Couch Potatoes Win: Diet of NFL Games Won’t Be Scrambled

He describes himself as “just the average fan,” but La Jolla restaurateur Norman Lebovitz watched the results of this week’s National Football League meeting with the intense interest of someone who can actually influence what league owners say and do.

And, to a certain extent, he can.

The NFL announced Friday that, for the third straight season, it would not “scramble” its telecasts, thus making it possible for satellite dish owners across the country to pick up games other than the ones being carried on local network affiliates.

In 1990, Lebovitz led a nationwide boycott of Anheuser-Busch, the company that brews Budweiser, one of the NFL’s leading sponsors, after the league threatened to scramble its televised signals, making it impossible for fans with satellite dishes to see them.

Lebovitz, 54, is one of thousands of restaurateurs who use such technology to attract customers interested in watching games other than those featuring the team that represents the city in which they live.

In other words, the last team Lebovitz and the patrons of Sluggo’s, his chain of La Jolla-based restaurants, are interested in seeing is the San Diego Chargers. Since Lebovitz and most of his patrons are from Chicago, they care to watch only one team:

In his words, “Dah Bears.”

After Lebovitz’s boycott in August and September of 1990, in which he was joined by thousands of restaurateurs and bar owners across the country, he was invited to New York to meet with network television representatives.

The meeting was set up by representatives of the Miller Brewing Co., another prominent NFL sponsor, which Lebovitz had threatened to add to his boycott unless the league and the networks backed down.

They did.

He was promised that the NFL would declare a moratorium on scrambling for 1990. The same moratorium will now be extended into 1992, “with no plans one way or the other beyond that,” Greg Aiello, the NFL’s spokesman, said Friday from New York.

League owners met this week to consider a proposal by the networks to extend the current TV contract, which expires after 1993, into the 1994 and 1995 seasons. The league tabled that proposal until later this year but did agree to give the networks a partial rebate. Network executives had sought the rebate because advertising revenues have dropped considerably.

To Lebovitz, the inescapable conclusion gleaned from the meeting is that “the last thing the league wants to do is make any of its advertisers unhappy”--which he clearly did with the beer boycott.

“First of all, we appreciate that they’re not going to scramble in ‘92, as they didn’t in ’90 and ‘91, but I still wish to remind them that they’re custodians of our sport,” he said. “I think they just have to be very, very careful of what they’re going to do in the future. We’ll be looking over their shoulder, and we get stronger every year.”

The “we,” in this case, is Lebovitz’s organization, the Assn. for Sports Fans’ Rights, which he says remains active. At one time in 1990, Lebovitz said the organization had grown to more than 10,000 members.

During the ’90 boycott, he appeared on many television and radio talk shows, flew to several other cities and received a call of support from consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Lebovitz said the experience taught him that the average fan has more power than he knew.

The boycott “woke up the NFL--it taught them that the sports fan can speak up,” Lebovitz said. “It certainly got the attention of the beer companies. They stood up and immediately took notice. It showed us we could really do something. My advice to the NFL from now on would be: ‘Don’t get us mad.’ ”

Aiello, the league spokesman, said Friday that the league is still considering scrambling its signals in 1993, but, if that happens, the league would make all of its games available on a subscription basis.

Private individuals or merchants with satellite systems would be able to receive such games, in the same way that they are able to unscramble Home Box Office, Showtime, Cable News Network and a variety of other programming now available. A subscription fee would be charged.

Lebovitz says he could live with that. His main objection to the plan announced in 1990 is that no unscrambling option was even talked about. The NFL, in his words, was trying to limit its telecasts to the one or two available each week on local network affiliates.

And, in contemporary America, Lebovitz says such a policy is unrealistic.

He says such restrictions are especially inappropriate in San Diego, “where so many people living here are not from here and don’t want to see the local team. They want the team from back home--which they usually can’t get unless they have access to a satellite system, either at home or in a restaurant.”

He worries that limiting the full menu of games to subscriptions smacks of what he calls the average fan’s greatest fear--pay-per-view, which the NFL has hinted it may explore once its current television contract expires at the end of the ’93 season.

As a possible test of such technology, much of this year’s Summer Olympics on NBC will be available only on pay-per-view.

“It’s coming down to the fact that the average fan can’t afford to go to the game,” Lebovitz said. “The owners are getting their money through television, and, ultimately, that will probably mean pay-per-view. I worry about the average fan being out in the cold, looking in.