U.S. appeals court: High-school sports associations can bar live videostreaming of tournaments

"The association that oversees Wisconsin high school sports can limit who streams its games live on the Internet even though most of its member schools are funded by taxpayers, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday," The Associated Press reports. The decision by the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago "could have First Amendment implications for news-media outlets nationwide."

Many rural newspapers have found videostreaming of high-school sports a popular feature that builds traffic and advertising for their websites. "Other athletic associations and newspaper groups have been closely watching the Wisconsin case, and the decision could lead to litigation in other states," AP notes.

The court ruled that the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association can grant exclusive rights for live streaming of its tournaments. The WIAA "said it couldn’t survive without being able to raise money by signing exclusive contracts with a single video-production company for streaming its tournaments," AP reports. It won at the trial-court level, and unanimously among a three-judge panel of the appellate court.

In their ruling, the judges said the exclusive contracts don't prevent limited coverage of tournaments by other media. The association allows other media outlets to have up to two minutes of live video coverage of a game. “Nothing in the First Amendment confers on the media an affirmative right to broadcast entire performances,” the panel said. (Read more)