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Hacksaw’s Great Sports Weekend PODCAST
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“NFL–SHOCKING LOSS”
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The NFL is big money business.  It is all about the profit margins.  It offers a tremendously great product and charges exorbitant prices to its fans to enjoy what the NFL is all about.

And now it has taken a massive financial hit.

The 8-member Los Angeles jury unanimously voted late Thursday the NFL was guilty of anti-trust violations and ordered them to pay a record (4.8B) dollars in damages in a class action suit filed by more than 2.8M fans and business.

Because it is an anti-trust violation, damages are tripled meaning the NFL is on the hook for nearly 14.4B in damages for the pricing of the popular Sunday Ticket package with its partner Direct TV.

The NFL argued, that because it makes a large quantity of games available on free TV, they have the right to take segments of the TV package, and create premium packages.

Yes they did, yes they could, but this is where the case veered off the road.

Yes we get to se eall the Chargers-Rams games in LA and San Diego, as our home teams, free of charge.

Yes, we access CBS-Fox-NBC National games of the week on free television too.

And yes the NFL has spun off certain segments of the schedule, to create Monday Night Football on cable, a subscription deal.

That’s been the blueprint now for the streaming packages, created for Amazon, Peacock and You Tube.

And the NFL, in its creative genius, has games this year on separate TV deals on Wednesday-Christmas Day, Black Friday after Thanksgiving, special Saturday games too, and playoff games, all bringing in different dollars via streaming deals.

The LA jury decision was not a reaction to the creative genius of the NFL Broadcast Division.  This decision came because of the evidence of collusion, the dialogue of how the NFL could maintain its big money relationships with the networks, while building a premier price tag for Sunday ticket, that had its blue print designed in discussions with CBS-Fox.

Those networks wanted to preserve the integrity of the big money rights fees they were paying, insisting that Sunday Ticket be priced with huge numbers, so high, fans would not turn away from the CBS-Fox national games to pay big money to go watch anything everything on Sunday ticket.

What destroyed the NFL’s stance that it’s the ‘Fans Choice’ was a paper trail of Emails and letters exchanged by the NFL with CBS-Fox, about how to price the Sunday Ticket package so fewer people would want to pay top dollar and would instead stay with the traditional telecasts.

That’s collusion. That’s an anti trust violation.  And that’s why the jury ruled within 5-hours, after reading thru volumes of paperwork correspondence, stacking the pricing the fans would have to pay.  iI was like restraint of trade.  It was not freedom of choice.  It was a money grab of the greatest degree.

I loved Sunday Ticket, for I had the best of both worlds.  When they shifted to You Tube and asked for my 499-fee, I said no.

The NFL was getting 2B a year from Sunday Ticket., a paltry dollar total compared to what they get for all the other TV packages they have, that are part of an 11-year media rights deal..  But they got it illegally, by violating the anti trust laws.

If this deal gets appealed and turned down, it will cost every owner 321M-in TV money, a revenue sharing penalty they’d have to put into the pool to pay the 14.4B in damages.

Think about that, they violated the law for 2B a year and it will cost them 14.4B in penalties.

Sometimes, too smart for their own good.  Sometimes too greedy too.

Sorry for the public stance I am taking, but I could not buy the offensive closing statement from an NFL lawyer….’We are pro consumer…pro fan’.

Yes this is the same NFL that lost anti trust lawsuits trying to block the Raiders move to LA.  The same league that lost in court trying to block NFL player free agency that resulted in bitter strikes.  The same NFL that yearly said no links to brain damage, dementia, alzheimers and players suicides from concussions, then paid nearly 900M to prevent the case from going to court.

I thought it would be too complex for a jury to understand, and would wind up in a hung jury, or maybe a not guilty verdict.

But right there in black and white are what’s legal-illegal in big business deals, what is right or what is an anti trust violation.  All that back and forth correspondance from the NFL to CBS-Fox about pricing was a joint effort to control all pricing.  And that is against the law.

The NFL is right about one thing, ‘it’s the fans decisions’.  Sure is, where to tell the NFL to send the damage settlement that more than 2.4M-individual fans and 20-combined lawsuits wound up winning on Thursday night.

Lies, deceit, paper trails, smoke screens, arbitration cases, all part of the NFL’s game plans for Sunday Ticket.

In NFL language that Roger Goodell and every owner will now understand.  The NFL-Sunday Ticket-Anti Trust violation…’greatest QB sack in the history of the game that started in 1920′.

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