Sunday, February 04, 2007

 

Dear NFL: You Suck

Apparently the NFL doesn't want churches to hold Superbowl parties. They don't want the game played on big screens outside of homes, and churches don't have the right to use the word "Superbowl" in certain contexts. And they're starting the enforcement of this with a church in Indianapolis, which is, you know, rather connected to the game in that their team is a 7-point favorite to win.

I am not a lawyer and don't intend to claim to know what the rules are. In fact, I just assume that the NFL has such an expensive team of lawyers that they're completely right about the law. And though it's tempting, I won't go into how this indicates that the law is screwed up.

But as we've all seen many times, there's a big difference between being legal and being right. And the NFL is out to prove it again. At first their objection was around the church having a cover charge and using their trademarked term, but after the church agreed to drop both of those they still squashed the party.

The reason: they're worried about TV ratings. Nielsen can't estimate how many people might watch at such events.

OK, first, if you have a problem with how Nielsen determines ratings, take it out with them. Leave the rest of us out of it. Second, are you suggesting that because your ratings might be a little inaccurate, you're going to have trouble selling Super Bowl ads? Can't you go to your advertisers and say, "Hey, you know that our real ratings are higher than this because so many people watch it at a friend's house or at a party somewhere."

It's also interesting that this ratings accuracy problem doesn't apply to sports bars.

So anyway, it's stupid. But I'm sure the NFL is doing what's best for them. I just hope this means they're going to be consistent about it. I hope that next week we see a press release from the NFL saying that they are banning all of their teams from asking for or accepting any public money to build stadiums for their teams to play in. It's clear from this event that NFL isn't about contributing to a community by giving them something to bond over: it's just a business, and all that matters is the business. If they have their own way (and someday, eventually, they will) the NFL will become entirely a pay-per-view operation, or at least confined to media outlets they wholly own, like "NFL network." They still won't be able to even get the down and yardage right in the broadcast, but everyone will have to directly pay them to see it, and that's all they care about.

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