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After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last week that it would seek public comments on the ongoing shift of live sports from broadcast channels to streaming services, the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking for a revision of the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act.
Congress passed the act to let leagues pool their media rights and sell them nationally — a move that helped make NFL games a staple of free network television. Presently, those same collective rights deals are increasingly being sliced up for streaming platforms, sparking backlash from fans frustrated by paywalls and platform hopping.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, wrote a letter to acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed A. Assefi and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson seeking answers.
“I applaud President [Donald] Trump and his Administration for addressing affordability for American consumers. 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. The resulting fragmentation has produced consumer confusion and increasing costs for viewers attempting to watch their teams …” Lee wrote in a letter Monday obtained by Fox News Digital.
“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. 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.”
Lee ended his letter by stating he wants the parties to “evaluate whether the statute continues to serve consumers or should be revised to reflect modern market conditions.”
If one were to strictly stream all NFL games throughout the 2025 season on Sunday Ticket, Netflix, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, ESPN Unlimited, and NFL+, it would have cost a minimum of $575, and others (prior Sunday Ticket watchers) nearly $800.
“From a consumer perspective, they were used to, for a long time, you sit down, you flip on the TV and you find your favorite sports game right there,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told Fox News Digital Wednesday night. “It was either free, or it was already part of the TV package that you already purchased. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen a movement of a significant number of games behind paywalls. I think that’s been really frustrating for so many consumers.”
The sports leagues have cashed in on the pivot to streaming, with the NFL landing $1 billion a year to air “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon as an example. The Sports Broadcasting Act exemption passed in 1961 applies only to broadcast television.
Courts have ruled in the past that it does not apply to other media, including cable, satellite and streaming. The Sports Broadcasting Act includes a rule allowing blackouts of local games, which still applies to out-of-market packages sold by the leagues.
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