Two years ago 6 NHL fans filed the lawsuit in New York. The lawsuit centres on the relationship between the NHL's TV broadcast rights, nationally and locally, and the NHL Centre Ice package. The aim of the case is allow NHL teams to sell broadcast rights to stations outside of their local market.
NHL Centre Ice is a subscription service offered by cable and satellite providers in the United States and Canada that allows viewers to watch out of market NHL games for $179 a season. Primarily aimed at fans, like one of the plaintiffs Thomas Laumann, who lives in Florida and is a fan of the New York Islanders. His argument in the case is that if he wants to watch Islanders games he has to pay the fee for a Centre Ice subscription but in market games are not broadcast on Centre Ice meaning he has to pay $10 a month for access to the local TV station that broadcasts either Tampa Bay Lightning or Florida Panthers games. The claim that the restrictions on broadcasting are inappropriately driving up the price of sports cable TV packages.
Now lawyers for the plaintiffs are planning to attempt to turn this into a class action. If the judge approves of a class action then all of the Centre Ice subscribers in the US will be plaintiffs. Canada is not affected by the case. Documents from 1984, produced by then NHL President John Ziegler, will be used by the lawyers in court. The documents show that some NHL teams were unhappy that larger teams were selling rights outside of their markets. Ziegler said preventing teams from doing that would be "anti competitive". A year later he changed his mind when ESPN pressured the league into a lucrative deal providing no other broadcaster was allowed to compete with them.
In rejecting the NHL's motion to dismiss the case the judge said "the plaintiffs have carried their initial burden of showing an actual impact on competition. The clubs have entered into an express agreement to limit competition." "There is also evidence of a negative impact on the output, price and perhaps even the quality of sports programming". The NHL argue that restricted rights would make teams invest more in higher quality programming.
If the motion is successful then teams could sell their rights to markets where certain players may be popular, the Washington Capitals could sell rights to areas with large Russian populations to using the popularity of Alex Ovechkin, the New York Rangers could capitalise on the pulling power of Swedish superstar goalie Henrik Lundqvist.
In short, this will revolutionise the way broadcast rights are sold and packaged. Not just in the NHL and not just in the United States. Major League Baseball is also facing a similar case.
The best way to compare it for any readers not familiar with the NHL or how TV rights work is to say the Premier League decide to offer an online service costing around £30 a month for the length of the season, then saying that any game shown live on Sky Sports isn't viewable on the service, you have to pay an extra £30-40 for a Sky Sports subscription. Sky already do this at those costs in the UK with the NFL's Gamepass service. Premier Sports do this in the UK with the NHL's Gamecenter, although Premier Sports and NHL Gamecenter are both half the price of Sky and Gamepass.
If the fans win this case it can send shockwaves throughout the sporting world.
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