The NFL football league is banning the sale of its licensed goods on eBay, Amazon, and other third-party marketplaces. Online sellers received notice from their suppliers in March of the new prohibition effective April 1, 2016.
The manufacturers explained that the NFL is banning them from selling to merchants who list on third-party marketplaces, otherwise, the NFL will cut them off - eBay, Amazon, and Buy were specifically mentioned.
"As a licensee of the NFL we have to comply with their regulations," one supplier told its merchant customers. The notice continued:
"The NFL has announced that they are restricting all 3rd party online sales. As a licensee we will not be able to sell to anyone who sells our NFL products online through any 3rd party portal. All sales of our NFL products must occur through the retailer's own e-commerce site. These restrictions include, but are not limited to, sales on amazon.com, buy.com and ebay.com. To sell our NFL products online you, as our customer, must have ownership of the URL that the transaction occurs on. If you own a URL that redirects back to a 3rd Party URL for the ultimate transaction you cannot sell our NFL products."
The new policy also mandates that suppliers force merchants make sure their websites comply with NFL requirements, such as the following: "You cannot have any NFL logos or team logos present on your site that are not part of an image of the product without express permission from the NFL."
eBay and Amazon appeared to be unaware of the new policy and the sites continue to offer listings for NFL merchandise.
Sellers say they've received notifications from suppliers including Rico Industries, Wincraft, Siskiyou Gifts stating no sales of NFL merchandise on third Party sites.
We've reached out to the NFL by phone and email with no response, we'll continue to follow this story.