The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s dubious regulation of intercollegiate athletics has been a frequent topic on this blog, but I must admit that this absurd example of overwrought regulatory control from last weekend’s NCAA Super-Regional baseball series surprised even me:
Everybody can watch a game on TV and put their musings online. But don’t try blogging from a press box at an NCAA championship.
After the NCAA tossed Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett for doing just that at an NCAA baseball tournament game Sunday ó actually revoking his media credential during a Louisville-Oklahoma State super regional game ó it said Monday that it was just protecting its rights.
Like rights to live game radio or TV coverage, suggests NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson, live coverage online is a longstanding “protected right” that is bought and sold. Blogging reporters can report about things such as game “atmosphere,” he says in an e-mail, but “any reference to game action” could cost them their credentials.
Christianson says those online “rights” were packaged into media deals with CBS and ESPN ó which aired the game. Monday, ESPN spokesman Dave Nagle said “our rights are the live TV rights. We didn’t ask them (to take the reporter’s credential.) And they didn’t ask us.”
A similar incident occurred at the Rice-Texas A&M Super-Regional in Houston.
Howard Wasserman analyzes the speech restriction issues, while Rich Karcher reviews it from an intellectual property standpoint. And the NY Times is reporting today that the Courier-Journal is weighing whether to mount a legal challenge to the NCAA’s action on First Amendment grounds.
What on earth are these NCAA-types thinking?
By the way, not everyone is pleased with the way in which Rice won the Houston Super-Regional.
This is actually an extension of an old battle. If I recall correctly, several years back there was legal action over a service that provided real-time “box scoring” for baseball games via phone/texting. Also, IIRC, the ultimate decision was that providing such ‘details’ of an ongoing game did indeed violate the rights of the owner of “play by play” (which, if I understood correctly, was usually whomever had payed for ‘broadcast’ rights). Generally speaking, while the game is ongoing the ‘general’ media (i.e. those who report ‘news’ and have not payed for specific rights) is not supposed to report much more than score and time remaining.
Similar issues came up several Olympic games ago. The media protested that events were “news” that they should be able to cover(reported real time, footage shown, etc.) without paying for. Sorry, said the courts, “news” coverage was limited when it infringed on other legal rights. If you even want to be there, you have to agree with what the owners demand. The media does not *have* to be given free tickets and a press box,computer access, etc.
A more interesting question would be: What if the media hired a blimp, which flew in public airspace, and reported what it saw from there? If the game is viewable from a public space…
You will probably see more fighting along these lines. I’ve heard of issues with video-phones at NBA games, for example. A snippet of a swearing player (or celebrity spectator) can bring a pretty penny. But someone else has paid for the right to tape (and ticket buyers have usually given up their rights, read the fine print on the tickets).
I really don’t think there are any particularly novel legal questions here, though certainly someone may try and set some kind of precedent.