FCC Votes To End Its Sports Blackout Rule

from the game-time dept

Thu, Oct 2nd 2014 4:01am — Timothy Geigner

Blackout rules in sports: they're really stupid. Sure, perhaps there was some semblance of logic at one time behind the theory that if the stadium seats weren't filled, a team would pull a game off of television to encourage attendance, but the point is that in the age of massive television deals that are so much more important for a team or league's revenue compared with stadium sales, such that some teams try to fake their way into televising games, finding excuses to keep games off of the money-machine that is television is just plain silly.

What you may not know is that the leagues have had a federal partner in blacking out games for quite a while in the FCC. While the NFL is really the only league left that is bothering with blackout rules, they've now lost that partner as the FCC has unanimously voted to repeal its support for sports blackouts.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 to repeal the sports blackout rule. Currently, the NFL will not allow broadcasters in a team’s home market to air games that have not sold out. This unfriendly practice is a matter of private contract between the league and the broadcasters, restricting what a sports fan can watch in the process. The FCC’s sports blackout rule prevented cable systems from carrying those games, as well. Although the repeal of the sports blackout rule is no guarantee that cable viewers will be able to see blacked-out games, now the NFL will have to arrange for blackouts solely through private contracting. The rule applies to any sports league, but only the NFL currently blacks-out games on local broadcast.

This, believe it or not, is an important step. Not because it represents any dramatic shift in televising games in and of itself, but because it's the beginning of the lift on blackout restrictions in general. Television blackouts due to attendance are the low-hanging fruit when it comes to blackouts in general, but if this starts building momentum such that the growing masses of cable-cutters can finally get local sports games with their internet packages somewhere down the road, it's a big deal. Because, as I've argued before, the only dam holding back an overflowing river of cable-cutters is professional and college sports. Take that away and the river runs wild.

This FCC vote, by the way, comes at the behest of a petition from Public Knowledge.

The vote follows a petition Public Knowledge filed with its allies that argued the FCC should end this archaic rule as an unnecessary intervention in the marketplace on behalf of the NFL, one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world. The following statement can be attributed to John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge:

“We’re pleased that our petition, the voices of sports fans and TV viewers, and the evidence has persuaded the FCC to act on the public’s behalf. Private parties should not be able to use government regulations as an excuse to limit fans’ access to their local teams."

To be clear, local broadcasts can still be blacked out by the NFL, but that won't last much longer. Already there are rumblings from the NFL that indicate they realize that their product is far better consumed on television, and that fantasy football is pushing a larger consumption of multiple games throughout a day, rather than driving dedicated fans to a single stadium for the day. Good on the FCC for getting this right, even though they probably should have made this move a few decades ago.

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Filed Under: blackout, blackout rules, fcc, sports
Companies: nfl

26 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 4:10am

We anxiously await real-time, live streaming for sane prices. Any bets on when it's happening? I'm optimistic, I'll bet in 5-10 years (once the flow starts it will be quick, either they board the ship or they drown).
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 4:41am

Re:
The best way to do this might be to get Congress to threaten to rescind the tax-exempt status of all these sports leagues.
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Pixelation, 2 Oct 2014 @ 4:53am

Blackouts return in 3,2,1...
"now the NFL will have to arrange for blackouts solely through private contracting"

And they will be contracting.
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Rich Kulawiec, 2 Oct 2014 @ 5:25am

Re:
Given the increase in the capabilities and presence of mobile devices combined with the decrease in cost and size, it's only a matter of time until a sporting event picked at random is streamed in real time by 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 members of the crowd watching it in person.

The owners will of course try to stop this, but how? They can't confiscate that many devices, the backlash would be enormous. They can't keep them from entering since most of them are phones and everyone expects to bring their phones with them. They can't impose a radio blackout because everyone expects their phones to work. They can't try to allow some and not others because that's way too onerous to implement in practice. They can't try to identify and throw out everyone do it because there will be way too many and again, the backlash would be enormous.

Those streams will be far from perfect of course, for all kinds of reasons that are immediately obvious. But they'll always get better, never worse, and there will come a point when 4,000 random amateur-operated cameras trump 18 carefully-placed professionally-operated ones. And then someone will cook up software that combines the data streams from all of them in real time to generate 3D output which can be "viewed" from any chosen angle, buffered (for instant replay), and so on.

(Copyright? Meh. Let's see a team take 3,972 season ticket holders to court over copyright. I'm sure that will work out well for them.)

And that will be the beginning of the end for sports broadcasts unless they can find a way to add sufficient value to justify the cost. Clearly some operations are coasting: CBS's football telecasts are awful, featuring idiotic commentators, a lack of sideline reporters, and endless promotion of their primetime crap. Others are better: Tirico and Grudin do a pretty good job for ESPN. Those which can provide scarce commodities (literate, timely, expert analysis) will manage, those that feature prattling morons will not.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 5:34am

Re:
It'll happen the exact moment that Google decides to turn YouTube into a sports' league "broadcasting" partner. The NFL is powerful. Google is powerfuller....
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Mark Gisleson (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 6:04am

The NBA's League Pass
still blacks out local games, making it impossible for fans to watch the local team except by paying for cable TV.

League Pass is a horrible run service, something the NBA did solely to take the heat off them for their unholy alliance with cable. Very few NBA games are shown on broadcast TV, and their playoffs are all locked up by cable channels. It's a pay-per-view league, and only fans in a handful of cities get to watch the home games and playoffs without paying at least $600 a year.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 6:40am

Re: Re: for phones read drones
".. there will come a point when 4,000 random amateur-operated cameras trump 18 carefully-placed professionally-operated ones. And then someone will cook up software that combines the data streams from all of them in real time to generate 3D output which can be "viewed" from any chosen angle, buffered (for instant replay), and so on."

One change:

".. there will come a point when 4,000 random amateur-operated drones trump 18 carefully-placed professionally-operated ones. And then someone will cook up software that combines the data streams from all of them in real time to generate 3D output which can be "viewed" from any chosen angle, buffered (for instant replay), and so on."

I think the software already exists to do this. Getting it done as a huge open-source project would be difficult, especially the part about funding legal defenses to beat off hordes of rabid media companies and the NFL (remember the famous restriction on 'any other accounts of the game' etc).
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 6:57am

Re: The NBA's League Pass
What has happened to Monday Night Football viewer numbers since they stopped local broadcast?
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 7:27am

Sport blackouts = the hostage demanding ransom for their release
Sports blackouts are basically someone taking themselves hostage and demanding a bunch of money for their safe return. If the ransom isn't paid, the 'hostage' and 'hostage taker' shoot themselves in the foot.

Sure the people who know the hostage are upset about their injury, but in the end the hostage/hostage taker is the real loser. They could have made money airing their game on local TV.
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Jeremy2020 (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 7:45am

The NFL is not the only league that 'bothers' with blackouts. The NHL still uses blackouts quite a bit even when you pay for a package.

Research is good.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 8:03am

This practice of blackout is part of what got me away from watching TV Sports. I am not going to buy a season ticket to the stadium. I hate the crowds. I also hate the idea of a rip off on watching sports through what they want to charge.

I am not a fanatic sports fan but I used to care about which team was winning and where it ranked. I would at one time watch the games on tv. However because of blackouts you weren't going to see every game. No sense in following if you can't watch your favorite team play.

Over time, that no sense in following part made more sense than trying to find somewhere that had it. So I cared less and less each year until it no longer matters. I don't watch sports anymore and find I don't miss it. I got other things I can do besides sit in front of a tv.
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Ninja (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 8:06am

Re: Re:
I can't even begin to imagine the amount of money being left on the table by sheer stubbornness. Can you imagine live streams where anybody can pay cents to watch? Or any advertiser can go and target at the geo location they want?
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Anon, 2 Oct 2014 @ 8:09am

Is that the rule?
Really? I always thought the rule was that the league could *not* black out sold out games - they could whatever they wanted with empty-seat ones.

