The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a federal appeals court on Thursday rejected efforts by the Oakland A’s and the city of San Jose to force major league baseball to let the team move to the South Bay, saying only Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court can overturn the sport’s nearly century-old exemption from antitrust laws.
The Ninth Circuit's ruling leaves the A’s and San Jose with the remaining option
of asking the high court to repeal the antitrust exemption, which it
established in 1922 and reaffirmed in 1953 and 1972. The exemption
requires a team that wants to move outside its territory to seek the
major leagues’ approval, which hasn’t been forthcoming since the A’s
first floated the San Jose possibility.
“Like Casey, San Jose has struck out here,” the opinion said in the 3-0 ruling. “Only Congress and the Supreme Court are
empowered to question continued vitality (of the 1972 ruling) , and with
it, the fate of baseball’s singular and historic exemption from the
antitrust laws.”
The appellate court described the antitrust exemption as “one of
federal law’s most enduring anomalies,” acknowledging that the original
1922 ruling was based on a “soon-to-be-outmoded interpretation” of the
Constitution. But he said Congress, which has the power to rewrite the
antitrust law to include relocation of major league teams, has left the
ruling and its successors intact.
The A's have been trying to move out of Oakland for years. The stadium is in poor condition. Oakland is the ugly sister economically to neighbor-across-the-bay, San Francisco, whose Giants own the territory rights on the east side of the bay all the way down through Silicon Valley.
Territorial rights used to be important considerations when teams joined a league. By having an exclusive presence in a town, it meant the club had a better chance of profitability. Two team towns had divided loyalties, and usually one team got the short end of the stick (politically, socially or in attendance).
But since baseball, like most major sports, has now grown past mere attendance as being the life blood of a team, the concept of territorial monopoly seems to be outdated. But teams still guard those territories so as to keep the mystic of fan serfdom. The great gnawing peeve for fans is the territorial black out rules where fans of a team just outside the club's broadcast rights territory cannot pick up their club's games.
It is still money, or the perception of losing a single dollar to a competitor, that keeps the MLB team ownership rules and restrictions in place.
