Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: FTC Halts Investigation into Football Helmet Manufacturers’ Concussion-Prevention Claims, (Apr 30, 2013)

By Tobias J. Gillett, J.D., LL.M.

The FTC has closed its investigation into potentially deceptive claims made by three football helmet manufacturers regarding the ability of their helmets to prevent concussions, the agency announced. The FTC sent letters to Riddell Sports Group, Inc., Schutt Sports, Inc., and Xenith, LLC, stating its intent to end the investigation based on the manufacturers’ actions in removing the claims from their advertising.

The FTC’s letter to Riddell discusses its review of Riddell’s claims with respect to a study published in the journal Neurosurgery in February 2006. Riddell used this study as support for its claim that "research proves that Revolution® varsity and youth football helmets reduce concussions and the risk of concussion by 31% compared to other varsity and youth football helmets." The FTC staff observed that this study indicated that its results were limited by the facts that "Revolution helmets were not randomly distributed across all of the participants in the study," and that "[p]layers in the control group who suffered concussions were younger than test group players who suffered concussions."

The FTC believed these limitations were "sufficiently serious to preclude the conclusion that the design features of the Revolution helmet, by themselves, were responsible for the difference in the concussion rates experienced by the two groups of players," and therefore could not be used to support the claim that the Revolution helmets reduced concussion or the risk of concussion by 31%. However, the FTC staff chose not to recommend an enforcement action because Riddell removed the 31% claim and because a more recent study "appear[ed] to show that Revolution varsity helmets perform much better than Riddell's ‘traditional’ VSR-4 helmet in reducing concussion risks attributable to linear acceleration." The staff noted that the study did not address rotational acceleration and that the results could not be extrapolated to youth helmets.

Similarly, the FTC had challenged allegedly unsubstantiated statements in advertising by Schutt Sports and Xenith that their helmets helped reduce the risk of concussion, but concluded that enforcement actions were not warranted because those manufacturers informed the FTC that they would remove or alter the claims at issue.

Xenith represented that it would "remove references to player data survey results and specific percentages in relation to occurrence of concussive episodes, and statements regarding reductions in the occurrence of concussive episodes."

Schutt Sports represented that it would remove from its website a statement that its helmets were "designed with the intent to reduce the risk of concussions," "change how it presents the results of impact absorption tests conducted on its own helmets and competing helmets," and "accompany any representations that Schutt helmets absorb impact better than competing helmets with a clear and conspicuous disclosure that better impact absorption has not been shown to be correlated with reduced risk of concussion."

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