NCAA Scores Legal Win in Tennis Prize Money Spat
Within hours of U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken preliminarily approving a multibillion-dollar settlement in the House, Carter and Hubbard antitrust litigations, the NCAA landed another win Monday when U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles denied University of North Carolina tennis player Reese Brantmeier’s motion for a preliminary injunction. Brantmeier asked Eagles to prohibit the NCAA from enforcing its prize money rules against college athletes who participate in individual sports while her antitrust case against the association is pending.
Brantmeier sued the NCAA in March in what she hopes will become certified as a class action on behalf of herself and other Division I athletes in individual sports. Those sports are tennis, golf, swimming, track and field, wrestling, gymnastics, skiing, fencing, women’s bowling, indoor and outdoor cross country, women’s triathlon, women’s equestrian, rifle, and skiing.
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Brantmeier argues the NCAA and its member schools are engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy that artificially deflates earning opportunities for individual sports athletes. Brantmeier also asserts the NCAA has used amateurism rules to engage in a group boycott of athletes who accept prize money.
The NCAA prohibits tennis players from accepting more than $10,000 per calendar year in prize money prior to attending college, with allowances for additional prize money not exceeding actual and necessary expenses. Brantmeier contends this prohibition is tantamount to price fixing. Arguably, the restriction is hard to justify given that college athletes can now generate unlimited earnings through NIL deals and given the aforementioned antitrust settlement would, if granted final approval, empower colleges to pay athletes, subject to an annual salary-cap-style limit, for media rights, ticket sales sponsorships and NIL.
But as Eagles explained, a preliminary injunction is an “extraordinary remedy.” In finding that Brantmeier’s arguments came up short, the judge offered several reasons.
For starters, Eagles wrote the “evidence of harm to competition from the prize money rules”—the central thesis of the antitrust argument—“is remarkably thin.” Eagles explained Brantmeier has not presented enough evidence regarding how many college athletes play each sport, how many prize money opportunities exist in each sport and the likelihood athletes within each of those sports would win prize money.
Eagles was also unpersuaded by Brantmeier’s argument that prize money restrictions reduce the number of college athletes who play in prize money tournaments. The judge reasoned the relevant market for Brantmeier’s case concerns college athletics, not non-NCAA events. Eagles further opined that even if some athletes skip the chance to compete in the NCAA due to prize money restrictions, Brantmeier “has not shown that the number of players who make this decision is meaningful enough to have an actual effect on quality, at least not in every single Individual Sport.”
Another flaw, Eagles wrote, in Brantmeier’s demand for an injunction is that while “a few elite athletes” in tennis, bowling “and perhaps swimming” might be able to win “significant sums of prize money,” and while “one might assume the same for gymnastics and golf,” the judge concluded this impact on the market in general “is insufficient to show a likelihood of success on the merits.”
That’s not to say the NCAA fully convinced the judge it is on the right side of the law.
Drawing from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s ruling for Ed O’Bannon against the NCAA where the court held it was “not credible” that NCAA eligibility rules “do not regulate any commercial activity,” Eagles nixed the NCAA’s argument that prize money rules are “non-commercial eligibility requirements” and therefore outside the scope of antitrust law. The judge also agreed with Brantmeier that the NCAA is without competition in controlling the market for services of individual sports athletes who want to play D-I sports and “receive a college education in exchange for their athletic services.”
Brantmeier, who could appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, has not lost her case. Even though she has failed to obtain a preliminary injunction, she could ultimately win a jury trial over the same set of issues.
But for now, register another legal win for the NCAA.
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