The NFL has an antitrust exemption that allows it to collectively negotiate TV rights. The NFL uses this exemption to effectively create a monopoly for professional football.
How does the NFL use it's antitrust exemption to create a monopoly?
Simple, viewership of professional football games is extraordinarily popular and lucrative. Advertisers pay premiums to place commercials during NFL games and all of the networks crave the broadcast rights that the NFL controls. The NFL has done an extraordinary job of both making broadcasters fight for those broadcast right but also allocating rights to everybody who broadcasts. The implied threat of denying those rights keeps everyone out there from even considering the option of supporting a competitive league.
If ABC or CBS or Amazon or ESPN were to ever consider supporting another professional football league the NFL's reaction would be swift (and monopolistic). They would punish that network by restricting access to broadcasting NFL games.
The NFL does not want it's fan base to understand what the impact on the market for professional football would be if it were to lose it's antitrust exemption.
The Brown BLog intend to try to explain this in the coming months. In a nutshell, if the NFL were to lose it's antitrust exemption the long term impact would be that the free market would rule. That would be great for consumers, but really bad for most NFL teams, except the Dallas Cowboys and a few others. But even that would be good for consumers.
Stay tuned.
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