A League of Their Own: NFL Wants to Run Up Score On Its Antitrust Exemption
Usually winners in lawsuits count up their take and go home. They don’t ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take another look.
So the National Football League received plenty of attention when it asked the high court to review an antitrust decision that gave it the exclusive right to license sales of caps, T-shirts and other memorabilia bearing league and team insignias to a single supplier—rather than open the deal to more vendors.
But the justices accepted the case and could forever alter the way professional sports leagues do business. Arguments in American Needle Inc. v. NFL are scheduled for Jan. 13.
The Supreme Court took the case because “it’s much more than just caps and shirts,” says Indiana University-Indianapolis law school dean Gary R. Roberts, editor of a widely used casebook on sports law.
Continue reading “A League of Their Own” at this link in the January ABA Journal.
