The National Football League is banning most local television news crews from the sidelines of football stadiums during NFL games. The new policy says local channels - often the primary source for coverage - will no longer be allowed to shoot or air their own footage.

According to 9news.com in Denver, team owners approved the restrictive rules at an owner’s meeting last March.

Spokesman for the Denver Broncos, Jim Saccomano, told 9News that a major factor leading to the decision revolved around the league trying to protect its intellectual property rights. That intellectual property, said the news agency, refers to the league’s NFL Network and an effort to drive more viewers to its in-house channel.

Critics are saying that taxpayers (read: fans, and non-fans for that matter) have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build new stadiums all across the country and now the owners have turned them into private studios.