Negotiating TV/Radio Broadcast Rights

During the simulated season, student franchise owners have the opportunity to flex their monopoly muscle. Being the sole provider of football entertainment in the United States, the league has the ability to extract monopoly rents from the television networks that broadcast its games. What makes this exercise interesting is that the owners must recognize their monopoly power. If they negotiate as a group, they have they ability to work as a monopoly league. If they negotiate their broadcast rights individually, they will compete with one another for the networks' money. Competition will cut into their collective profits.

Before the regular season begins, students in the EconFantasy.com simulation must decide how they will negotiate: as individual franchises or as a collective group. This is actually one of the first steps in Negotiating The League Constitution (including revenue sharing arrangements). In fact, this decision is often negotiated in conjunction with the negotiation of revenue sharing arrangements.

In order to provide a multi-season experience in the EconFantasy.com simulation, the networks will recalculate the broadcast rights contract each week based on the competitiveness and popularity of the league. Franchise owners may change their decision to negotiate individually or collectively at any time during the season.