I meant to post this a long time ago, but I have been so busy as of late, that I could not find the time to read through Gabe Feldman‘s new piece, The Puzzling Persistence of the Single Entity Argument for Sports Leagues: American Needle and the Supreme Court’s Opportunity to Reject a Flawed Defense. I have finally read through it, and the Director of the Tulane Sports Law Program and future panelist at the 2010 UF Sports Law Symposium, did a fantastic job in advance of the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling on American Needle v. National Football League. Will the SCOTUS decide that the NFL is a single entity when it comes to the licensing of its intellectual property and thus make the NFL exempt from scrutiny under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, or will the Court reverse the decision of the Seventh Circuit, which upheld the NFL’s single entity status?
Gabe Feldman fears that granting the NFL single entity status will led to the league acting in an anti-competitive manner. He believes that the Seventh Circuit’s decision should be overturned in this case and that no professional sports league should ever be labeled a a single entity.
I suggest that you have a background on the actual American Needle case before reading Feldman’s article, which is the first link on this post. Also, make sure you section off some time, because Feldman’s piece is not a quick read. For prior SAB posts on the topic:
