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16  NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. v. ALSTON 

Opinion of the Court 

that joint ventures can have such procompetitive benefits
surely  stands  as  a  caution  against  condemning  their  ar-
rangements  too  reflexively.    See  Dagher,  547  U. S.,  at  7; 
Broadcast  Music,  Inc.  v.  Columbia  Broadcasting  System, 
Inc., 441 U. S. 1, 22–23 (1979).

But even assuming (without deciding) that the NCAA is
a joint venture, that does not guarantee the foreshortened 
review it seeks.  Most restraints challenged under the Sher-
man  Act—including  most  joint  venture  restrictions—are 
subject  to  the  rule  of  reason,  which  (again)  we  have  de-
scribed as “a fact-specific assessment of market power and
market  structure”  aimed  at  assessing  the  challenged  re-
straint’s  “actual  effect  on  competition”—especially  its  ca-
pacity to reduce output and increase price.  American Ex-
press,  585  U. S.,  at  ___–___  (slip  op.,  at  8–9)  (internal
quotation marks omitted).

Admittedly, the amount of work needed to conduct a fair
assessment of these questions can vary.  As the NCAA ob-
serves, this Court has suggested that sometimes we can de-
termine the competitive effects of a challenged restraint in 
the “ ‘twinkling of an eye.’ ”  Board of Regents, 468 U. S., at 
110, n. 39 (quoting P. Areeda, The “Rule of Reason” in An-
titrust  Analysis:    General  Issues  37–38  (Federal  Judicial
Center,  June  1981));  American  Needle,  Inc.  v.  National 
Football  League,  560  U. S.  183,  203  (2010).    That  is  true, 
though, only for restraints at opposite ends of the competi-
tive  spectrum.    For  those  sorts  of restraints—rather  than 
restraints  in  the  great  in-between—a  quick  look  is  suffi-
cient for approval or condemnation.

At  one  end  of  the  spectrum,  some  restraints  may  be  so 
obviously  incapable  of  harming  competition  that  they  re-
quire little scrutiny.  In Rothery Storage & Van Co. v. Atlas 
Van Lines, Inc., 792 F. 2d 210 (CADC 1986), for example, 
Judge Bork explained that the analysis could begin and end 
with  the  observation  that  the  joint  venture  under  review
“command[ed] between 5.1 and 6% of the relevant market.”