James Gross · August 2014
82 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1194 (2014)
As cities continue to rely on the use of tax-exempt municipal bonds to build bigger, better, and more expensive professional sports stadiums to accommodate their local National Football League (“NFL”) teams, taxpayers are ultimately the ones who foot the bill. At the same time, the NFL continues to enforce its blackout policy, preventing local television broadcasts of NFL games unless a minimum number of tickets are purchased before kickoff. As a result, NFL fans are often subjected to a double punishment by the NFL and their municipalities: they are forced to pay for the construction of a new NFL stadium, and are then prevented from watching the games played inside of these stadiums on television unless enough tickets are purchased to prevent the game from being blacked out. Although a number of challenges, both legal and political, have been brought against this policy in the past, each has ultimately failed, and the NFL’s blackout policy still stands today.
To solve this problem, this Note proposes that Congress amend the current Internal Revenue Code to except municipal bonds from tax-exempt status whenever these bonds are used to fund a stadium that is subject to broadcast blackouts based upon the number of tickets sold. The consequence of such an amendment would effectively be to force the NFL and NFL team owners to make a choice: either continue to receive public funding for new stadiums or continue to impose the NFL’s blackout policy. They would not, however, be able to continue to take advantage of both of these options simultaneously. Taxpaying NFL fans would no longer be subject to a double punishment when they try to watch their local football team on television, and they would find themselves in a better overall financial position than they were in before.
