Coliseum Commission Puts Up a Red Card

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission today will file a lawsuit in federal court, charging the United States Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer with conspiracy and restraint of trade.

The suit, to be filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, seeks unspecified damages and “an injunction to put a stop to the anticompetitive practices of USSF and MLS.”

The Coliseum Commission will also seek a summary judgment from the court declaring that the USSF has no jurisdiction over the scheduling and presentation of professional soccer matches.

At issue is the right of the Coliseum to stage games involving foreign club and national teams without interference from the USSF, the sport’s Chicago-based national governing body.

Currently, the Coliseum is limited in its ability to schedule such matches by what it claims are “exorbitant” fees imposed by USSF and by blackout periods that the federation mandates to protect its own events and--the lawsuit alleges--MLS games. “No one questions their authority to govern and issue rules and regulations concerning amateur soccer,” Marshall B. Grossman, the Coliseum Commission’s lead attorney in this case, said Monday.

“However, they have arrogated unto themselves presumed authority over professional soccer and we are attacking that head-on in the lawsuit.”

Lisa Specht, the Coliseum Commission president, said commission members had discussed the necessity for litigation in executive session in recent weeks and had unanimously agreed to file the suit.

“The action was taken only after we made an effort to resolve this issue with the USSF,” Grossman said, adding that he had met with federation officials in Chicago last month.

“They turned a deaf ear to our concerns,” he said, characterizing the USSF’s response as “very much that of an old boys’ club and an old boys’ network.”

“There is a turf protection that goes on, which frequently seems to be more concerned with their own well-being than those of the fans they purport to represent,” he said.

Federation leaders were not available for comment Monday because of the Veterans Day holiday. In New York, Mark Abbott, MLS chief operating officer, said the league would reserve comment until after it had examined the lawsuit.

The USSF’s control over soccer in the U.S. has existed since the federation was founded in 1913 as one of what are now 203 national federations belonging to FIFA, the sport’s Switzerland-based international governing body.

Independent promoters in Los Angeles and elsewhere have bowed to the restrictions imposed by the USSF, but Specht said that would no longer be the case.

“It’s a question of enough is enough,” she said. “I think it’s time for us to act. We can’t live with the restrictions that USSF is putting on our ability to provide professional soccer to L.A. fans.”

Pat Lynch, general manager of the Coliseum, said there is “a whole laundry list” of instances where the Coliseum and local promoters have been denied the opportunity to stage games.

“We’re doing fewer and fewer games,” he said. “The ability for us to get games and the ability for the promoters to promote games and make a living is really being curtailed here.”

Lynch said Los Angeles area fans have a difficult time understanding the politics involved.

“When I say to the fans, ‘You can’t see Chivas [of Mexico] and Comunicaciones [of Guatemala] because there’s a Galaxy game,’ they don’t like that at all,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘Why? What rule is there? Why can’t I see them?”’

The Coliseum has staged international soccer matches for decades, acting within the USSF constraints, but the prospect of a new soccer-specific stadium being built next year in Carson by Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz and the Anschutz Entertainment Group is adding to the pressure on the stadium and the commission that oversees it.

The Coliseum also failed to get the next edition of the CONCACAF Gold Cup, the international tournament that will be played Jan. 18-Feb. 2 at the Rose Bowl and Miami’s Orange Bowl. The Coliseum hosted several previous Gold Cup tournaments.

The lawsuit could very well turn on the court’s interpretation of the USSF’s right to govern soccer in this country--amateur and professional--under its authority from FIFA.

Grossman said he doubts such authority is legal.

“It would be a strange day when a foreign sports organization could vest authority in a United States organization to engage in predatory anticompetitive practices,” he said. “The USSF derives its authority from a United States statute and that statute speaks in terms of amateur and Olympic competition.

“I don’t know what happens elsewhere in the world, but I do know that our antitrust laws prohibit conduct that stifles and eliminates competition, and in our opinion that’s what’s happening here. The USSF seeks refuge behind FIFA and behind the Amateur Sports Act, and the Coliseum Commission has determined that now is the time to test that legally.”

FIFA abhors disputes being taken to court, preferring to settle them within the confines of the sport itself. It might well find itself dragged into this lawsuit, however.

“What goes on between USSF and FIFA is largely clouded in secrecy and we intend to take the secrecy label off that through discovery,” Grossman said.

“We do intend to pursue discovery aggressively against FIFA as well as the USSF, and if it is appropriate to name FIFA as an additional defendant, so be it.”