Supreme Court Rules Against NFL

[Xantar]

The Supreme Court said on Monday that the N.F.L. is an “unincorporated association of 32 separately owned professional football teams,” not a single business, for the purposes of selling branded jerseys and caps.

American Needle is an apparel maker from Illinois that lost its contract with the N.F.L. when the league entered into an exclusive 10-year deal with Reebok in late 2000.

The unanimous ruling in American Needle Inc. v. National Football League was a reversal of a controversial lower-court ruling and amounted to a defeat for the league, which had sought protection from challenges to its business on antitrust grounds, legal experts said. In effect, the court said the N.F.L. was still open to antitrust scrutiny, as it has been for years.

Source: New York Times

My reading on this ruling is that it means individual football teams can negotiate deals involving their own image and the NFL doesn't speak for them or have the ability to force them into any deals. So if I want to manufacture Packers themed merchandise, I can negotiate a contract directly with them and the NFL can't forbid them from signing any deal with me nor can the NFL force the packers into an exclusive deal with any other manufacturer. In fact, it would be illegal for the NFL to force all the teams into an exclusive deal with some other party.

What I'm wondering is what this means for EA's videogame exclusivity. In theory, Sega could develop a game with the New York Giants and neither the NFL nor EA would be able to stop them. Obviously, a game with just one team isn't one that anybody would want to play, but it might mean that EA's exclusivity deal is illegal on anti-trust grounds.