Please help me to become a smarter investor. Do you have anything valuable to add here? How do you figure out what games are fixed and to lay off them? Please start a thread every week and let us know. 
Why do you think fading the forum works so well? Don't think of it as a bad thing. Certain sports may just want more parity, or feel good stories. Its not always about the money.
Why do you think fading the forum works so well? Don't think of it as a bad thing. Certain sports may just want more parity, or feel good stories. Its not always about the money.
Professional football is a battle; fought on common ground and with shared rules, but like life, only the fittest will survive.
That is the perception. The reality, as seen in two recent court cases involving the NFL, is the complete opposite.
While
the NFL has surpassed Major League Baseball in television ratings to
become America’s favorite pastime, there is still one perk the MLB has
the NFL desires – its antitrust status.
Baseball was granted its
broad antitrust status in 1922 when the Supreme Court ruled in
baseball’s favor in the case Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc v.
National Baseball Clubs. The short-lived Federal League (1914-15) sued
the loosely connected National and America Leagues over the inability to
sign away their opposition’s players. The Federal League’s complaint
was based on a perceived antitrust violation. The Supreme Court shot
down the Federal League’s argument, ruling that though teams crossed
state lines to play games, it was “not the essential thing” as the games
themselves were local events (this prior to national radio and
television broadcasts).
The Supreme Court’s ruling signaled not
just the final destruction of the Federal League, but the dawn of
baseball’s antitrust status.
That status was challenged twice, in 1953 and again in 1972, but has always held its ground. In the 1972 case, when Curt Flood sued baseball to become a free agent, the Supreme Court ruled that it would be up to Congress to revoke MLB’s antitrust exemption. Until the recent steroid scandal that reached to the level of congressional hearings, baseball has had little to worry about in this regard. The NFL already possesses one huge antitrust exemption courtesy of President Kennedy which allows the NFL to package its games for sale to the television networks (which brings the league upwards of $6 billion a season today). |
As the NFL
won in the lower courts, American Needle appealed the decision all the
way to the Supreme Court in early 2010. Remarkably, the NFL backed that
appeal, thinking it was a loophole to take advantage of in order to get
its coveted antitrust exemption.
The Court was skeptical of the league’s stance. Justice Antonin Scalia replied to Levy, "Well, the stated purpose is to promote the game, [but] the purpose is to make money. I don't think that they care whether the sale of the helmet or the T-shirt promotes the game. They sell it to make money from the sale."
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