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JANUARY 13, 2012 5:07 AM
Can the FCC Prevent Leagues from BlackingOut Games?
On January 12, 2012, the FCC announcedthat it was seeking
comment on a petition filed arguing that the FCC should
eliminate its Sports Blackout Rules.
In the petition, the petitioners, which include the Sports Fan
Coalition, Inc., Public Knowledge, Media Access Project,
National Consumers League, and League of Fans, provide several
reasons as to why the Sports Blackout Rules should be
overturned. The petitioners argue that blacking out games in a
tough economy faced with high unemployment amounts to
anti-fan, anti-consumer behavior by professional sports leagues.
The petitioners also pointed to the public subsidies
leagues receive in the form of taxpayer-funded stadiums; federal
antitrust exemptions. . . [and] tax-exempt status for
professional sports leagues as a reason why sports fans should
not be prevented from watching a game due to a blackout.
Finally, the petitioners assert that the Sports Blackout Laws
are outdated, as they were not created in a time when modern
technology existed, but rather, in the birth of the cable
area.
Upon learning that the FCC will consider eliminating the Sports
Blackout Rules, many fans likely breathed a collective
sigh of relief. There is no doubt, that when leagues blackout
games in geographic areas for one reason or another, it is
annoying. However, the FCCs elimination of its Sports Blackout
Rules is not a be-all-end-all solution to leagues blacking
out games.
When news broke yesterday about the petition to the FCC seeking
elimination of the Sports Blackout Rules, the general
media described the situation in a way which made it appear that
it is the FCCs Sports Blackout Rules which require
games which are not sold out to be blacked out. However, the
FCCs Sports Blackout Rules nowhere specify that a gamemust be
blacked out on cable television if it is not sold out.
Rather,the Sports Blackout Rules prevent cable and satellite
stations (not local broadcast stations) from carrying a live
television broadcast in a particular geographic region, at the
request of the holder of the broadcast rights, if the event is
not available live on a television broadcast station in the
specified geographic region.
Typically, the holder of broadcast rights is the league, because
the leagues generally hold the copyright to a respective
game. As such, each league determines the rules for which of its
games will be blacked out on local television broadcast
stations. The leagues have adopted significantly different
models of blackout policies.
The NHL and MLB share a similar policy, which in effect gives
local broadcasters broadcasting priority, unless a national
broadcaster has exclusive rights to the game. As for the NBA, if
a game is aired on NBATV, it will be blacked out from
local broadcasting stations within a 35-mile radius of the home
teams market. The NFLs blackout rule is the only major
league rule which centers around the stadium attendance of a
given game. In general terms, the NFLs policy specifies
that local broadcasters within 75 miles of a given team may only
broadcast a game if it is an away game or if the game was
sold out 72 hours prior to kickoff.
The benefit of elimination of the FCCs Sports Blackout Rules, is
that doing so will allow cable and satellite television
providers to broadcast games when their local television
broadcast counterparts are barred from doing so because of
various league blackout policies. The NFL has argued against
overturning the FCCs Sports Blackout Rules by asserting
that this would essentially provide cable providers with an
unfair competitive advantage over local television
broadcasters.
While elimination of the FCCs Sports Blackout Rules will likely
give sports fans more access to watch previously blacked
out games, it is not a perfect solution to the problem of
leagues blacking out games for various reasons. As noted above,
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technically, all that the elimination of the FCCs Sports
Blackout Rules would do, is allow cable and satellite broadcast
providers the opportunity to broadcast games which are blacked
out from local stations. However, it is likely that if the
FCCs Sports Blackout Rules are eliminated, that leagues will
work to institute their own set of the rules, through
contracting with cable and satellite broadcast providers. This
in turn would remove the competitive advantage spoken of
by the NFL, while also recreating the problem of sports
blackouts.
Thus, it will likely be many years before the world sees a
Sunday afternoon when there isnt a single NFL game blacked out
from a market due to low game attendance.
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3 responses to Can the FCC Prevent Leagues fromBlacking Out
Games?
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