September 14, 2015

Episode 2 – Baseball Antitrust Exemption with Gordon Hylton

In this episode, Peter Ott discusses Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption with UVA Law Professor Gordon Hylton. Antitrust law is designed to protect consumers from anticompetitive practices by monopolies or groups of businesses. Most sports leagues are subject to antitrust laws in some way, however, Major League Baseball has historically enjoyed an exemption from the applicability of these laws. This greatly affects the “playing field” upon which professional baseball operates. Peter and Professor Hylton discuss why this antitrust exemption exists and what are its practical effects on baseball players, owners, and fans.

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September 5, 2015

Deflategate and the NFLPA

This past Thursday, amid all of the “Deflategate” news, I came across the following three-minute long discussion between NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith and ESPN Legal Analyst Roger Cossack on ESPN.com:

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August 17, 2015

NLRB Rejects Northwestern Unionization Effort

Today, the National Labor Relations Board made a surprising decision that was actually a bit of a non-decision. The Board unanimously ruled that it could not rule on the issue of college athlete unionization because labor law only allows the Board to look at private-sector workplaces and only 17 of the 125 schools eligible to play in a college football bowl are private universities. The Board says that “asserting jurisdiction over a single team would not promote stability in labor relations across the league.” This decision has the practical effect of preventing Northwestern University football players from being able to unionize.

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