Competitive Entertainment: Implications of the NFL Lockout Litigation for Sports, Theatre, Music, and Video Entertainment

Abstract:     
The 2011 NFL lockout reveals profound changes in the labor and product markets for the entire entertainment industry, driven by a revolution in technology. This article explores the revolution in the professional sports, theatre, and movie-making industries and concludes that it is fragmenting production, blurring the boundaries between labor markets and product markets, and introducing new forms of competition. As a result, the labor exemptions to the antitrust laws, which featured prominently in the NFL controversy are becoming less relevant, shifting the law's policing of competition to antitrust rule-of-reason analysis, where counterpoises such as labor unions are inactive, and making overaggressive interpretation and enforcement of copyright law a major danger to realization of the new markets' potential.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 112

Keywords: NFL, lockout, sports, entertainment industry, labor market, product market, antitrust law, copyright law

JEL Classification: K20, K21, K31, K39, L82, L83

Accepted Paper Series