The Federal Communications
Commission’s support for sports broadcast blackouts is about to
become a thing of the past: The agency’s commissioners voted 5-0
today to end the blackout policy
the agency has had in place since 1975.
The policy is an explicit form of protectionism for big-league
sports teams: Basically, as The Washington Post notes, it
says that if a game doesn’t fill every stadium seat, then it’s
off limits for broadcast TV, which means cable provider that rely
on those broadcast streams can’t really carry it either.
The rule cover all pro sports, but mostly ends up benefiting the
National Football League, which has
lobbied extensively to keep the policy in place. The league’s
argument for the rule, that it’s necessary to “protect football on
free TV,” is pretty transparently a self-serving cover for
protectionist policies designed to maximize stadium revenues. As
The Hill reported last month, “The league argues the rule
helps teams sell tickets and creates a compelling stadium
atmosphere, allowing the NFL to keep games on free
television.”
The FCC’s vote today was a rebuke to the idea that helping teams
sell tickets is somehow part of the FCC’s job: “It is not the FCC’s
role to make sure the NFL gets [the] last nickel out of every game
played,” agency commissioner Michael O’Riley
said, according to The Washington Examiner.
In a USA Today
op-ed, Chairman Tom Wheeler called the rules “a bad
hangover from the days when barely 40 percent of games sold out,”
and declared that “the NFL should no longer be able to hide behind
government rules that punish loyal fans.”
“It’s a simple fact, the federal government should not be party
to sports teams keeping their fans from viewing the games—period,”
Wheeler
said after the vote today, reports Politico.
The NFL will still be able to blackout some games without agency
help, however, by making private deals.
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