Jerry Jones’s Legends Hospitality will pay $1.5 million penalty for antitrust violation

The headline? Long-time sports executive Tim Leiweke (older brother of former NFL COO Tod Leiweke) has been indicted on federal bid-rigging charges.

Something far more interesting, and potentially far more relevant to the NFL, lurks beneath the top-line news.

Tim Leiweke served, until Wednesday, as the CEO of Oak View Group. He resigned due to a problem arising from the construction of the Moody Center at the University of Texas.

OVG led the financing and oversaw the development of the arena. Along the way, OVG and Legends Hospitality — founded by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the New York Yankees — allegedly committed antitrust violations by (wait for it) colluding. (Sixth Street Partners purchased a controlling interest in Legends four years ago; Jones still owns a piece of the company.)

Leiweke allegedly entered into an agreement with Legends to drop its bid to oversee the construction of the arena in exchange for “lucrative subcontracts.” Leweike then allegedly reneged on the subcontracts.

CNBC reports that Legends is expected to pay a $1.5 million penalty for its involvement in the alleged scheme. OVG is expected to pay $15 million. And Leiweke will face an eventual trial, barring a dismissal of the charges or a deal of his own.

Leiweke, in a statement issued to Sports Business Journal, says he did nothing wrong. He calls the arrangement with Legends a “vertical, complementary business partnership” that fully complies with the law.

The development comes at a time when the NFL Players Association has secured an arbitration finding that the NFL’s Management Council, with the blessing of Commissioner Roger Goodell, urged teams to collude regarding guaranteed contracts for NFL players. As a source familiar with the NFLPA’s operations told PFT after it became clear that the NFLPA had hidden the ruling for months, “a properly functioning union would alert the [Department of Justice’s] antitrust division” about the behavior — with the obvious goal of getting the DOJ to investigate whether and to what extent the NFL has engaged (and/or is engaging) in other antitrust violations.

Now that it’s come to light that the league tried to collude as to player guarantees, maybe an ambitious AUSA will take a closer look at whether supposedly competing businesses have been doing a little colluding (or a lot) in violation of the federal antitrust laws. The fact that the DOJ is currently run by a president who has vowed regarding NFL owners to “get them all back” won’t make that possibility any less likely.