Sports Fans Coalition Bulks Up

SackNFLTaxBreaks.com's Ryan Rudominer has been named chairman of the Sports Fans Coalition's Mid-Atlantic region.

The NFL announced in April that it was dropping its tax-exempt status, which Sports Fans Coalition chairman David Goodfriend said at the time likely had something to do with pressure over the Washington Redskins name change controversy. "When you have 50 United States senators saying 'change the name of the Washington football team or we will take away your nonprofit status,' it becomes pretty clear that the nonprofit status was a lightning rod."

"SackNFLTaxBreaks.org was launched on the eve of Super Bowl XLVIII by Rudominer and co-founder Lynda Woolard, a New Orleans Saints fan whose Change.org petition calling on Congress to 'Revoke the Tax-Exempt Status of the NFL' collected nearly half a million signatures," the coalition said in announcing Rudominer had joined the team.

“Our victory in pressuring the NFL to give up its nonprofit tax-exempt status is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ending taxpayer giveaways that benefit the most profitable sports leagues on the planet,” said Rudominer in a statement.

Goodfriend told B&C/Multichannel News in an interview last month that broadcast access to college football could be the next battleground for the Sports Fans Coalition, whose pushback against the FCC’s sports blackout rules helped topple the FCC-provided government backstop to sports league-imposed TV blackouts.

Goodfriend said he had already discussed the issue with the staff of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the group’s former MVPs (most valuable policymakers) for efforts he made in tandem with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to both eliminate the blackout rules and take other steps to provide more televised access to sports programming.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.