King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Fantasy ruling: Major League Baseball gets lucky and loses a battle in its war on fans.

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Aug. 9, 2006 | Major League Baseball got a huge break in court Tuesday in its attempt to force fantasy-league companies to pay a fee to use players' names and statistics.

It lost.

In a summary judgment in a lawsuit brought by CBC Distribution and Marketing, a company that runs fantasy leagues, federal Judge Mary Ann Medler ruled that baseball doesn't have the exclusive right to ballplayers' names and stats, and that even if it did, that right "must give way to CBC's First Amendment right to freedom of expression."

Medler wrote that if the court had found in favor of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, MLB's Internet arm, "information which is otherwise readily accessible would be removed from the public domain and CBC's First Amendment rights would be infringed."

Baseball, which argued that it has the exclusive right of publicity to players' names and stats under a 2005 licensing agreement with the players association, may appeal.

Is there a single baseball fan out there who's rooting for MLB to prevail in this case?

"This was just baseball trying -- and I dont blame them -- to seize this growing area and make money on it," Rudy Telscher, a lawyer representing CBC, told Alan Schwarz of the New York Times.

Well, I do blame them. It's baseball declaring war not just on its fans, but on its most devoted fans. A lot of people occasionally take in a ballgame rather than, say, going to a movie, watch a few innings when "House" is a rerun. Those people don't play much fantasy baseball. Baseball fans do.

It's received wisdom nowadays that baseball's growth since the 1994 strike was spurred first by Cal Ripken chasing and breaking Lou Gehrig's consecutive games record in 1995, then by the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase in 1998 and the general offensive explosion of the "chicks dig the longball" era, which is still going on and which is possibly driven in large part by steroids.

But I'd like to hear a good argument that the explosive growth of fantasy baseball isn't a major driver of baseball's boom. Because I've never heard one. It's a chicken-egg question. Maybe fantasy's growth is an effect of baseball's. But maybe it's a cause.

Baseball wants to cage this free-market golden goose so it can make a few bucks. And even though we're talking millions here, in the big picture, it's a few bucks.

Next page: Sound business strategy MLB should learn: Don't whiz on the customers