미국 스포츠 리그의 선수시장 제한제도와 독점금지법의 적용

Traditionally, U.S. Sports Leagues have adopted labor market restraints, such as the reserve system and the draft system, which have played the role of maintaining 'the competition balance of clubs' and 'the restriction of players' salaries' properly which were necessary to manage sports leagues. But, these labor market restraints had the nature of the infringement of the players' rights to choose clubs for contracting and to transfer to new clubs freely, and there was no negotiation and agreement for the introduction of these restraints by the players because the labor unions were not organized or had no bargaining power for the collective bargaining agreements with the leagues. Therefore, the players continued to try to do away with these restraints, and for that purpose, they filed lawsuits claiming that labor market restraints by leagues violated antitrust law. In Federal Baseball Club case(1922), the Supreme Court held that the business of baseball was a state affair not involving interstate commerce within the meaning of the Sherman Act. and the baseball was exempt from antitrust law(Baseball's exemption). But, since Radovich case(1957), the Supreme Court determined that other sports leagues, such as NFL, were interstate business under the purview of the Sherman Act, and adjudicated that the introduction of the excessive labor market restraints by leagues were the violation of the Sherman Act. The application of antitrust law to labor market restraints by the Supreme Court made sports leagues to negotiate with the players about such restraints and to conclude the collective bargaining agreements(CBA) with players unions, because the labor market restraints operated by CBA were exempted from antitrust law by the nonstatutory labor exemption of the Supreme Court. Consequently, for the present the problems of the labor market restraints become solved by the collective bargaining agreements between sports leagues and players unions under the protection of the labor laws, if players don't give up their collective bargaining rights to preserve their antitrust rights.