PROFESSIONAL SPORT, MARKET RESTRICTIONS AND THE NBL’S PLAYER POINTS SYSTEM: A RESPONSE

Abstract

This article is a comment on the article by Jacob Holmes in this volume entitled ‘Professional Sport and Market Restrictions: Is the Player Points System in the Australian National Basketball League an Unfair Restraint of Trade?’. It explores some of the difficulties in applying the traditional tests from Nordenfelt v Maxim Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Co Ltd  and Adamson v New South Wales Rugby League Ltd to sporting organisations and concludes that ultimately, the discussion of restraint of trade and its applicability to sporting organisations highlights the limits of legal experience, and suggests that only empirical data learnt through the hard lesson of experience will yield the knowledge we need.