Judge Shira Scheindlin
Subscribers to television and Internet packages for baseball and hockey programming brought putative class suits against the National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball (MLB), various clubs within those leagues, regional sports networks (RSN) televising games, Comcast and DirecTV alleging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. They claimed defendants agreed to eliminate competition by dividing the live-game video distribution market into exclusive territories, protected by "anticompetitive blackouts," and by colluding to sell "out-of-market" packages only through the respective leagues at "supra-competitive prices." The court denied Comcast’s and DirecTV’s motionson behalf of themselves and their affiliated RSNs to stay the claims of television subscribers pending the Supreme Court’s ruling in American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant (AMEX III), addressing the enforceability of arbitration clauses barring class arbitration as applied to antitrust claims. The Television Defendants offered no evidence that their role in pretrial proceedings would be significantly impacted by the decision in AMEX III. The court determined that a stay would merely delay litigation and was likely to result in greater inefficiencies.
