After weeks of rumblings, the U.S. justice department is now said to be investigating the NFL over its media rights deals with streaming companies.
According to multiple reports Thursday, the federal government has opened an investigation into the NFL concerning whether the league’s various rights deals with streaming companies constitute anti-competitive practices. The Wall Street Journal — a corporate sibling of Fox Corporation, which is one of the primary companies opposing the NFL’s deals with streamers — was first to report.
Despite consisting of 31 separate privately owned businesses (and the Packers, who are community-owned), the NFL is able to negotiate the collective sale of its media rights because of an antitrust exemption granted by Congress in 1961. That exemption has been challenged at varying points in recent years, but particularly in the past few months — as various aggrieved parties (including Fox Corporation, which owns rights to NFL games) have expressed support for the government examining whether that exemption extends to games on streaming services.
As might go without saying, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 did not anticipate games on streaming, or even cable, as neither existed at the time. In a decision that was later overturned, the NFL in 2024 lost an antitrust suit concerning the price of NFL Sunday Ticket on the grounds that the SBA applied only narrowly to over-the-air broadcast television. The league would have been on the hook for as much as $15 billion had that decision not been overturned. (Last year, a new judge ruled that the judge who overturned the initial decision had erred in doing so.)
In a statement to NBC News, a government official described the current investigation as being “about affordability for consumers and creating an even playing field for providers.”
Across the sports industry, much has been said about the price consumers have to pay to watch every game, and the fragmentation of sports media rights has been a common source of frustration. The current FCC chairman last month said that the NFL could get to a point where it puts “too many games behind a paywall” and the protections of the 1961 antitrust exemption would “collapse.”
The FCC has been soliciting public comment on the issue of sports rights shifting to streaming services, with Fox Corporation among those submitting letters. In its letter, Fox argued that as “leagues place more content on less-regulated, paid streaming platforms … and as customer costs increase, both the legal basis and public-policy rationale behind this antitrust exemption are appropriate to examine.”
Those sentiments were echoed by the Senate Judiciary antitrust chair on social media Thursday: “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.”
Across last year’s regular season and playoffs, there were 21 NFL game windows that aired exclusively on streaming services outside of the home markets — 17 on Prime Video, two on Netflix and one each on Peacock and YouTube — accounting for 15 percent of league’s 143 total windows. Other than the YouTube game, which was made available for free, all required a subscription.
By comparison, a full three-quarters of NFL game windows aired on broadcast television — 107 of 143 (counting the ‘singleheader’ window of 1:00 and 4:05 PM ET games as a single telecast). The quarter of NFL game windows that did not air on broadcast, whether on streaming (the aforementioned 21) or cable (15 total across ESPN and NFL Network), are required under NFL policy to air on local broadcast affiliates in the home markets, meaning that all NFL telecasts are available to watch on broadcast TV in the home markets.
There is no comparable policy in any other league, nor is there any other major team sports league with a greater percentage of games on broadcast television. (Though it should be noted that both the NBA and Major League Baseball have both considerably increased their broadcast television presence as part of their new media rights deals.)
The government’s interest in the NFL comes as the league seeks to renegotiate its media rights deals three years ahead of its contractual opt-out (four in the case of Disney). The league is in active negotiations with Paramount, using an opportunity created after the company’s sale to Skydance triggered a change-of-control provision in its contract. Once those negotiations are complete, the league is expected to move forward in seeking to renegotiate its deal with Fox and its other partners, with John Ourand of Puck reporting recently that its plan is to have all of the new deals struck by the start of the new NFL season in September.
It also comes as the league is actively shopping new media rights packages to streaming companies, including a potential expansion of its Netflix deal to include two additional games.
Despite speculation to the contrary, the government did not use the regulatory window opened by the NFL’s recent deal with Disney — which saw the league sell NFL Network and other assets in exchange for a stake in ESPN — to pressure the league on any issue, at least as far as is publicly known.
About a year ago, the same government now investigating NFL media rights opened an investigation into Disney’s planned merger with Fubo. But within months, the Disney-Fubo deal was approved after little if any delay.
Though both the current administration and congressional majority party are seen as ideologically aligned with the most outspoken media companies opposing the NFL’s streaming deals — namely Fox Corporation and Sinclair Broadcasting, both of which submitted public comment to the FCC — concerns about anti-competitive practices in sports media would seem to be at least broadly bipartisan. Earlier this week, two members of the minority party urged FCC review of various recent developments in the industry, including Disney’s deals with the NFL and Fubo, though they did not specifically address the topic of NFL rights on streaming services.
