Which Hat Do You Wear?

Personally, I’m on a campaign to bring the fedora back in style but if you are an NFL fan you might choose to wear a baseball style hat with your favourite team’s logo prominently displayed (hey, it’s January 15 it’s about time for me to make a post relative to sports). If you have purchased this hat recently it’s likely to be made by Reebok, which is the genesis of a U.S. court case between the (deep voiced commentator) National Football League and Amercan Needle a hat manufacturer, with potentially far reaching implications which have been commented on widely in recent days. This case is ostensibly about contracts to make hats; while American Needle asserts that the exclusive contract violates the Sherman Antitrust Act in the US as there are 32 teams competing with each other, the NFL asserts that it is one entity. The lower courts agreed with the NFL for the purposes of hats and American Needle appealed, where this gets interesting is that NFL supported the appeal to the Supreme Court. In football parlance the NFL is hoping to connect on a hail mary pass, which would see the Supreme Court declare the league a single entity for all purposes, the larger implication being that the league could then set salaries at pre-determined levels as well as ticket prices at all venues and sign many exclusive provisioning contracts. The NFL has been supported in this case by many other professional sports leagues which would follow the NFL’s lead should they succeed in this endeavour. In short, a successful completion of this hail mary pass could potentially change the landscape of professional sports in North American as we know it. On Wednesday of this week the Supreme Court heard the various arguments involved in the case. And while I hesitate to engage in the gambit of interpreting what the proceedings revealed, I have no such compunction about linking to people who do engage in legal tea leaf reading here and here .

It’s likely that the potential implications of the case are overhyped but the potential for such a shift in the landscape has caught the imagination of those who follow the business of sports. While the average fan watches the games on the field this weekend you can be sure that many other leagues are far more interested in the results that will come out of the court in the coming days.