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A wild, rather star-studded sports-related antitrust trial is currently taking place in a Brooklyn federal court. The case being litigated is the defunct second version of the North American Soccer League (NASL) versus the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) and Major League Soccer (MLS).
The North American Soccer League, led by its former chairman Rocco Commisso, the billionaire founder, CEO, and owner of cable company Mediacom, is seeking up to $170 million in damages from USSF and MLS. The amount would be tripled if NASL gets a favorable verdict, as is the case in all antitrust lawsuits.
When the trial first began earlier this month, among those who were expected to testify were MLS commissioner Don Garber, FC Dallas and Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, Big East commissioner Val Ackerman (a former USSF board member), and former NBA star Carmelo Anthony, who owned the NASL Puerto Rico FC franchise.
Commisso, who owned the NASL New York Cosmos franchise and still owns ACF Fiorentina, and NASL attorney Jeff Kessler claim that MLS and USSF conspired to stop NASL from competing with MLS and then conspired to remove the soccer league’s Division II status, leading to it folding in 2018.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the trial so far, occurred this week when Kessler, who is also representing Michael Jordan in his race team’s lawsuit against NASCAR, asked Commisso about a Twitter account that used to make derogatory statements about the USSF and MLS.
Commisso, who previously admitted during the lawsuit’s discovery phase that he ran the account anonymously, said he created the account so his posts wouldn’t interfere with his media company’s business. He also admitted creating a second anonymous Twitter account, and, Front Office Sports reports, ordered a public relations executive at Mediacom to post negative things about MLS and USSF on that account.
Among the tweets Rocco Commisso wrote on Twitter using the anonymous “Global Soccer Fan” account was one in which he wrote, “USSF has been raped by the Harvey Weinstein of US Soccer – Garber, who with MLS owners and Gulati, have engineered a Madoff-type scam on all of American soccer.”
Commisso was referring to MLS commissioner Don Garber, USSF president Sunil Gulati, convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein and Bernie Madoff, mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history.
When asked by Ruskin, “You chose to equate someone with rape over a business grievance where you didn’t get what you wanted, correct? That’s when you decided to do this, yes or no?” Commisso replied “Yes” to both questions.