NFL Scrambling Plan Dims Picture for Sports Bars : Business: The football league’s decision to “scramble” telecasts of its games this fall has local bar and restaurant owners furious and could force some establishments to shut their doors for good.

Saying that it may sound a death knell for hundreds of small businesses across America, owners of San Diego sports bars reacted with shock and outrage to Friday’s news that the National Football League will, for the first time, “scramble” its telecasts with the start of the new season Sept. 9.

NFL Sundays are the “heart and soul of my business,” said John Comas, owner of Pounders, a sports bar and restaurant in Pacific Beach that has been open for just a year.

“Without the NFL,” Comas said, “there’s no way around it--we may have to close.”

Comas said his business is worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars, and no insurance company sells a policy to cover the scrambling of professional football on television.”

Norman Lebovitz, owner of Sluggo’s, which has outlets in La Jolla, Hillcrest and University Towne Centre, said his business is “totally dependent” on NFL broadcasts. A transplanted Chicagoan, Lebovitz described Sluggo’s as a family-oriented restaurant--”We are not a bar”--that champions Chicago sports teams.

Sluggo’s is often packed, he said, with fans clamoring to watch football’s Bears or baseball’s White Sox and Cubs. Lebovitz, like other owners of bars and restaurants, is able to show such events by using a rooftop “dish” that receives the broadcasts from satellites orbiting 22,300 miles above the Equator.

In the past few years, cable channels--Home Box Office being the first--began scrambling signals, making it impossible for dish owners to receive such broadcasts without purchasing a legally authorized descrambler and paying the network a subscription fee. Until Friday’s announcement by the NFL, major networks had only hinted at scrambling.

But the shock of the NFL’s proposal was that no descrambling option will be available, except to local affiliates or cable companies.

“I don’t care if all the sports bars and restaurants go out of business,” said Val Pinchbeck, the NFL’s vice president in charge of broadcasting. “CBS, NBC, ABC--their signals should be available only to affiliates. These bars have proliferated over the course of 10 years, and in our opinion, they’ve done nothing but steal our signals. So, we’re taking efforts to stop it.”

Pinchbeck said the NFL’s new television package--a four-year agreement calling for CBS, NBC, ABC and cable’s TNT and ESPN to pay the league a record $3.6 billion--has created a new militancy toward private dish owners, as well as sports bars and restaurants.

Symbolic of that militancy is the threat of a lawsuit by HBO, which Lebovitz and Comas said they received this week in a letter from the cable network. HBO threatened to sue “about 20” owners of San Diego sports bars, Comas said, for showing (via a Mexican satellite feed) a recent heavyweight fight between Mike Tyson and Henry Tillman to which HBO had exclusive rights.

One sports bar operator, who asked not to be quoted by name, said he received a threatening letter this week from CBS, in which he was “ordered” to stop broadcasting any CBS transmission unless it was carried by KFMB-TV (Channel 8), the network’s San Diego affiliate.

The NFL’s Pinchbeck said the league had “tried the courts,” pursuing cases in Buffalo, N.Y.; Tampa, Fla.; Dallas; Kansas City, Mo.; Detroit; New Orleans; Houston, and Chicago, “and that didn’t stop it, so maybe scrambling will. We’re tired of it, plain and simple.”

Pinchbeck, reached by telephone in Houston, said the league’s primary concern was that local and regional advertisers across the country were being shortchanged. Because satellite dishes receive only network feeds, and do not pick up the transmissions of local stations, local and regional commercials are simply not seen.

“If you’re watching the NFL in a sports bar, then you’re not watching the local affiliate, and you’re not seeing the (local) commercials,” Pinchbeck said. “The affiliates, which make up the networks, pay a ton of money for these games. In one of our cases, the court equated what these bars and restaurants are doing to wiretapping. How is it different? They’re stealing a copyrighted signal and using it for their own profit or gain. So, let them squawk--we’ve got the law on our side.”

Jules Moreland, spokesman for KFMB-TV, said the scrambling decision should come as no surprise to dish owners and restaurateurs, “since it’s been talked about for years.” Moreland said KFMB supports the league’s decision, regardless of the impact on local businesses.

Mike Reiley is the manager of Trophy’s, a sports bar and restaurant in Mission Valley that has only been open for a week. Trophy’s is owned by former San Diego Chargers receiver Lance Alworth, radio personality Joe Bauer and former San Diego Padres infielder Tim Flannery.

“It’s awful,” Reiley said of the league’s decision. “One way or the other, we’ll have to deal with it, but we’re really dependent on the NFL. It’s a blow, no question.”

Pounders owner Comas said he makes it a policy not to show Charger home games, so as not to interfere with the local team’s attendance, or bring problems on himself.

“But I fail to see how I’m hurting anybody by showing Eagles games from Philadelphia or Bears games from Chicago,” he said. “San Diego is made up of hundreds of thousands of people from places all over the country, and they’re dying to see these games. If anything, we’re pumping the NFL’s product. How could we possibly be hurting them?”

“This is going to hurt people all over the country,” Sluggo’s Lebovitz said. “How much money do CBS, NBC and ABC need? How much does the NFL need? When is enough enough? What do they want from us, anyway?

“I have a nephew on his way to Saudi Arabia at this very moment to defend the networks’ right to rob us of our livelihoods. Could you explain that to me?”