[mpyne]

> The whole thing is a fairly weird set up designed to avoid antitrust scrutiny

Well in that regard they failed, as the Congress passed laws decades ago quite specifically exempting the professional sports leagues from antitrust claims relating to sports broadcasting rights, and that was in response to a Supreme Court ruling on the antitrust problems with the NFL.

And now with the NFL Network people are looking closely into whether that antitrust exemption should be retained at all. So I think it's hard to claim that the NFL is managing to use this to avoid antitrust scrutiny; if anything the NFL is bringing even more of it on themselves.

> The NFL org just plows any profits back into the teams

Which then shows up as extra income for the teams, which increases their profit (except for the Packers), which leads to higher taxes, etc. etc.

I'm sure you can play accounting tricks to reduce the impact of the extra income but I see nothing weird by itself with having a League office to handle League-wide affairs that don't involve individual teams.

[DannyBee]

Yes, i'm acutely aware of the various antitrust exemptions. However, the structure enables them to say they make no profits, and own no market: that would be the teams. Additionally, they will say there are no damages at all, since they are a non-profit, they make no money, and have nothing to gain for themselves by committing antitrust violations. Lastly, they will say being a 501(c)(6) specifically authorizes them to be doing what they are doing.

At least their supreme court arguments were that they were operating as a single entity, "the NFL". They specifically called out their structure as being proof of this. Thus, this structure was, in part in attempt to avoid antitrust scrutiny.

It was certainly a failure, but that doesn't mean it wasn't one of the reasons they did it :)