Sports Bars to Fight NFL Over ‘Scrambling’

Furious over efforts by the National Football League to “scramble” its telecasts, owners of several San Diego sports bars said Saturday that, collectively, they plan to protest the move through the courts.

“I spoke with my attorney for two hours this afternoon and plan to seek an injunction before the first regular-season game (Sept. 9),” said Norman Lebovitz, who owns Sluggo’s, with outlets in Hillcrest, La Jolla and University Towne Centre.

John Comas, who owns Pounders, a sports bar in Pacific Beach, said he planned to join Lebovitz, as do owners of other establishments that receive NFL broadcasts by use of a satellite “dish” stationed on the roof.

“I support the preliminary injunction,” Comas said. “I can understand not showing San Diego Charger home games--which I don’t do--but this is ridiculous.”

Comas said he had been involved in efforts in Miami and Phoenix to contest the NFL’s right to limit the programming available at sports bars.

The NFL’s latest move, announced Friday, seeks to limit its audience to network affiliates and cable channels by scrambling the signals beamed from satellites 22,300 miles above the Equator.

Some cable channels have scrambled for years but, by use of an authorized “descrambler” and a fee paid to the network, have given dish owners an option.

The NFL is planning no such option, which owners of sports bars say will run them out of business.

Val Pinchbeck, the NFL’s vice president in charge of broadcasting, said Saturday Lebovitz and Comas were “not the first” to contest the league “and won’t be the last.”

He called their efforts “useless.”

He said the league had been “concerned about sports bars for years” and how they’ve “proliferated, not just in San Diego and Southern California but all over the country.”

He said the league had pursued lawsuits against such bars in Buffalo, Tampa, Dallas, Kansas City, Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, Chicago, Miami and St. Louis. He said sports bars “do nothing but steal our signals,” which he equated to wiretapping.

“We’ve won every court test in this area,” said Pinchbeck by telephone from Houston. “Going back as far as 10 years, we’ve won everything.”

But those cases involved the rights of local bars to show NFL games played in those cities. Scrambling--minus the option to descramble--is something new.