Antitrust Cases

Experienced attorney and sports enthusiast Freedman provides a comprehensive and extremely informative discussion of the antitrust legislation that affects professional sports--now undeniably a major business in the United States. In addition to thorough coverage of such legal aspects of professional sports as exemption and non-exemption from antitrust laws, anti-competitive practices, restraints of trade, and state regulation, Freedman also provides relevant case law and supporting decisions throughout. Following an introductory section outlining the history of professional sports law and an overview of legal relationships in professional sports, Freedman traces the experience of each of the major sports--baseball, football, basketball, hockey, boxing, wrestling, tennis, golf, and soccer--as pertains to antitrust laws. He offers an incisive analysis of monopolistic aspects of professional sports and other anti-competitive practices against the professional athlete and also examines state regulations and tort and contract liability in professional sports. He concludes with a chapter on the relationship between professional sports and First Amendment freedom of expression.

Major League Baseball, alone among industries of its size in the United States, operates as an unregulated monopoly. This 20th-century regulatory anomaly has become known as the "baseball anomaly." Major League Baseball developed into a major commercial enterprise without being subject to antitrust liability. Long after the interstate commercial character of baseball had been established and even recognized by the Supreme Court, baseball's monopoly remained free from federal regulation. Duquette explains the baseball anomaly by connecting baseball's regulatory status to the larger political environment, tracing the game's fate through four different regulatory regimes. The constellation of institutional, ideological, and political factors within each regulatory regime provides the context for the survival of the baseball anomaly.

The Cola Wars have long fascinated students of American business. Until 30 years ago, Coca-Cola clearly dominated the carbonated soft-drink industry, but with Pepsi-Cola's challenge in the 1960s, the market environment became fiercely competitive. Rivalry was well publicized and intense. Now recognized as two of the premier marketing companies in the world, Coke and Pepsi created and implemented management strategies to deal aggressively, not reactively, with the competition between them. How they have changed their product and marketing strategies, and altered their corporate structures to reflect them, is explored here in detail. More than a case study, this book will be a valuable how-to for corporate management in other highly competitive arenas and an informative inside look for their marketing and sales teams.

"A comprehensive examination of the events that led to the Bell System breakup. . . . Argues that divestiture was the culmination of a long process of change in telecommunications policy that began several decades ago. Associates new technologies, economic pressure, and social and political developments as the driving stimulus inducing a change that was a process of gradual evolution rather than programmed revolution in national telecommunications policies." Journal of Economic Literature

Shakedown tells a two-part tale of government-sponsored extortion using the courts. Levy uncovers the worst of the abuses and advises to lawmakers what to do about them.