Too Much Competition: The Supreme Court Sacks the NFL's Single Entity Defense 9-0 in American Needle v. National Football League

Abstract

(8 Willamette Sports L.J., no. 2, 2011, at 21). This article considers issues raised by the Supreme Court’s decision in American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League (NFL), an antitrust case. American Needle, an apparel manufacturer, accused the NFL of conspiring under Section One of the Sherman Act. In its decision, the Court had to decide whether the NFL was even capable of conspiring under the Sherman Act, which would require the Court to view the NFL as thirty-two separate entities rather than a single entity. To classify the NFL as a single entity, the Court would have had to decide there was “economic unity” amongst the thirty-two teams, and, if so, whether the NFL’s conduct was concerted action that unreasonably restrained trade. The article argues that courts must look past the intra-team competition among NFL teams when determining single-entity versus separate entities status. Part I describes the NFL and the antitrust issues. Part II examines Section One of the Sherman Act and “rule of reason” analysis. Part III discusses relevant case law used by the Supreme Court in its opinion. Part IV discusses the “non-statutory labor exemption” afforded to the NFL in disputes involving labor. Parts V and VI review various court decisions involving sports leagues and antitrust law. Finally, Part VII focuses on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in American Needle, addressing the “competition” and “unity” between the NFL teams. The author argues that an analysis of how NFL teams depend on each other for financial success would have yielded a different result.