria BacaLucero, 48, was charged withaggravated assault with a deadly weapon [on July 28, 2104] andbooked into jail. She was released later that day.”[34] Is there acableindustry equivalent to “stand your ground” or “justifiablehomicide”? Will our addiction to sports make the pain feel anybetter?
BIO: Peter J. Dekom practices law in Los Angeles in the fields ofentertainment, Internet, and telecommunications law. His clientsinclude Hollywood notables, as well as corporations. An author,management/marketing consultant, and entrepreneur, he may bereached at [email protected].
ENDNOTES
[1]. Richard Sandomir, NBC Extends Olympic Deal into Unknown,N.Y. Times, May 7, 2014,http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/sports/olympics/nbcextendsolympictvdealthrough2032.html.
[2]. Brian Steinberg, Madison Avenue Bets Big on Football, “BigBang” to Lead New TV Season, Variety (July 8, 2014),http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/madisonavenuebetsbigonfootballbigbangtoleadnewtvseason1201259260/.
[3]. Rick Kissell, College Basketball Title Game Ratings on CBSSoar to 18Year High: 28.3 Million Viewers, Variety (Apr. 7, 2015),http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/collegebasketballratingssoarto18yearhighforchampionshiponcbs1201467463/.
[4]. Id.
[5]. Cecilia Kang, AT&T, DirecTV Merger Could Make It Harder toCut the Cord, Wash. Post, June 11, 2014,https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theswitch/wp/2014/06/11/attdirectvmergercouldmakeithardertocutthecord/.
[6]. Todd Spangler, InternetVideo Service on Apple TV, Xbox,Roku and Other Devices, Variety (Aug. 7, 2014),
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http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/nfllaunchesnflnowinternetvideoserviceonappletvxboxrokuandotherdevices1201277218/.
[7]. Cecilia Kang, Want to Watch Football Online without Cable orSatellite? You’ll Have to Wait Longer, Wash. Post, Aug. 29, 2014,http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/technology/wp/2014/08/29/wanttowatchfootballonlinewithoutcableorsatelliteyoullhavetowaitlonger/.
[8]. Todd Spangler, Fox to Stream 101 NFL Games Online ThisSeason, but Only to Some PayTV Subs, Variety (Sept. 3, 2014),http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/foxtostream101nflgamesonwebthisseasonbutonlytosomepaytvsubs1201297126/.
[9]. Dan Primack & Daniel Roberts, American Sports Teams: AllWorth More Than You Think, Fortune (June 5, 2014),http://fortune.com/2014/06/05/americansportsteamsallworthmorethanyouthink/.
[10]. Ted Johnson, Congressman Brad Sherman Outlines HowDodgers Arbitration Would Work, Variety (Aug. 4, 2014),http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/bradshermanoutlineshowdodgersarbitrationwouldwork1201275570/.
[11]. Ted Johnson, FCC Chairman Threatens to Intervene toResolve Dodgers TV Dispute, Variety (July 29, 2014),http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/fccchairmanthreatenstointervenetoresolvedodgerstvdispute1201271257/.
[12]. Press Release, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communicationsto Merge with Time Warner Cable and Acquire Bright HouseNetworks (May 26, 2015), http://ir.timewarnercable.com/investorrelations/investornews/financialreleasedetails/2015/CharterCommunicationstoMergewithTimeWarnerCableandAcquireBrightHouseNetworks/default.aspx.
[13]. Cecilia Kang, How the Supreme Court’s Ruling on AereoCould Change How We Watch Football, Wash. Post, June 17, 2014,http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/howthesupremecourtsrulingonaereocouldchangehowwewatchfootball/2014/06/17/b314ca20ea9111e393d2edd4be1f5d9e_story.html.
[14]. No. 1:12cv03704 (S.D.N.Y. May 9, 2012).
[15]. Eriq Gardner, Judge Rules MLB’s Antitrust Exemption Doesn’tApply to Televisions Broadcast Rights, Hollywood Rep. (Aug. 9,2014), http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thresq/judgerulesmlbsantitrustexemption724368.
[16]. Id.
[17]. Peter Dekom, A League of Their Own, Unshred Am.
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(Sept. 19, 2014), http://unshred.blogspot.com/2014/09/aleagueoftheirown.html.
[18]. 259 U.S. 200 (1922).
[19]. Id. at 208–09.
[20]. 346 U.S. 356 (1953).
[21]. 407 U.S. 258 (1972).
[22]. Gardner, supra note 15.
[23]. 130 S. Ct. 2201 (2010).
[24]. Gardner, supra note 15.
[25]. Aaron Vehling, MLB Strikes Out in Bid for 2nd Circ. to HearAntitrust Row, Law360 (Feb. 2, 2015),http://www.law360.com/articles/617445/mlbstrikesoutinbidfor2ndcirctohearantitrustrow.
[26]. Nathanial Grow, The Week That Was in MLB AntitrustLitigation, FanGraphs (May 19, 2015),http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/theweekthatwasinmlbantitrustlitigation/.
[27]. Laumann v. Nat’l Hockey League, No. 1:12cv01817(S.D.N.Y. Mar. 12, 2012).
[28]. See Abrahamian v. Nat’l Football League, Inc., No. 2:15cv04606 (C.D. Cal. June 17, 2015).
[29]. See Ninth Inning Inc. v. Nat’l Football League, Inc., No. 2:15cv05261 (C.D. Cal. July 13, 2015).
[30]. City of San Jose v. Office of the Comm’r of Baseball, No.5:13cv02787 (9th Cir. June 18, 2013).
[31]. Robert Barnes, Appeal to Reverse Baseball’s Antitrust Rule Isa Desperate Swing for the Fences, Wash. Post, Feb. 8, 2015,http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/appealtoreversebaseballsantitrustruleisadesperateswingforthefences/2015/02/08/6a57d5a8af9d11e4886bc22184f27c35_story.html.
[32]. The NHL Adds MLBAM to Its TopLine; Fox Sports Punches Upthe Weekdays; Networks Line Up PGA Championship Plans,Cynopsis Media (Aug. 5, 2015), http://cynopsis.com/080515nhladdsmlbamtoplinefoxsportspunchesweekdaysnetworkslinepgachampionshipplans/.
[33]. Pew Research Ctr., The Web at 25 in the U.S. 6 (2014),http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/02/PIP_25thanniversaryoftheWeb_0227141.pdf.
[34]. Nicole Perez, Comcast Customer Jailed in Gun Case,Albuquerque J., July 30, 2014,http://www.abqjournal.com/437537/news/comcastcustomer
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