Senator Mike Lee has penned a letter to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission calling for an antitrust review of the NFL’s dealings with streaming platforms.
“To watch every NFL game during this past season, football fans spent almost $1,000 on cable and streaming subscriptions. In practice, this requires subscribing to multiple streaming services and maintaining high-speed internet in addition to a traditional cable or satellite bundle,” Lee wrote. “The resulting fragmentation has produced consumer confusion and increasing costs for viewers attempting to watch their teams.”
The investigation would examine whether the league’s distribution practices are aligned with the Sports Broadcasting Act, which was enacted by Congress in 1961 to grant limited antitrust immunity to allow professional football teams to collectively license sponsored telecasts of their games to national broadcast networks that are financed through advertising and made available free to the public.
“The modern distribution environment differs substantially from the conditions that precipitated this exemption. Instead of a small number of free broadcast networks, the NFL now licenses games simultaneously to subscription streaming platforms, premium cable networks, and technology companies operating under different business models,” Lee continued. “To the extent collectively licensed game packages are placed behind subscription paywalls, these arrangements may no longer align with the statutory concept of sponsored telecasting or the consumer-access rationale underlying the antitrust exemption. Accordingly, I request that your antitrust enforcement agencies examine the Sports Broadcasting Act and its applicability to current media landscape.”
Approximately 87% of the NFL’s 272 regular season games are available on free, over-the-air television and that number is even higher for the league’s post-season. All of its games are also available on over-the-air television in the markets of the competing teams.
Representatives for the NFL declined to comment. The DOJ and FTC did not immediately return TheWrap’s request for comment.
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The call for an investigation comes as the NFL has an opt-out clause in its current media rights agreements that can be exercised starting after the 2029-30 season, but could potentially reopen negotiations as early as this year.
The league’s current partners include Disney/ESPN, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Paramount/CBS, Amazon and Fox. It also has separate deals with YouTube for the NFL Sunday Ticket and Netflix for Christmas Day games.
In addition to the DOJ and FTC, the Federal Communications Commission has asked for the public’s input to better understand the sports marketplace, consumer experience and how sports’ shift from broadcast to streaming is impacting TV stations’ ability to deliver local news, information and other programming.
Comments will be due on March 27, with the deadline for replies set for April 13.
When asked about its media rights deal with the NFL earlier this week, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch touted the company’s over 30-year relationship with the league “very strong” and “mutually beneficial.” However, he noted that there’s been no “material” renewal conversations yet.
“We have four more years on our contract before any presumed opt out would take effect. So we feel comfortable with where we are,” Murdoch told an investor conference hosted by Morgan Stanley. “Prices were renegotiated only three years ago, and they went up over 100% three years ago. So we think our current pricing is at market but to the extent that there was any incremental cost for that NFL programming, the key thing for people to realize is that incremental cost would would flow through to local affiliates, to our distributors and ultimately to consumers and the fans.”
At the same conference on Wednesday, Netflix chief financial officer Spencer Neumann said that sports is part of the company’s overall live event strategy, but that the streamer doesn’t “love being in the business of big seasons of big sports.”
“We think that’s a pretty tough business to be in and we don’t think we need it to deliver that improving member value,” he said. “We’re excited for those opportunities and continuing to build on those opportunities and find a way where sports can be a nice compliment to our business. But we’re going to stay disciplined in terms of how we invest.”
Paramount CEO David Ellison told CNBC on Thursday that the company has a “phenomenal relationship” with the NFL and anticipate continuing that for the “forseeable future.”
“They are one of our most important partners, and we plan for them to stay one of our most important partners having just delivered a historic season, really, in partnership with them,” he said.
Ellison declined to comment on specific negotiations, but said that Paramount has “planned accordingly” in the event of a potential increase in the overall cost of the NFL by as much as 50%.
Meanwhile, Disney’s ESPN recently closed its acquisition of the NFL Network, the linear RedZone Channel and NFL Fantasy. In exchange, the league is being given a 10% stake valued at $3 billion in the sports network. The deal, which values ESPN at roughly $30 billion total, will see the NFL Network integrated into ESPN’s direct-to-consumer streaming service at the start of the 2026 season in the fall.
Fans can currently get the NFL Network through NFL+ and in the ESPN DTC-NFL+ Premium bundle. The distribution of NFL RedZone TV to pay TV providers will also begin with the 2026 season and will continue to be a part of NFL+ Premium. NFL Fantasy will also be combined with ESPN’s Fantasy starting with the 2026 season.
During the company’s February earnings call Disney’s outgoing CEO Bob Iger declined to weigh in on how the partnership would impact the company’s relationship with the NFL and said it was “premature” to speculate on the possibility of an early renewal of ESPN/ABC’s media rights deal with the league.
