Major League Baseball asks, How many fans can we drive away this year
 

Do these greedy ass people ever stop trying to think of ways to piss off their fans.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/15/bas....ap/index.html

i wonder whats next...they will probably try to find a way to charge people for talking about their favorite teams or players at bars.

Meh - I personally don't see a problem with this. The statistics wouldn't be there without the teams and players - why shouldn't they benefit from a brand-new industry that is using that data for entertainment purposes?

They will charge personal seat licenses to season ticket holders....ooops football already doing that
baseball is sport that relies too heavily on the fact that it is so popular. i have never seen such a crock of crap that MLB does... be it a tie in the all-star game to outpricing the average joes ability to go to a game

Ever bought an NHL ticket? ;)

How many for-profit industries are there that purposely sell something below cost so the "average joe" can buy/attend/etc? This is just such a damn fallacy that there's some conspiracy to raise ticket prices beyond the reach of what the consumer will pay. Read "Macro Economics", Chapter One, page one.

Ugh, tell me about it. After service fees through Ticketmaster, I think to see the Wings its about 50 bucks for a seat relatively high in the upper bowl behind one of the goals.

Try $60+ for upper level Thrashers -- $52 for ticket + $7 "convenience charge" + $2.50 "delivery charge (for emailing them to me) and IIRC there's an additional processing fee of about $5 per ticket on top of the convenience charge.

I agree ... but that's with the understanding that "the average joe" is not "the consumer" for the majority of pro sports tickets.

Inside the back cover of this text, you will find a detailed explanation of the funtional use of color for this edition?

Getting back to the original point of the post, didn't MLB already lose a case like this ten years or so ago?

Er, I guess it wasn't MLB.

Motorola v. NBA, 1997.

Either way, you have to think precedent is setting MLB up for a fall here.

Yep, it was detailed in "The Numbers Game" by Alan Schwarz (GREAT BOOK, btw!). The 2nd Circuit said that stats are facts, not protected under copyright law. MLB was backed the NBA in that Motorola case, btw. They'll go down hard on this one.

Agreed on the Schwarz book. My copy is well-thumbed. That's where I remembered the previous case from, but findlaw helped me track down which specifically it was.

Wouldn't this have enormous implications on the computer/video game field?

If the leagues lost cases like this, why couldn't a game like FOF use player names and stats freely? Why should they need a license to include basic facts about a player, such as who he plays for and what his stats look like?

Ugh. Ticketmaster sucks.

Although I wish I owned them.

That sums it up for me. Win or lose, you lose, you idiots.

Except no one cares. Sure, we've noticed it, but 90% of fans will have no idea that this even happened.

SI

I dunno, we got our Royals season ticket package already and it was pretty cheap: a flex plan where we got 20 lower deck seat vouchers for $10 each. Normally, in year's past, we'd get the $7 tickets but splurged this year since the great deal came along. We're in Kansas City, tho, and I know not everyone is like that. But baseball has $15 tickets in almost every stadium. Point me to the other of the 4 major sports that can claim that.

SI

Last I knew the NBA mandated that each team have $15 or $10 seats available for each game. Granted they're way up at the top of the stadium but they're there.

Well, no one ever accused Herr Selig of being smart..

But the ones who do care are generally the ones who are...not "more hardcore," exactly, but guys who are probably more predisposed to spend money on the sport in the first place.

How many people will drop $150 on a jersey who aren't also into at least one fantasy baseball league?

Yeah, but we're also suckers. We're not leaving the sport and we have a "baseball budget", as it were. Some of us will just go play free leagues (Yahoo) while others will suck it up and pay it, taking away from their jersey or hat budget. MLB still gets the money.

SI

I don't think it will have much impact at all. At Microsoft they already had to pay a stats service for our numbers, as well as other things that they tracked which helped us compile our player ability database ratings, and I would suspect it's the same for 2K Sports and Acclaim. Even if MLB lost this case and 2K Sports and Acclaim could get the stats for free, they still need to acquire more arbitrary information to help them figure out player ratings. Perhaps they could negotiate cheaper rates from Stats, Inc. and the like, but they'd still likely need to use some kind of service that has an arrangement with MLB.

As for the text sims, I think there are still legal precedents for restricting the usage of a player's name without permission. Should a text sim acquire the MLBPA license to use actual names, then they may benefit from the ability to use actual stats for free if MLB were to lose this case.

