FanPost

CBA fun

Hello everyone my name is Ken Mack, and I am currently a 3rd year law student at Penn State. As the CBA negations are ongoing I thought I could put the vast amount of money I wasted on this degree to good use, by doing a hopefully multi-part little fan shot on CBAs in American sports, and eventually Fraser V. MLS

In order to fully understand Fraser v. MLS and CBAs you first must look at the backbone of antitrust, which is the Sherman Act of 1890. Named after Sen. John Sherman, the principal author of the Act, the Act was passed to prohibit activities that the federal government deems to be anti-competitive, it is more commonly used to prevent monopolies; think of the breakup of the Bell telephone system. The most important takeaways from the Sherman Act are: section 1 and the "rule of reason". A section 1 violation, the most common violation, and the one that comes up the most in a professional sport context, has three elements: 1. an agreement, 2. which unreasonably restrains competition, 3. which affects interstate commerce. The rule of reason, which is the analysis used for a section 1 violation, asks within the totality of the circumstances does the challenge practice promotes or suppresses market competition, which in turn unreasonably restrains trade.

To turn this back into a sporting context, the first challenge in sporting context occurred in Federal Baseball Club v. National League. In that case the Supreme Court in 1922 ruled that the Sherman Act did not apply to Major League Baseball because, "the business if giving exhibitions of baseball which are purely state affairs." While this is not the same reason that the 1st circuit gave in holding that Major League soccer was not in violation of antitrust, (it is a single entity and therefore legally incapable of conspiring with itself) it is an important first step in understanding the relationship between anti-trust and professional sports.

That’s it for now, thank you for taking the time to read. If you have any thoughts or suggestions about this little blurb let me know. Also apologizes for not linking to the actual court cases the site I use is a pay site, but Wikipedia does a fine job of summaries if you are more interested.

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