As the popularity and revenue of fantasy sports have grown tremendously, the amount of court cases surrounding the use of statistics (Yahoo v. National Football League) has followed suit. Leagues have tried to charge for the use of stats. It’s a “lose-lose” for sports fans when sports leagues try to claim public-owned information as their own intellectual property.

We have seen sports leagues (Major League Baseball v. CBC Distribution and Marketing) and players associations (CBS Interactive v. National Football League Players Association) try to force fantasy providers to pay for the use of this information. Fantasy providers are exposed, and the leagues will continue to try to charge for the use of stats and, perhaps, even online conversation about the facts of the game (ex. the SEC’s ill-conceived ban on Social Media usage in stadiums). The next logical step is for the sports leagues to tell those who play online fantasy league sports that they will have to pay before using any statistics.