Regarding the article, I think it's leaving out some important information. As pointed out, CBC had an agreement in place with the MLBPA to pay out 9% of their gross revenues. When MLB took over the rights to statistics, I highly doubt they simply decided to not renew CBC's license - I'm sure what actually happened is the two sides couldn't come to a mutually acceptable financial agreement. I suspect this legal move is part of their negotiating tactics to try and pressure MLB into lowering their asking price.

I have a hard time getting to upset with MLB for wanting a piece of the pie here - these stats are generated in MLB sanctioned games in MLB stadiums, where MLB controls all aspects of exposure to the games played, either through ticket sales and radio, TV and internet broadcast agreements. You can quibble with how much they want to charge for access to the statistics generated in these games, but I don't have a problem with them asserting a right to a share from any profits generated from these stats.

Let's think about it this way. Say the Republican National Convention said that its primary voting numbers were its property. It's done in RNC primary elections and counted by RNC representatives. So newspapers shouldn't be able to put the vote counts in their papers without paying the RNC.

The difference there is paying the stats service wasn't compulsory. It was done to save you guys obscene manpower costs for doing it yourselves.

As Motorola v. NBA said, multiple organizations reporting stats is fine, provided one's not leeching off of another. Microsoft can't just grab the final numbers from STATS, Inc. and use those. If they want to pay their own crew of stringers to go compile everything and use it in their games, though, they have that right.

The difference is, it's a lot cheaper to pay one service or another to do it for you. Economy of scale.


Yeah, player names are protected, as are team logos/nicknames (intellectual property). Stats, on the other hand, are facts, according to legal precedent. They cannot be copyrighted. The various fantasy services can use stats all they want, and MLB doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. Where MLB benefits from an arrangement with MLBPA is the right to use the player names.


Yes, there are aspects of the sport that are copyrightable. The actual broadcasts of the games, for example. When they say "any retransmission of the accounts and descriptions of this game is expressly prohibited," they mean you can't quote Vin Scully's play-by-play verbatim. Nothing prohibits you from passing along your own account (which is why the AP and other news outlets can report on sports games without paying fees to the leagues).

Nothing wrong with MLB wanting a piece of the pie. The problem is, several of their approaches won't pass legal muster, unless the court is willing to ignore precedent.

Many games in the past have included the real stats and characteristics of real players without the names unlicensed. Early versions of RBI Baseball on the ol' Nintendo and even NCAA games today continue that trend.

I suppose the only case MLB would have would been objecting on the use of the names, but without the names the stats are useless. It would appear that the law and commonsense, as Quik noted, are not on their side.

Correct. I doubt it would make much of a difference though if MLB lost this suit - the major baseball game publishers will still be using stats services to provide a wide range of stats and ratings rather than relying on the more simplified lists posted in USA Today.

If it was really that clear cut, then why wouldn't CBC and others have challenged this when the MLBPA controlled the rights both player names and stats?

Is that the legal reason, or is it simply good business practice?

This is a very interesting case.

In contrast to what Sack is saying, it's by no means established that we can't use player names. It's just that no one has ever taken a group to court over that issue.

MLB is defending based on the right to publicity. That's exactly the area that is established in state law, but fails to pass the First Amendment test.

My guess is that CDM wins this case, and that should eliminate any risk of a text sim being sued over using player names. After all, being sued and winning is just as bad as being sued and losing. I just hope CDM doesn't settle out of court. I've asked them if I can file a brief on their behalf. It's important they know how many people are behind them. There's a lot at stake here.

Thumbs up to you Jim! I hope all other text sim creators follow your lead and show the support that is behind the company.

Applicable to the Lahman database?

It seems to me that it's pretty well-established in the law that a person has a right to stop the use of the commercial use of his or her name by another party. Player names in games would certainly fall into that category.

And there you'd be wrong. There's a lot of case law here, and it tends to fall on the side of the First Amendment. We wouldn't have "unauthorized" biographies, satire on Saturday Night Live, or any number of commercial applications if permission were required to include public figures.

You're confusing endorsement with simple use. I can't, for instance, rename my game "Matt Millen's Front Office Football," because that implies he endorsed my game.

God, why would you want him endorsing it anyway. :)

On a serious note, good luck to everyone involved in the case, if it starts taking on the issue surrounding player names as well. That one the MLB/MLBPA is gonna throw billions at.

Yes, I rethought what I had posted as you were responding, and realized that I was doing exactly that.

If they eliminate some teams and fire in a meaningful salary cap up... I might tune back in. Right now I can manage to pay attention through the month of April... then I'm done.

I'm going to try and go to some college games and renew my love of baseball.