OT: Fake NFL fans lobbied FCC to maintain blackout rules

[LeHab]

WASHINGTON—“I write as a football fan,” read the letter to the Federal Communications Commission, “to strongly urge you to maintain the FCC’s current broadcast rules.”
It was signed Bilbo Baggins, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

That’s odd, because the Mr. Baggins everyone knows isn’t human or from Brooklyn. He’s a hobbit from Middle Earth in “The Lord of the Rings” books and movies.
Mr. Baggins’s letter urged the FCC not to drop the “Sports Blackout Rule.”
It was among what may be thousands of bogus, identically worded letters generated on the National Football League’s behalf, which were posted in 2014 to the FCC’s website from scores of “fans,” a Wall Street Journal investigation shows. These supposed fans opposed an FCC move to repeal the blackout rule. That rule banned cable and satellite providers from showing home games that weren’t sold out when the NFL blocked local TV broadcasts of those games.
...
The decades-old blackout rule aimed to get people to buy tickets. A group called the Sports Fans Coalition and cable and satellite providers were lobbying the FCC to dump it.
About 21,000 identical letters went to the agency urging it to preserve the rule, saying: “The NFL, my local community and fans like me all win when home games are sold out.”
...

The NFL hired four firms to lobby Congress on the rule, disclosure records show. A website, protectfootballonfreetv.com, invited fans to fill out forms that produced letters starting with the “I write as a football fan” line, says a person familiar with the campaign.
A Washington, D.C., firm, Direct Impact, using a subcontractor, collected the letters, says another person familiar with the campaign. Direct Impact directed Journal inquiries to its parent, Burson-Marsteller, part of global communications company WPP PLC. A Burson-Marsteller spokeswoman said: “For our program with the NFL back in 2014, we used industry-leading and widely used online technology and practices based on targeted advertising—and used by firms across the grass-roots industry—to engage key audiences.”
...
Asked about letters from the Bagginses and other unlikely sounding names, she said: “We have nothing further.”
The letters went out in seven batches with cover letters dated from July through September 2014, the FCC’s online docket shows. Among them were some from real fans, including Paul Slifer of New Jersey, who says he completed a form on an NFL website and agreed with the league that the blackout rule would result in more games on free TV.

The NFL’s Other Problem: Fake Fans Lobbying for the Blackout

Fortunately real fans interests prevailed in the end.

Click to read more...

 

[Hivemind]

Yet another example of the FCC's open letter system being abused by corporate interests.

 

[Djp]

FCC received thousands of letters from fake fans who 'supported' the NFL's blackout policy

Here is a different account.

 

[KevFu]

It's really difficult to talk about business issues in the US without bring up politics, since virtually all of politics is corporations buying their way into the political system and controlling the rules.

Every single issue that people think is politics is really about money. Follow the money and you get your answer. There's some cases of simple, succinct "bumper sticker" platforms because they rally single-issue voters to a side (aka, getting votes to get the power to make the money-making decisions).

For example:
Gun manufacturers donating billions to politicians to thwart any changes that impact sales despite mass shootings monthly.
Gay marriage opposition is funded by insurance companies, because if they can't be legally married, gay couples buy TWO insurance policies and not one.


The weird thing is that the FCC change really had zero effect on the NFL at all.