Motion to Compel Arbitration Granted in Antitrust Case v. Cable Providers and Sports Organizations
This post has been viewed 2,529 times.
On November 25, 2013, Judge Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York issued an opinion in Laumann v. National Hockey League, granting in part and denying in part a motion to compel arbitration brought by defendant Comcast and denying in full a similar motion brought by defendant DIRECTV. Plaintiffs claim that defendants, including the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball, along with the major cable and satellite television service providers entered into “agreements to eliminate competition in the distribution of [baseball and hockey] games over the Internet and television [by] divid[ing] the live-game video presentation market into exclusive territories, which are protected by anticompetitive blackouts,” and by “collud[ing] to sell the `out-of-market’ packages only through the League [which] exploit[s] [its] illegal monopoly by charging supra-competitive prices.” These agreements allegedly violate the Sherman Antiturst Act.
At the heart of plaintiffs’ beef, it seems, is that if one wants to view “out-of-market” games — that is, games that do not feature the team from one’s home city or the city where one is located — one must purchase television packages which inculde all out-of-market games, even if one is only interested in the games of one out-of-market team.
Read original articleTags:
