It Started Out Innocently Enough...

A church youth ministry in Indianapolis was going to host a Super Bowl party. Nothing really big about that. My church's student ministry has hosted one every year since we moved into our new building. No biggie, just order a 10-yard Subway sandwich, turn on the video games and turn on the game and we're off! I'm aware of at least 3 other youth groups in our area that do the same thing.

Turns out this particular ministry in Indianapolis gets a "cease and desist" from the National Football League.

Seems they were going to charge admission and use the extra cash to fund a mission trip somewhere. Again, not all that odd.

However, turns out that the NFL cares a great deal about it's copyrighted broadcast and decided to get serious about that. You know that little thing they read at any time during a major league sporting event that starts uses the phrase, "without the express written consent" of the league you can't use any "transmission of the broadcast?" Yeah, they mean that.

And, they should.

I've got no beef with the NFL on this one. The church should've known better than to charge admission and/or use the Super Bowl logo on advertising and all that jazz. I'm sure the church meant well, but I understand the league's stance: YOU can't make money off their property, no matter how worthy the cause, unless you get their permission to use it for said purposes.

I certainly get that you can't use their logo on flyers and such as that would imply endorsement of the ministry or their causes that they may or may not agree with. Again, kudos to the NFL for protecting their logo & identity.

And, since you can't enforce this copyright infringement without looking bad (I mean, here's a billion-plus-dollar league going after a party that was expecting 100 people), they had their spokespeople put some spin out there and even listed on their website the qualifications for showing the game without infringement. Again, good for them, and thanks to them for communication so quickly.

But here's the one I don't get: Apparently, you can't show the game to a mass audience on a screen larger than 55" unless your business shows sports on television as part of it's "business operation." So, that means any restaurant that has a bar can do it without impunity. Yet, a church can't because we don't show televised sports as part of our operation.

So, our church has 4 televisions in our lobby, and we could put all 300 people that will be likely to attend our "Big Game" party (no kidding, now, anyway) in that lobby and watch the game, but we can't put all 300 people in the main hall and watch the game on our big screen? What difference would it make it they were all sitting in a clump against whether or not there were 75 people around each TV?

I know the answer already: Money. See, Neilson television ratings are the basis for advertising dollars. Restaurants and sports bars and the like are "counted" in the Neilson ratings that will tell the networks how many people actually watched the game. This tells them how much they can charge per 30 seconds of advertising.

So, NFL, we've been having get-togethers at various times to watch your product at Roads Coffee House (located on our church property) as well as other sports, too. Hence, it's part of the operation of that particular establishment...so we'll dutifully take our watchers down to Roads and show it on our screen there (it's actually a tad larger than 55", but we'll use our projector to shrink it to that size, just so we'll be in compliance) and thankfully, it'll hold the same number of people we anticipate.

We've done it for years and had a ball.

We've never charged a nickel.

We've never used your logo--although all our announcement sheets used the phrase "Super Bowl Party" over the years--sorry about that one. Didn't know that little phrase was trademarked. That one's on me...so my bad.

And we'll joyfully comply with your ruling on screen size.

And, we'll all have a good time as a church family anyway.

But, I can assure you that Roads Coffee House will have a little 5' B&W screen on to some sport every day, and next year we'll have a lawyer tell us if we comply NOW. And I wonder if we can show Monday Night Football down there legally again. Or if we can watch a Cowboys game for 20 minutes before class starts again.

That third qualifier seems like a silly rule to me, though, given the state and size of large screen HDTV's coming out. Maybe you should re-think it...