Lizard's Rant

Remember last week when I said that Upper Deck “claimed that they will be able to overcome any antitrust issues that may arise from having one company own both baseball licenses”? I was surprised that they would make that claim, and apparently they didn’t. That statement came from the Beckett.com article that I was referencing in the post, and Topps has since then issued a press release to deny the claim and Beckett removed the article from their site. Here’s the release from Topps:

Today, in response to inquiries due to an article published by Beckett.com suggesting that the proposed acquisition of Topps by Upper Deck may have received antitrust approval, confirmed that no such approval has been obtained.

That has to be the shortest press release in the history of press releases! It’s not like Beckett to make up facts, but that just goes to show the importance of citing your references any time you present people with a factual claim. If they had a legitimate source I would suspect that Topps would have put a bit more effort into that release and Beckett wouldn’t have pulled the article.