cleduc said:
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cach...S+antitrust+decision+"O'Toole"&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
The NHL as a business can demonstrate fiscal failure over a number of years. With decertification, that is clear evidence of collective bargaining failure. In order for the NHL owners to salvage their situation, they can make the case that the circumstances gave them little choice - they had to restructure in order to continue legally to manage some level of fair competition of their league beyond which owner has the most money to buy talent. The court's acceptance of MLS doing what they did was partially based upon prior failures of the multi-owner structures.
Prior failures? Why cant they can restructure using the players framework?
The MLS decision was an interesting read. One thing that came to mind when reading the appeals of the jury verdict on the relevant market, is how you could win a case on process. You want good lawyers. This written decision sure seemed to frame the players as plaintiffs as the suspect, or maybe it was just me.
It seems it failed with a jury, first on the grounds of the relevant market, and then their inability to combine to control it as a small cog. But not prior failures.
I guess that reasons. But it also would seem to stand to reason that the NHL owners would be definitely be combining previously individual companies for the purposes of restraining salaries for which they are more easily than MLS described as a single market. Unless I guess Bain starts another league. Then monopolizing a single market may become a harder claim to make. Maybe thats why the league was making the case that the NHL isnt a major league anymore.
The other point was that MLS owned all the teams, intellectual property rights, tickets, equipment, broadcast rights, negotiated all stadium leaases assuming the liabilities, paid players and paid the owner/operators with a management fee. The NHL should think about this. Would Jacobs be willing to own his team for a mangement fee?
But, if the NHL owners all wanted to pool their money, buy stadiums centrally, negotiate all deals, that would be revenue sharing, what the players are after. In a situation like that, setting a percentage like 54% might mean something. But in their current incarnation, it is a meaningless number.
Of course another centralized function outlined in this MLS case was central boardroom decisions on how to allocate the marquee players for our entertainment pleasure. There's something i find uncomfortable about that. The rational marketplace provides an integrity and assurance I, (in a minority it seems), feel is needed for those the sporting and competitive integrity above the business and entertainment value.
Although the players calls for revenue sharing seem to dangerously opportune the owners with a way to go down the path of centralization MLS used
ABA Sample Jury Instructions in Civil Antitrust Cases, at C-6 to C-13 (1999). It defined monopoly power as "the power to pay lower than competitive wages for the services being acquired without having the sellers of those services--the players--turn to another league or team for employment"; and it explained that the geographic market was the geographic area "to which players can turn, as a practical matter, for alternate opportunities for employment as professional soccer players."
I like the way he put is as a vertical device for producing horizontal coordination, limiting competition among operator/investors..
I want to dismiss the inevitable forthcoming suggestion from some that other leagues define the market, as it is obviously only this league that defines the competitive value of their services. MLS made great hay out of the reasoning that the existing competition was none. An NHL owner merger would seem to be more than a bump against the phrase "may .. lessen competition"
there is no implied immunity from section 7 for combinations that lessen competition in a new market.
The "New" market exemption was an interesting one. I guess it makes sense in that if you combine to reduce salaries too much you will induce competition, and its only at that point that combining really means anything. But how could the NHL owners ever obtain such a distinction now? Still, it puts Bain in a more emphasiszed perspective.
