Friday, June 5, 2009

Greed: NFL Players Association

Greed is the only answer. In an article by Jenna Ross, Yahoo! Sues for fantasy football info, she reports that Yahoo is suing the NFL Players association to gain free access to statistics on players for fantasy football leagues run on the internet. Since Fantasy sports has become a billion dollar industry, it appears that NFL Players association was to charge a fee for the use of players’ names, pictures, and statistics.

Has the NFL Players association gone mad? According to the article, back in 2007 the “Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. could use Major League Baseball players’ names and statistics for its fantasy baseball products – without paying a fee.” Well no kidding. When did personal player stats become private domain of the player making them?

Fantasy sports can do a lot for your sport and perhaps the NFL players are missing that. As an owner of several fantasy football teams, I know that I watch a lot more football while tracking players on other teams more. If it were not for fantasy football I’d likely just watch the Vikqueens and the Raiders and not care much about the rest of the NFL.

1 comment:

  1. Yahoo! Finally a post that speaks to me! Love the use of the "Viqueens" and totally agree that football fans should be not just fans of their local team but a fan of the game. I love watching a good football game...no matter what the sport I like watching a ocmptetive match. To me the money, the fame, the home team is not as important as the competition, history and sportmanship of professional sports in the United States.

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