Senators are urging the NFL to drop their blackout rule

Just because the FCC voted to stop enforcing the NFL’s blackout policy earlier this fall doesn’t mean that blackouts are dead. They haven’t come into play at all this year, but are still alive and well, written into the league’s contracts with its various television providers. Now, senators from both parties are urging the league to remove their blackout rule – or lose their antitrust exemption.

The bill, co-sponsored by Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Republican John McCain, was discussed at a hearing on Thursday. Blumenthal and McCain said that they didn’t want to enact the bill, preferring that the NFL drop the blackout policy on its own to save face and keep their valuable exemption intact.

NFL lawyer Gerard Waldron gave a very flimsy defense of the policy, saying that the bill would undermine “the complex business and legal structure that allows the NFL to be the only professional sports league that offers all of its regular-season game to viewers at no charge”. Waldron also claims that if there isn’t a blackout rule in place, games would likely migrate from broadcast to cable – which is hilarious, given the NFL’s new contracts with CBS, Fox, and NBC.

Just get rid of the damn blackout rule, NFL. It hasn’t been enacted this year, and was only needed twice last year. So why not just completely dump it? The only people that get screwed over by the rule are fans, who don’t have the desire to leave their houses to pay hundreds of dollars to watch the games when they can just stay at home and indulge in a comparable experience for a fraction of the price. Why punish them?

And besides – if a team can’t sell out their games, does it really make sense to not broadcast their games in their home territory? All you’re doing is pushing fans in that area further and further away from their team, which will continue to eat away at the revenue of the affected team. But then again, given the league’s ridiculous desire to get teams in Los Angeles and London, maybe that’s the endgame here – depress a local fanbase so much that a team has no other choice but to move to a new city.

[ESPN]