Yahoo Drops Fantasy Sports Lawsuit Against NFL Players Association; Reasoning Not Clear
from the what-happened-here? dept
Last month, we wrote about Yahoo going to court to make sure it didn't need to pay any royalties to the NFL's Player Association in order to offer up fantasy football data. This would be consistent with recent rulings that have noted that services offering fantasy sports offerings don't need to pay up for the use of data (factual information) such as player names and stats. Oddly, however, Yahoo has now dropped the case, though no one seems quite sure why. It's possible that the NFLPA has said that it won't seek money, but if that's the case, why was the lawsuit filed in the first place?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: copyright, facts, fantasy sports, nfl, royalties
Companies: nfl, nfl players association, yahoo
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So the lawyers on both sides talked, and the NFLPA lawyers promised Yahoo that if they drop the suit they won't get sued. Yahoo got what it wanted, and the NFLPA got what they wanted.
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NFLPA will now target another fantasy league. They will avoid Yahoo and ESPN and anyone else with the money to fight. They will turn their attention to some smaller fantasy sites who don't have a couple million in cash laying around to fund their lawyers. NFLPA will target them, and they will settle and pay a fee. Then the NFLPA will turn to the next site, and the next site and build a nice long list of fantasy leagues paying their extortion. Once they have extorted money from all the little guys, they will turn to the big leagues and hit up ESPN and Yahoo. Both will refuse, and the NFLPA will take them to court. They stand a decent chance of getting a stupid judge who doesn't understand the situation but will rule on it in ignorance. ESPN and Yahoo will end up having to pay because you can't exactly run a sports site/network and NOT report on the NFL.
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