Opinion ID: 2583
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Major League Baseball

Text: The Major League Baseball teams together produce an entertainment product  the MLB Entertainment Product  that consists of approximately 2,400 interrelated, professional baseball games per year played by the 30 MLB Clubs, leading to separate playoff games for the American and National Leagues and culminating each season with the World Series between the champion Clubs from the two Leagues. This entertainment product can be produced only by the Clubs operating together in the form of a league; it cannot be produced by any one individual Club, or even a few Clubs. While squads of players from a single Club could play each other, the organization of the Clubs into a nationwide league with geographic diversity and a common championship goal, pursued in a structured manner employing uniform rules of play, has created a vastly different and more marketable product than is created by scrimmages between squads of players from a single Club or even by ad hoc barnstorming games between Clubs outside of a large league structure. ( See Salvino Responses to MLBP Rule 56.1 Statement ¶¶ 41, 42.) The MLB Entertainment Product, for which cooperation among the Clubs is essential, affects the value of MLB Intellectual Property. For example, during the baseball players' strike in 1994 and 1995, revenues generated by sales of MLBP-licensed products decreased; after the strike ended and MLB games resumed, those revenues increased. ( See Salvino Responses to MLBP Rule 56.1 Statement ¶¶ 44, 45.)