A few weeks ago I complained (joining what turned out to be a chorus of complainers) when Angelina Jolie besmirched the legacy of Danny Pearl by imposing absurd media-restrictions on her interviews to promote "A Mighty Heart." Now it turns out that Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, T.O, and everyone else in the sports world might be moving in the same direction. To be fair, it's not the players here. It's the owners. But still.
The National Football League, the superpower of all sports organizations, recently imposed a new rule limiting media outlets to 45 seconds of online audio or video footage with league or team personnel per day on NFL property. Further, the league requires media Web sites to remove such footage after 24 hours and always include links to the Web sites of pertinent teams and nfl.com. Those sites can show as much footage as they please, but no fan would consider them a destination for negative news like a player's arrest or drug suspension. This could force many papers to change their practices: the Miami Herald, for instance, last year streamed five or six two-to-three minute interviews after Miami Dolphins games, posted an additional one or two of that length per day during the week and streamed all of ex-coach Nick Saban's Monday press conferences, according to executive sports editor Jorge Rojas.So a question: Don't these stadiums have sweetheart deals from local authorities? Can't the politicians who are subsidizing these facilities insist that the public, through the press, have free access to the games that are played there?NFL officials say they welcome independent coverage of their 32 teams. But having made $170 million in online revenue in the fiscal year ended March 31 -- up over 17% from the previous fiscal year -- and with a young cable network to nurture, the league has plenty of incentive to limit the newspapers, TV and radio stations that cover it. And it can set its own rules: anyone not abiding by its media policies can have their credentials revoked without legal repercussions.
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Since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, the criminal, immoral or otherwise embarrassing behaviors of certain professional athletes have been subject to exposure by the press. Owners and administrators, not surprisingly, have done their best to keep a lid on scandals that are bad for the business of sports. Nowadays, the stakes are raised. The recent Michael Vick scandal showed how the multimedia journalism of outrage can destroy the marketability of one of the game's top products overnight. Don't think for a minute Vick is the only bad apple in the NFL basket.
At another level, this new policy is merely an extension of the NFL's desire to extend its intellectual property rights further into the public domain. After all, the NFL's profitability is a result of its status as spectacle. People pay to attend the games in person. Networks pay for the broadcast rights. And if the NFL can ultimately control the secondary media spectacle demanded by information-ungry fans, that's a potential evenue stream for the NFL. How you do it is simple: begin restricting free media access to your product, while providing an alternative outlet for exclusive information and content controlled by yourself.
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