LEIF LARSON: American Athletes Win With Free Market SCORE Act

Americans love sports, especially college sports. There is something special about rooting for your alma mater on a crisp autumn afternoon. However, there is no guarantee that college sports will keep moving forward on a level playing field.

This is one area where lawmakers can help, but they must take the right steps. They should employ a market-oriented approach, rather than attempting to over-regulate the industry. There are two bills pending in Congress, but only one would be effective in the long term.

The first proposal called theStudent Athlete Fairness and Enforcement Act (SAFE) would be the wrong big government approach. The bill — pushed by left-leaning Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Maria Cantwell of Washington — imposes what appears to be a compulsory licensing scheme on sports content.

This would void existing contracts of colleges, universities, and conferences, many lasting into the mid-2030s, with extension rights.

The SAFE Act bans extending current contracts and limits future media rights deals to a government-created committee. It states current media rights can’t be renegotiated or extended, resembling a government taking existing rights from schools and conferences.

Instead of settling the legal concerns around college sports, this idea would make things much worse. Just imagine the First Amendment cases that could be filed. Good for lawyers, bad for players.

Such a scheme would slash the value of school and conference sponsorships. Local broadcasters would be able to sell competing advertising for the same content, keeping the benefits for themselves instead of the schools or the athletes. One complaint that many fans have is that there are already too many broadcast outlets. Is your team’s game on broadcast TV, or cable, or streaming, or somewhere else? This bill would increase confusion rather than delivering clarity.