EA College Sports Is Back, But Some Schools Are Opting Out Until Name, Image, Likeness Rules Are Created To Compensate Athletes

from the hut-hut-punt dept

Way back in 2013, a class action lawsuit started by ex-UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon resulted ultimately in the NCAA found to have violated antitrust laws. The antitrust bit comes from a waiver the NCAA forces student athletes to sign that removes their ability to be compensated for their names, images, or likeness (NIL). While this restriction has been in place at the NCAA for eons, this case came about due to O'Bannon discovering that he was represented in EA Sports' NCAA Basketball game in a "classic" team loaded into the game.

The knock on effect to all of this was that 2010 was the last year EA Sports offered its college basketball game and 2013, the year the lawsuit came about, was the last year the company made its vaunted NCAA Football game. The reason given by the company was that schools were shying away from those games to avoid further lawsuits. For the next seven years, EA Sports stuck to professional sports.

But now, in 2021, the company has announced that the college football series is back.

EA Sports actually dropped a few Easter eggs pointing to the possibility. In the past two editions of Madden, some college football programs were included as part of the "Face of the Franchise" story mode of the game. EA Sports vice president and general manager Daryl Holt told ESPN that while it wasn't a conscious decision to do that as a test run for the return of a college football game, there was positive feedback and returns, particularly in those college markets.

"That was another just check mark to go -- we know [fans] are itching for it and we know we can develop and deliver a great college football experience," Holt said. "So why are we waiting?"

So, what changed? Apparently not much beyond the Collegiate Licensing Community and its members once again being willing to license school names, stadiums, and imagery to EA Sports. Why there is this sudden change of heart isn't entirely clear at the time of this writing, but it is worth noting that there is a lot of talk and pressure on the NCAA to create new NIL rules so that athletes can get some compensation for their likenesses.

Still, with those NIL rules still theoretical as of now, not all schools are opting in. Notre Dame had already indicated that they were pulling out of the game, citing the lack of NIL rules being established. And now Northwestern University has done likewise.

According to a report from Steve Greenberg of the Chicago Sun-Times, the Northwestern football team is opting out of the upcoming college football video game from EA Sports. The school wants NIL rules to be created and finalized before players can take part in the highly-anticipated video game. Northwestern is the second known school to opt-out of the game with Notre Dame being the first. It was also reported by Northwestern made the decision in January before EA announced college football is coming back.

So, what does this all mean? Well, it's a bit of a risky venture for EA Sports to take, given that any NCAA Football title as of now would have to be given an "incomplete" grade. The Big 10 without Northwestern? College football without Notre Dame? And what if more schools start getting pressure from their students and athletes and start to go down the same path?

What this ultimately highlights is that the NCAA cartel should get its shit together and work out an NIL compensation arrangement with its athletes before once again attempting to dunk its licensing cookie into video games to try to enrich itself. That this is still an unsettled topic of conversation is baffling.

Filed Under: college sports, ea sports, ed o'bannon, likeness rights, video games
Companies: ea, ncaa

NCAA Strips UCF Kicker Of Eligibility After He Refuses To Stop Being An Athlete That Posts YouTube Videos

from the nice-speech-you-have-there... dept

You may recall that several months ago, we discussed Donald de la Haye, kicker for UCF and a very good YouTube personality to boot. After racking up thousands of subscribers and millions of views at his YouTube channel, where de la Haye discusses all manner of things, including his football career, the NCAA came a-calling. The organization first informed him that he would have to shutter his channel completely, arguing that the advertising revenue it generated violated NCAA rules, which are designed to make sure that all student athlete activity that generates revenue does so only in the direction of the NCAA. Then, after the backlash, the NCAA reportedly offered to let de la Haye keep his YouTube channel, but only if he agreed to essentially never reference who he is or what one of his primary life activities is: football. It was a deal devoid of sense, as his football playing career is among the primary motivators for people to check his channel out to begin with. It's also a strange stance coming from an organization purportedly in the business of supporting student athletes as they become full-fledged adults, limiting his creative expression over a concern of YouTube revenue from his own fans.

Because of that, de la Haye refused the deal. As a result, the NCAA has announced that de la Haye is no longer eligible for the upcoming football season.

De La Haye has been ruled ineligible for the upcoming college football season, according to the NCAA. De La Haye had an opportunity to make a deal with the NCAA that would limit his creative output, but he declined it. De La Haye did not respond to our request for comment, instead tweeting that he’s “mind blown” and passing along the following message:

Here's the tweet.

Now, the NCAA apologists have already started making noise about how the NCAA was upfront with de la Haye about all of this and only asked that he not take advertising revenue or not discuss his football career. And it appears that both claims are absolutely true. Many, because of that, are falling into the trap of thinking that this was somehow an acceptable deal for de la Haye to take, or for the NCAA to offer in the first place. It is neither of those things.

The NCAA is a money-making machine. Full stop. As a money-making machine in league with higher learning institutions of grown men and women, to baldly offer to allow creative expression of a student athlete if and only if it can control that student's message and expression is insane. We're not talking about de la Haye getting endorsements or signing merchandise, or any of the other examples of things that might threaten his status as an amateur athlete that happens to contribute to the NCAA making millions of dollars. Instead, we're talking about a purely creative output published directly to fans of de la Haye. Censoring it and threatening his educational career in the name of college sports revenue is disgusting.

Fear not, because the days of the NCAA are numbered. Still, the damage it can do in the early stages of its death throes is gross.

Filed Under: advertising, amateur sports, college sports, donald de la haye, social media
Companies: ncaa

NCAA Forces UCF Football Player To Choose Between His Athletic Career And His YouTube Channel

from the bad-guys dept

While we've talked about the NCAA in the past, those conversations have mostly revolved around the NCAA's backwards thinking regarding the streaming of sporting events and issues about the likenesses of players appearing in video games. Unsaid from what I can tell, however, is the general opinion of this writer that the NCAA is an outdated institution designed to make gobs of money off of the labor of otherwise free citizens while curtailing their rights to make any income themselves. These attempts to make income by college athletes typically revolve around selling autographs, memorabillia, and game-worn clothing, but the NCAA is perfectly capable of taking its rules to ridiculous lengths.

Serving as an example of this is UCF kicker Donald De La Haye, who has been informed by the NCAA that he must either shutter his YouTube channel or his football career.

De La Haye’s channel has published 41 videos over the past year, piling up 54,000 subscribers and two million views in that time. His videos are nearly all related to his athletic career, though only a few directly address his status as UCF’s kicker; others are simply videos showing off his daily kicking regime and ability to boot a flatscreen TV from a ledge. As De La Haye stated in his latest video, entitled “Quit College Sports Or Quit YouTube,” because he was profiting from ads placed on his videos and channel homepage, the NCAA determined that he was profiting off his own likeness—the nerve!—and put its foot down.

As is the case with everything to do with the NCAA, this is about where this advertising money is going and not the actual conduct of De La Haye. The NCAA's stance is that it is perfectly fine for athletes to generate money based on their activities, it's just that the money generated must end up in the NCAA's coffers instead of in the bank accounts of the athletes that perform on the field of play. If that sounds like slavery to you, the NCAA would like to remind you that some of these athletes get college scholarships. But not all of them do, of course, and the value of those scholarships pales in comparison to the revenue generated by these athletes for the NCAA and its member institutions. It's a terrible deal for college athletes, all the more so when the NCAA is now in the habit of prohibiting speech in the form of these kinds of videos just because some advertising revenue is generated.

Revenue, by the way, that appears to be going to De La Haye's family instead of bling.

De La Haye intimated in his 10-minute video that he had been using some of the money made from his channel to help his family at home—he hails from Costa Rica—saying they have, “tons of bills piling up and there’s no way for me to help. I thought I found a way.”

The NCAA may have once served a purpose, but it needs to die a very quick death in the present. Any organization that wants to keep an enterprising college student athlete from making YouTube videos has demonstrated its need to be exited.

Filed Under: collegiate sports, donald de la haye, free speech, money
Companies: ncaa, youtube

NCAA Found To Violate Antitrust Laws In Preventing Schools From Sharing Licensing Revenue With Student Athletes

from the antitrust dept

It's long been recognized that the NCAA sports setup is a bit of a scam, in which "student" athletes make various colleges a ridiculous amount of money -- none of which actually makes it to the athletes themselves. In many cases, these are barely actually "students" at all. And while some of the athletes may later cash in by going pro, many do not. A few years ago, we wrote about a class action lawsuit brought by basketball player Ed O'Bannon over the fact that his likeness was appearing in an EA video game, and that the NCAA had basically violated antitrust laws in effectively forcing him (and all NCAA athletes) to sign away all such rights for no compensation. The case has gone back and forth over the years, but on Friday Judge Claudia Wilken sided strongly with the players, finding the NCAA had clearly violated antitrust laws.

The NCAA was done in by a variety of factors, but it appears that its own economic expert did not help matters. While he argued that the NCAA's activities were "legal" he also more or less helped make the case that they were violating antitrust laws:

Dr. Noll’s opinions are consistent with the opinions of the NCAA’s own economic expert, Dr. Daniel Rubinfeld, who testified that the NCAA operates as a “joint venture which imposes restraints” on trade.... Dr. Rubinfeld specifically acknowledged that “the NCAA does impose a restraint, the restraint we have been discussing in this case.” Id. 2921:8-:9. Although he opined that this restraint was lawful because it serves procompetitive purposes, he never denied that the NCAA restricts competition among its members for recruits. In fact, his own economics textbook specifically refers to the NCAA as a “cartel,” which he defined during his testimony as “a group of firms that impose a restraint.” ... Although the NCAA’s other economic expert, Dr. Lauren Stiroh, testified that the NCAA does not restrain competition in any market, her opinions were based on the theory that anticompetitive effects cannot arise unless consumers in a “downstream market” are harmed.... In this case, those consumers would be people who watch or attend college football and basketball games or purchase goods using the names, images, and likenesses of student-athletes. The Court rejects Dr. Stiroh’s theory that Plaintiffs cannot show any anticompetitive effects caused by the alleged restraint without demonstrating some harm to these consumers. The evidence cited above demonstrates that student-athletes themselves are harmed by the price-fixing agreement among FBS football and Division I basketball schools. In the complex exchange represented by a recruit’s decision to attend and play for a particular school, the school provides tuition, room and board, fees, and book expenses, often at little or no cost to the school. The recruit provides his athletic performance and the use of his name, image, and likeness. However, the schools agree to value the latter at zero by agreeing not to compete with each other to credit any other value to the recruit in the exchange. This is an anticompetitive effect. Thus, the Court finds that the NCAA has the power -- and exercises that power -- to fix prices and restrain competition in the college education market that Plaintiffs have identified.

The court goes further, in noting that the NCAA's restrictions on student athlete compensation aren't justified, going through the long history of how the NCAA's views have changed over time:

The Court finds that the NCAA's current restrictions on student-athlete compensation, which cap athletics-based financial aid below the cost of attendance, are not justified by the definition of amateurism set forth in its current bylaws.

The court also completely rejects the claims by the NCAA that it's popularity is based on the fact that athletes aren't compensated.

Other historical evidence suggests that the NCAA’s restrictions on student-athlete compensation have not contributed significantly to the popularity of FBS football and Division I basketball. The NCAA’s former president, the late Walter Byers, testified during his 2007 deposition, for instance, that the NCAA’s decision to remove incidental expenses from the grant-in-aid coverage in 1975 was not motivated by a desire to increase consumer demand for its product.... In fact, he specifically noted that NCAA sports experienced a tremendous growth in popularity during the period between 1956 and 1975 when grants-in-aid still covered the full cost of attendance.

In the end, it becomes clear that the NCAA is acting in a manner that pretty clearly violates antitrust law:

Because FBS football and Division I basketball schools are the only suppliers in the relevant market, they have the power, when acting in concert through the NCAA and its conferences, to fix the price of their product. They have chosen to exercise this power by forming an agreement to charge every recruit the same price for the bundle of educational and athletic opportunities that they offer: to wit, the recruit’s athletic services along with the use of his name, image, and likeness while he is in school. If any school seeks to lower this fixed price -- by offering any recruit a cash rebate, deferred payment, or other form of direct compensation -- that school may be subject to sanctions by the NCAA.

This price-fixing agreement constitutes a restraint of trade. The evidence presented at trial makes clear that, in the absence of this agreement, certain schools would compete for recruits by offering them a lower price for the opportunity to play FBS football or Division I basketball while they attend college. Indeed, the NCAA’s own expert, Dr. Rubinfeld, acknowledged that the NCAA operates as a cartel that imposes a restraint on trade in this market.

The court rejects the idea that free tuition is a reasonable exchange, noting that the licensing rights the student athletes give up is clearly worth much, much more.

While the court does find antitrust problems, it's interesting to note that it does not find harm done to the video game licensing market. After saying that such a market would likely exist without the NCAA's rules, that doesn't mean there's anti-competitive harm:

Nevertheless, Plaintiffs have not identified any injury to competition within this submarket. Just as in the live telecasting submarket, the ultimate buyers in this submarket -- videogame developers -- would need to acquire group licenses from a specific set of teams in order to create their product. This set might include all of the teams within Division I, all of the teams within the major conferences, or some other set of teams that the videogame developer believed would be necessary to produce a marketable product. Regardless of which teams were included within that set, those teams would not compete against each other as sellers of group licenses, even in the absence of the challenged rules, because they would all share an interest in ensuring that the videogame developer acquired each of the group licenses required to create its product. These teams would also not compete against any teams outside of the set because the videogame developer determined that those other teams’ group licenses were not required to produce the videogame. Indeed, competition between teams (or conferences) is even less likely in the videogame submarket than the live telecasting submarket because videogame developers -- unlike television networks -- are not constrained by the number of group licenses that they could use to produce their product. The evidence presented at trial demonstrates that videogame companies could, and often did, feature nearly every FBS football and Division I basketball team in their videogames. Under these circumstances, competition among individual teams and conferences to sell group licenses is extremely unlikely. And, to the extent that it happens (or would happen), it is not restrained by the challenged NCAA restrictions on student-athlete compensation. Thus, just as with the live telecasting submarket, the challenged rules do not suppress competition in this submarket.

Either way, the NCAA is going to appeal this decision -- but if it stands, it will likely have a pretty big impact on the nature of college sports going forward, changing the ways in which student athletes are compensated in general. The NCAA is ordered to allow colleges to offer to share licensing revenue with students (and refuses to have the ruling stayed, though it doesn't go into effect just yet anyway -- and it's possible that the appeals court would grant a stay also).

Filed Under: antitrust, college sports, ed o'bannon, licensing
Companies: ncaa

Prison Sponsor Tries To Delete Wikipedia Information After Sponsoring NCAA Football Stadium

from the ain't-gonna-work dept

Wikipedia gets, what I think is, a bad rap by the general public due to users being able to edit its pages. This isn't to say that there aren't ever problems, but I tend to think that the community does a pretty decent job of policing itself and much of the false-information-hand-wringing is much to do about nothing. Additionally, the benefits, both of all the good information on the site and the potential benefits of being a great Wiki editor, are far beyond any negative effects of false information. And, for anyone who does attempt to game the information on the site, the consequences can be awful.

Take, for instance, what has happened now that Geo Group, a company that runs for-profit prisons, has a spokesman running around trying to delete negative information about them from their Wikipedia page. This began shortly after Geo Group inked a deal with Florida Atlantic University for the naming rights to their football stadium, because nothing says irony quite like a prison name for college football, where the athletes are grossly exploited for the profit of the NCAA.

If you want a full litany of abuse, read the "controversies" section of Geo Group's Wikipedia page. But read it fast: Geo Group is desperately trying to wipe it before you see it. As their naming rights deal became national news, a Wikipedia user named Abraham Cohen attacking the page, clearing the entire "controversies" section and replacing it with, essentially, a PR packet. As first noted by the Huffington Post, Abraham Cohen is a spokesperson for Geo Group, and the new material contained multiple instances of the pronouns "we" and "our."

This, obviously, is seen as bad form on Wikipedia and editors almost immediately began fighting back, both restoring the deleted section and calling out Cohen. But Abe wasn't done. After the page was restored, an anonymous IP address which leads back to Geo Group's servers showed up on the page claiming that the PR information Abe had added wasn't PR information at all, but was an accurate reflection of the company's history.

The result of all this nonsense? Well, none of it is good for Geo Group. Deadspin picked up the story and there's little doubt their massive audience is now exponentially more aware of some of the company's more controversial moments, which include mistreatment of prisoners, withholding prisoner medication, withholding medical care for prisoners resulting in their deaths, and guards engaging in sexual intercourse with prisoners. Like me, it's likely that as of last week, most people didn't even know a company called Geo Group existed. But now, because they want to get into the football sponsorship business, and also because they think they can just remove negative information off of the internet, a whole lot of people are more informed about that negative information.

Filed Under: abraham cohen, prisons, streisand effect, wikipedia edits
Companies: geo group, ncaa

Lawsuit Over Video Game Rights Might Kill The NCAA But Not The System

from the the-system-always-lives-on dept

I don't particularly like the NCAA and I enjoy their legal difficulties as much as the next guy. As a devout college sports fan, the usually arbitrary and always backward business side of the NCAA (including the affiliated schools and "non-profit" bowl associations) causes me great consternation.

Apparently, the incomparable Charles P. Pierce shares my disdain for the lumbering excuse for a fair and credible sanctioning body that currently governs collegiate athletics.

In a sharp Grantland piece, Pierce revisits the Ed O'Bannon-led class-action case against the NCAA and video game manufacturer EA over their combined efforts to profit in perpetuity from the likenesses of unpaid "student ath-o-letes." (Take it away Eric Cartman!) But I think Pierce is overselling the extent to which a possible O'Bannon victory would really change the college sports landscape....

By way of background, Ed O'Bannon is a former UCLA and pre-Brooklyn Nets basketball player who had retired from the game. It came to his attention that the NCAA had licensed his likeness to EA to make approximately a gajillion dollars selling video games featuring "classic" teams like O'Bannon's 1996 UCLA Bruins. O'Bannon felt -- and he was later joined by basketball legends like Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson, who were stunned to learn a) that they were in a video game and b) what a video game was -- that this seemed a little far afield of putting his likeness on a calendar in 1995, which is what he reasonably assumed he was authorizing the NCAA to do when he signed away his rights to profit from the marketing of his collegiate career when he was all of 18 years old.

O'Bannon filed suit in 2009, alleging that the NCAA violated the Sherman Antitrust Act when they forced him to sign a waiver giving up his rights to profit from representations of his collegiate career. As Robert Wheel of SBNation explains:

O'Bannon is alleging that if the NCAA didn't force him to sign this contract, then he could have gotten money from someone else (say, an EA competitor) to use his likeness. Thus, it essentially fixed the price of using his image at zero. Even if you consider players' scholarships adequate payment for their services, this still artificially depresses how much they're paid. If a judge agrees, the waiver would be considered an illegal restraint of trade under the act.

And now O'Bannon and his lawyers are seeking to certify a class of all former athletes used in this way for a trial next year (courts have held that maintaining the amateur status of current student athletes is a laudable enough goal to justify the NCAA robbing current athletes of the fruits of their potentially debilitating labor, so this case only deals with former athletes).

Which brings us to Charles Pierce's piece. You see, Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California just denied the defendants' motion to end the class certification process on the grounds that the plaintiffs have changed their legal strategy. Judge Wilken basically asked, "So?" and the defendants had no response. Pierce contends that this legal setback for the NCAA, along with recent NCAA retreats on the issue of stipends for players, portends an extinction-level event for college sports.

By and large, the people charged with running our various sports conglomerates have proven through history to be as incapable of taking the long view of their own survival as the average brachiosaurus was. They blunder around, eating whatever comes under their noses, trampling the scenery and hooting loudly into the wind. They never see the meteor coming. …

For the NCAA to survive in its current form, it has to win this lawsuit or get the lawsuit dismissed. There’s no third alternative. The NCAA can’t settle and then go back to the status quo ante. It can’t pay off O'Bannon and Russell and Robertson and all the rest of them, and then start business as usual again as regards Cody Zeller or Kenny Boynton. If it loses the lawsuit, the effect on the NCAA's financial structure would be profound. About which, at this point, the device has not yet been invented capable of measuring how little I care. Instead, I stand aside and listen to the stomping and the hooting from the thick Cretaceous rain forest, which is just loud enough to drown out the high whistling sound of something coming down from the sky.

I'm not sure comparing the NCAA to the dinosaurs makes much sense. The dinosaurs were wiped out entirely and a new world order replaced their presence. The elimination of the NCAA is more akin to the extinction of the Dodo bird: the weakest, most ineffectual player on the evolutionary stage will saunter off while the crazy dudes with guns and hunting dogs remain on top.

Or maybe Pierce is right about the extent of the mass extinction... but he forgets that the elite athletic departments and conferences aren't the dinosaurs, they’re the cockroaches. I just don't trust these folks to go quietly into the night. They'll let the NCAA take this hit regarding past licensing of "classic team" likenesses and then come up with some new regime where the individual schools capture all the revenue from licensing their own classic teams through bi-lateral agreements with manufacturers to create some semblance of a competitive market for these likenesses and go on exploiting the next generation of future former athletes.

Would that survive legal scrutiny? Maybe not, but the big power players in the sport will happily drag out the issue as long as possible to capture as much profit as possible, even at the expense of the weaker sports schools who would lose out without the NCAA dividing the licensing pot. But for a major athletic department, this is no time for communism! There's already a roadmap out there to ditch the NCAA and kill off the weaker sports schools leaching off the strong.

So the NCAA might die, but for the players themselves, the motto would be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

The O’Bannon Decision [Grantland]
Ed O’Bannon vs. the NCAA: The antitrust lawsuit explained [SBNation]
NCAA Student-Athlete Licensing Program — How Could It Happen and What Are the Elements? [Winthrop Intelligence]

More stories from Above The Law:

• When Luddites Handle Cyber Security, You End Up With American Law Firms
• The Practice: Blogging And Other Social Media, Like A Search Engine Whore
• Quote of the Day: Trump’s Lawyers May Be ‘FIRED!’ Over This

Filed Under: ed o'bannon, money, ncaa, publicity rights
Companies: ea, ncaa

Honey Badger Don't Care... Unless You're Cheering On A College Player With That Nickname

from the intellectual-property-gone-mad dept

Not too long ago, we wrote about how lots of fans of (then) Kentucky basketball player Anthony Davis were creating and buying bootleg merchandise based on the phrase "fear the brow!" which is associated with him because of his prominent unibrow. Of course, after graduating and turning pro, Davis immediately sought the trademark on the phrase, so that only he could profit from it. But now, Stephan Kinsella points us to another college athlete for whom "bootleg" apparel is apparently an issue. LSU football player Tyrann Mathieu has been nicknamed "Honey Badger" after this famous memetastic YouTube video about how "Honey Badger don't care." Not surprisingly, fans of Mathieu want to support him, and have created various apparel and signs and the like, making use of the Honey Badger name, as well as statements from the video. All of this resulted in LSU warning that Honey Badger Does Care and that its "Compliance Office" was sending out cease & desist letters to any products that have the name or likeness of Mathieu, including the phrase "honey badger" accompanied by Mathieu's uniform number (7), his name, image or anything that associates it with LSU.

Now, much of this is because of completely asinine NCAA rules against selling products that advertise student athletes (even without their knowledge or permission). But, the overall concept seems even more ridiculous when you realize that the whole Honey Badger meme comes from somewhere else entirely. Is it really that wrong that fans of Mathieu want to celebrate a player they like?

Filed Under: honey badger, ncaa rules, trademark, tyrann mathieu
Companies: lsu, ncaa

NCAA Goes Backwards On Streaming The Basketball Tournament

from the same-service,-now-for-a-fee! dept

If anyone has gotten the streaming sports thing right in the past, it's been NCAA Basketball. I've actually pointed to them as an example in the past of how the rest of the sporting world should embrace streaming their games and advertise the hell out of the experience. Rather than locking down access to viewership, like the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL, the NCAA Basektball Tournament got it right, partnering with broadcasters to stream the games to their sites free of charge, with all the advertising one would expect on television. It was a wonderful method for ensuring that one of my monitors at work had their games on. It made it certain that I'd be that weird guy staring at images on his phone while taking the train home from work. It confused my neighbors as to how I could somehow simultaneously grill steaks on my deck while announcers went ballistic over last second hail mary shots as time ran out on the clock. I was engaged (sorry Mom and Dad, I mean engaged to the game).

And now they've taken that all away from me. To be fair, they're still streaming the games. And they promise that the streams will work across multiple platforms (computer, iPad, iPhone, Android devices, etc.). And it only costs $4.99 for the entire tournament.

But that's where the lie in all this is. It's not just $4.99 to watch the tournament on every device other than my television (where it's FREE!). There are serious mental transactions to consider here. Like most red-blooded Americans, I'm in an NCAA office bracket. Something like half the games in the tournament take place during work hours across the country. Most of us don't have televisions at our desks, in our cubicles, wherever. Watching at work is kind of the whole point here, with all the ducking and dodging from our bosses we have to do as a result. Now, we can argue all we want whether watching the tourney at work is productive or a good idea, but from the NCAA's standpoint, they shouldn't care at all. They should want people to watch. Asking them to pay $4.99 to do all of this is a massive fail, particularly since all of those same advertisements that were in place remain.

So...they're charging for something that used to be free...without adding any benefit. I watched the games on their feeds the past couple of years. This year, not so much. The obvious question is does the money they're making from the $4.99/subscriber outweigh the eyeballs that are no longer watching the advertising because of that cost. Maybe those in the comments can change my mind, but I'm fairly certain there's more folks like me out there than people buying the "package".

Filed Under: basketball, march madness, ncaa, streaming
Companies: ncaa

The First Rule Of NCAA March Madness Is You Can't Mention NCAA March Madness

from the where's-that-happening?-shhhhhh! dept

What is it with sports leagues that think they have the right to deny anyone from making factual statements? We've seen it (repeatedly) with the Olympics and we've seen it with the World Cup... and now we're seeing it with the NCAA men's basketball tournament, better known as March Madness. This week, of course, some of the games will be played in Syracuse (including, I feel the urgent need to mention, the surprise of the tournament, my alma mater Cornell), and jsl4980 was the first of a few of you to send in the news that local businesses are being told they cannot mention the fact that the tournament is being held there. No local businesses are allowed to "welcome" fans or players for the event. They can't mention the NCAA event is happening, or that we're at the "Sweet Sixteen" level.

Of course, that's all according to the NCAA, which is basically lying. They're abusing the rights that trademark law gives them to try to restrict free speech on factual information, in a misguided effort to squeeze more money out of sponsors, by pretending that only sponsors can mention the event. But trademark law does not give you blanket control over the trademarked terms -- and presenting factual information, or welcoming people to a city by mentioning an event that is absolutely happening there should not be considered trademark infringement in the slightest.

Apparently, in the past the NCAA wasn't as abusive of trademarks, but it's learned a thing or two by watching how other sporting events abuse trademark law, and now everyone seems to be bending over backwards assuming that just because the NCAA forbids something that they have the legal right to do so.

Filed Under: basketball, march madness, ncaa, syracuse, trademark
Companies: ncaa

NCAA Tries To Bully Fan Discussion Site Into Handing Over Its Domain Name

from the how-about-ncaasucks.com? dept

Reader Eileen writes in to alert us that the NCAA -- known for its overly restrictive views at times -- is trying to bully the owner of the discussion website NCAAbbs.com into handing over its domain names. The NCAA is, not surprisingly, complaining that any domain name that includes NCAA automatically should belong to the NCAA. Of course, it's not so simple. While the NCAA does have a trademark on its name, that doesn't mean it gets automatic control over any site that uses NCAA in its domain name. The NCAAbbs site is clearly not associated with the NCAA and is pretty clearly just a fan discussion site. The owner of the site says that he's planning to fight the demand, and hopefully he can succeed. While the domain dispute process can be a bit arbitrary, the courts have often realized that a trademark holder does not get full control over every domain that mentions them. Hopefully, that will be the case here as well. Of course, the one area where it's pretty clear that you can keep such a domain name is in cases of "sucks sites." So perhaps if the NCAA wins this, the owner can simple relocate to NCAAreallysucks.com.

More to the point, however, you have to wonder what the NCAA thinks it's doing here. You have a site that has been set up to promote the NCAA and all of the various sports teams within the NCAA. This is an incredibly useful promotional tool that the NCAA should be celebrating and helping rather than attacking. Why do so many organizations think it's smart to threaten, attack or sue their biggest fans?

Filed Under: domain names, ncaa, trademark
Companies: ncaa