For fantasy baseball owners, an interesting battle is waging in U.S. District court right now.   As of last week, the court has ruled that fantasy sports companies can use Major League Baseball’s player names along with their stats when creating and selling their fantasy games.  This all began when CDM Fantasy Sports, based in St. Louis, sued MLB after they were given a cease-and-desist order and told to stop using baseball players’ names in their fantasy sports leagues that they run.

I really would like to know the details of the case other than what I’ve read since MLB’s stance seems to be simply a moneygrab.  Supposedly they’re not claiming to possess rights to statistics of their players but they argue that companies can use those names and make a profit.  While I can partially understand MLB’s possessiveness of each player’s profile so it can’t be used in a negative fashion, the fact remains the stats are intertwined with the MLB players.  Since you can see the same stats in newspapers and see those numbers on TV and hear them on the radio, you can’t separate them.  It’s public domain, much like how their salaries are published.  Does MLB have a problem with salary-cap-based leagues too?  Those stats are tied to a player’s name too.

The problem lies in what MLB did to get into this mess – they pay the players union $10 million per year for their internet rights and they in turn sell those rights to sites like Yahoo and CBS and ESPN for $2 million a year.  They also decreased the licenses they sell from dozens in 2004, 19 last year, and only 7 this year, thus forcing out smaller companies like CDM.  MLB isn’t truly interested in protecting the names of their players – they’re simply trying to maximize the profit off the companies who already pay them these outsized fees.  Thankfully the courts ruled against MLB but of course baseball is appealing the verdict.

I think that MLB is trying to lump in their legitimate tangible businesses, like their deals with card companies and physical publications, into the same business model with intangible products like a fantasy sports team.  While baseball was the catalyst behind the now-massive fantasy sports world, I don’t see other sports trying to curb interest in their product.  If I had to guess, fantasy football might even be more popular in terms of total online users now and I don’t think the NFL has a problem with this.  Maybe they do and they’re just waiting to see the final outcome of this case.  Personally I think that any publicity drums up interest for their sport, so why try to limit the outlets where current and potential fans can access that product?