Reply to Stay-to-Play Hotel-Booking Requirements: Varsity Brands Lawsuit

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Reply to "Stay-to-Play Hotel-Booking Requirements: Varsity Brands Lawsuit"

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[quote=Anonymous]Anybody here both a soccer parent and an antitrust expert, and know whether last year's Varsity Brands settlement, [i]see[/i] [url=https://topclassactions.com/legal-industry/parents-varsity-brands-settle-cheerleading-antitrust-lawsuit-for-82-5m/]here[/url] and [url=https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/varsity-spirit-bain-pay-82-million-cheerleading-antitrust-settlement-2024-05-14/]here[/url], has had (or should be having) any effect on the widespread practice of tournament "stay to play" requirements?

As an example, [url=https://beachfc.demosphere-secure.com/tournaments-1/spring-classic]here's the requirement[/url] for (Virginia) Beach FC's 2025 Virginia Beach Spring Classic tournament:

[quote]Teams participating in the Tournament ARE REQUIRED to make all hotel accommodations using our tournament housing service.

The tournament housing service is a free service and enables the City of Virginia Beach to ascertain tax revenue and in turn, helps with future grants to build/improve soccer field/facilities development. We encourage your support of developing facilities for youth players.  Some hotels will offer single-night stays - check the listing on the website for this information.[/quote]

This sort of tying or bundling across unrelated markets (soccer tournaments and hotels) has always struck me as anticompetitive, but I don't know antitrust law well enough to really gauge.  It feels like, surely, thousands of soccer parents would have challenged this if the theory had legs.

I also wonder what, exactly, "enables the [c]ity ... to [i]ascertain[/i] tax revenue" is supposed to mean.  Like, is Virginia Beach [i]actually[/i] applying some sort of special, additional tax on tournament participants, beyond the standard hospitality taxes?  Or is this just a weaselly way for the organizers to [i]imply[/i] that's the case when it isn't?[/quote]

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