According to Wikipedia, 20 million North Americans play fantasy sports. (Members and alumni of this firm have maintained a fantasy football league for more than a decade. My daughter calls my club my “imaginary football team.”)

Thanks to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, those 20 million fantasies remain alive. In C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing, Inc. v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P. the Court upheld a summary judgment giving CBC the right to use the names and information about major league baseball players without their consent.

The opinion agreed with the lower court that the First Amendment trumped the players right of publicity. It noted that the information used in CBC’s games is readily available in the public domain, “and it would be a strange law that a person would not have a first amendment right to use information that is available to everyone.” It also rejected the players’ argument that this information was not speech protected by the First Amendment. Following the lead of a California court it found the “recitation and discussion of factual data concerning athletic performance. . . command a substantial public interest,” making them a form of expression deserving substantial constitutional protection.

The issue drew other interested parties as friends of the court, including groups representing the interests of professional football, basketball, golf, and hockey players, as well as NASCAR. It will be interesting to see if these groups pursue their claims beyond the Eighth Circuit, or whether they accept the loss of control over fantasy sports information.

For now fantasy football is safe, and bless the Eighth Circuit for keeping it that way. Now if the Court could only tell me how to win a game with two broken-winged quarterbacks and all my running backs on a bye week at the same time. . .