November 15, 2016

Florida and five other states announced a settlement with the National Football League resolving antitrust concerns about the NFL’s league-wide mandatory price floor policy. The policy required each of the 32 NFL member teams to impose a price floor on all secondary market ticket sales on the NFL’s Ticket Exchange and related websites officially sanctioned by the league. This policy, which the NFL terminated after the investigation began, prohibited sellers from listing tickets for resale on the NFL’s officially sanctioned resale sites at a price lower than the face-value of the ticket. The settlement prohibits a league-wide mandatory price floor policy and includes disclosure requirements in cases where an individual team imposes its own price floor. Additionally, the settlement prohibits the NFL from directing or requiring ticketing practices among teams that are designed to preclude fans from using competing exchanges and prohibits the NFL from interfering with an individual team’s efforts to coordinate anti-fraud measures with competing secondary ticket exchanges. FL

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