## Facts

- PGA Tour, Inc. organized professional golf tournaments and created a Real-Time Scoring System (RTSS) that collected on-course scores using staff, volunteers, and computer equipment and then distributed compiled real-time scoring information.
- The RTSS fed PGA’s own website and on-site media centers; PGA invested substantial resources to develop and operate the system.
- PGA adopted Online Service Regulations (OLSR) governing credentialed media access to RTSS information at tournaments.
- The OLSR restricted credentialed entities from selling or redistributing RTSS-derived scoring information to noncredentialed third parties without PGA’s written consent.
- Morris Communications Corporation published newspapers and operated golf-related websites; it obtained RTSS scores through PGA’s credentialed media access.
- Morris began syndicating RTSS-derived real-time scores to unaffiliated, noncredentialed third-party websites.
- PGA viewed Morris’s redistribution as a violation of the OLSR and as free-riding on PGA’s investment, and it revoked or declined to renew Morris’s credentials and otherwise enforced the OLSR against Morris.
- Morris alleged PGA’s conduct monopolized (or attempted to monopolize) online publication of compiled real-time golf scores and the market for selling/syndicating those scores, and also violated Florida’s unfair trade practices law.

## Issues

1. Whether PGA’s control of RTSS and enforcement of the OLSR constituted monopolization or attempted monopolization in violation of Sherman Act § 2 in the alleged markets for (a) online publication of compiled real-time golf scores and (b) sale/syndication of those scores.
2. Whether PGA’s denial of RTSS access to Morris through credential revocation and enforcement of redistribution limits was an unlawful refusal to deal or other exclusionary conduct under § 2.
3. Whether the same conduct violated the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA).

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for PGA on all claims.
- The court held PGA could condition access to its proprietary RTSS and on-site facilities on reasonable terms that prevented redistribution designed to free-ride on PGA’s investment.
- The court found PGA’s asserted business justification—preventing free-riding and protecting the value of RTSS—legitimate and not pretextual on the summary judgment record.
- The court declined to impose an antitrust duty requiring PGA to provide RTSS data to a competitor on terms the competitor preferred.
- The court rejected Morris’s attempt to infer antitrust power from a market definition centered narrowly on PGA’s own real-time scoring product.
- The court affirmed dismissal of Morris’s FDUTPA claim along with the federal antitrust claims.

## Legal Principles

- A firm generally has no antitrust duty to share proprietary systems, assets, or facilities with rivals; refusal to provide access is not exclusionary absent additional unlawful conduct.
- A defendant may defeat § 2 liability where challenged restrictions are supported by a legitimate business justification and the plaintiff does not show anticompetitive harm outweighing that justification.
- Conditioning credentialed access to private event facilities and proprietary data systems on anti-redistribution terms can be lawful where the terms are directed at preventing free-riding on costly data-collection and distribution infrastructure.
- Relevant markets cannot be defined solely around a single firm’s product such that the product’s distinctiveness or popularity is treated as proof of monopoly power.
- Antitrust law does not treat the ability to publish facts from public sources as foreclosed when restrictions apply only to a specific, controlled source of compiled real-time data.

## Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit held that PGA’s credentialing rules and restrictions on redistribution of RTSS-derived real-time scoring data were lawful efforts to protect a costly proprietary scoring system from free-riding, and thus did not amount to monopolization, attempted monopolization, or an unlawful refusal to deal under Sherman Act § 2, nor an unfair trade practice under Florida law.


Morris Commc’ns Corp. v. PGA Tour, Inc., 364 F.3d 1288 (11th Cir. 2004)