Thursday, May 12, 2011

NFL & Players Go Back To Court on TV Deal

The NFL is back in Court - this time Minnesota.

You may remember that Judge David Doty that the NFL violated the CBA by entering into deals with television networks that would pay them $4 billion if there was no football.

Why was this a big deal? In the event that football was not played in 2011, the NFL wouldn't be sharing television revenue with the players, and in securing a payout for not having a season in 2011, the Union argued that the NFL did not seek to maximize revenue in other seasons when the league would need to share that money with players.

So for the Union, the deal violated an agreement between the parties that the NFL must negotiate in good faith with a view to maximizing revenue for players. The NFL took less in years it had to share revenue to guarantee that it gets paid if there is no football.

Basically, the NFL left money on the table in other sharing years to get paid if there was no football.

For some background, click here.

So now the parties are in Court arguing over how much the NFL should pay the players for violating the CBA. The NFL doesn't want to pay beyond the $6.9 million it was ordered to pay by a master, and the players could ask for $600 million to $1 billion dollars.

If Doty does assess damages, the case could be appealed to the same Appeals Court hearing the lockout issue.

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