IIRC this came from the Nix on era (he was a football fan?) that people complained they could not get tickets and the game was blacked out locally. The FCC was told to make a rule that if the game was sold out, the gam could not be blacked out locally.

I guess with pay-per-view and similar pay services, what constitutes "blacked out"? What does "not allowed to black out locally" mean any more? Time to get rid of the rule.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 8:57am

Re: Is that the rule?
Don't know about NFL but used to be in the NBA that local blackout could be lifted if the game was sold out at least 72 hours before (24 hours for a playoff game).

Admittedly NBA arenas range from 14,000 to 20,000 seats whereas NFL arenas range 60,000 to 100,000 seats. Thus the NFL has a tougher time in some markets to sell out.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 9:04am

Re:
And MLB blacks out "home" teams on MLB.TV.

I am a Red Sox fan but I live in western NY, 6 hours from NYC. I am 3 hours from toronto.

Guess which games get blacked out? Any time the Red Sox PLAY the yankees, regardless if home or away, the game is a blackout on MLB.TV. I can watch ANY game they play Toronto.

YES usually only broadcasts one of the games on local TV (the friday game, but it isn't every Friday SOXvNYY game) , they might be the feature game on FOX on Saturday, but that isn't every series, and they don't always fall on the weekend. So, fuck blackouts. I don't even want to watch YES in the first place, if I can help it. THats why I paid for MLB.TV, so I could watch the NESN stream every time.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 10:47am

Teams and NFL relying on taxpayers money to build stadiums have the nerve to blackout these same taxpayers regardless of whether we love football!!??? LAWSUIT! LAWSUIT! LAWSUIT!
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college, 2 Oct 2014 @ 11:13am

College games are frequently subject to blackout too.
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John Fenderson (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 11:39am

Re:
Yes. With football anyway, there is no effective difference between college and professional.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 12:11pm

Screw filling seats - in fact, screw the whole stadium thing. They can have a space anywhere to play, just televise or stream it.
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nasch (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 12:22pm

Re: Re:
The best way to do this might be to get Congress to threaten to rescind the tax-exempt status of all these sports leagues.

Forget threaten, it makes no sense for massively profitable private enterprises to be tax exempt. End it immediately.
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nasch (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 12:32pm

Re: Re:
The owners will of course try to stop this, but how?

I'm not sure they would have to do much. How many incoming high quality video streams could a 4G access point really handle simultaneously? Surely not thousands.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 12:46pm

Two points, first, the NFL as a league is exempt from taxes, but the teams are not. All of the big revenue that goes to the league (TV Contracts etc.) pretty much get funneled to the individual teams (and their owners pockets). Those individual teams are subject to taxes, so taxing the organization NFL really wouldn't do anything, because taxes on the teams pretty much covers the income that the NFL brings in.

Second on the FCC ruling, while I can see why teams and the NFL set a black out policy, that is what it should have been, a business policy, not a government regulation. Why should our government pass laws that harms consumers?

That is the big question.
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nasch (profile), 2 Oct 2014 @ 1:03pm

Re:
Two points, first, the NFL as a league is exempt from taxes, but the teams are not. All of the big revenue that goes to the league (TV Contracts etc.) pretty much get funneled to the individual teams (and their owners pockets).

Thanks, that is a relief to know.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2014 @ 1:11pm

Re: Re:
The point is, the NFL revenue (which is tax exempt) goes to the teams (which isn't.)
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Craig, 3 Oct 2014 @ 11:27am

FCC Lifts Blackout - Political Move?
I thought the timing of this was to give the FCC a public relations boost to counteract the 4 million anti-fast lane comments and the soon to come decision on those fast lanes.
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cookies_mmm, 28 Oct 2014 @ 6:07pm

FCC blackouts
As a user of nba league pass both internationally and state side, the one internationally FAR surpasses the one in the states. I was shocked at least, because I thought that seeing as the NBA takes place IN America, it should be an even better experience. Black out rules are the dumbest, because what's happening is that by purchasing league pass, fans want the NBA experience, NOT the TV experience. People are paying $135 or more to see their respective teams, only to be told they have to watch it later. Hopefully this all can come to close soon.
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