This NFL lockout is intriguing to me. You must realize, I’m a sports fan, a politics nut and have grown interested in financial markets. The NFL lockout hits all three.
What really caught my eye is the anti-trust lawsuit. The NFLPA has decertified. Why? That’s a complicated question, but one answer is so the players on an individual basis can sue the NFL (and then form a class-action lawsuit) claiming that the NFL is a monopoly. (The NFLPA cannot itself sue because it had collectively bargained an agreement, so in essence, it signed off on the monopoly.)
The NFL doesn’t agree. No, they (the owners) think that each of the 32 teams is a separate business and subsequently, players have 32 different places to work. What the NFL would like you to forget is that the marketplace as a whole is not just the NFL, but the whole sports landscape. As the Wall Street Journal put it, the NFL is a “classic cartel—32 individual entities working in concert with one another.”
The players are basically saying, “the NFL has locked us out, and there is nowhere for us to make a living because the NFL is the only game in town, and they are the only game town because they are a monopoly.”
You might be asking yourself, isn’t it obvious that the NFL is a monopoly? I agree.
The players are basically arguing that a cook can work at a number of restaurants and find comparable wages. A quarterback can only make his market value inside the NFL. The NFL is saying, no, you can work at 32 different places.
That’s the mumbo jumbo portion. Now we get to a crucial point that I agree with the players on: the NFL’s amateur draft is utterly anti-capitalistic and unfair to the players.
A lot of you reading this will be graduating and moving into the job market soon. Let’s say you are studying Nursing. After you get your degree, the local hospitals take turns picking Nursing graduates, and someone calls you and tells you where you’ll work and how much you’ll make. Sound fun?
College players who wish to turn pro have no control over what company, in what city, they will work. The ability to choose is a fundamental right to a free society. (Politics!)
That’s a great example of why the lockout interests me. The problems being discussed can be intriguing if you apply them to your own life.
Also at issue is the NFL’s salary cap. In no way is a salary cap okay in a capitalistic society. Again, imagine you are a nurse, you are doing a great job, but you can’t get a raise because all your potential employers have together decreed nurses can only be paid so much. Does that sound fair?
The NFL must know it is a monopoly. The owners are not happy that the players brought this up again; billions of dollars are at stake as the courts debate the question.
September is a long ways away, so don’t expect any type of agreement until around then. I don’t think either side will think about budging until they start losing money. After all, both of their business is playing football games, and I’ve never seen an NFL game in April.