Have Sports' Leagues Media Deals Become Anticompetitive?

Why It Matters

Congress is taking a hard look at whether a 65-year-old antitrust exemption still makes sense in an era when fans increasingly need a paid streaming subscription to watch their favorite teams play. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust has scheduled a Sports Broadcasting Act hearing for June 10, and the backdrop is anything but routine.

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 gave the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL a narrow antitrust carve-out to collectively negotiate television broadcast rights. The logic at the time was straightforward: fans would get broad, free, over-the-air access to games in exchange for letting leagues pool their negotiating power. That bargain is now under strain. Games have migrated to streaming platforms behind paywalls, and the Department of Justice opened a formal antitrust investigation into the NFL's television contracts in April 2026, probing whether the league's media deals have crossed into anticompetitive territory.

The DOJ Investigation and the FCC's Role

The DOJ probe, reported by ESPN, CNBC, and the Washington Post, focused on whether the NFL's arrangements with streaming platforms require consumers to pay subscription costs to watch certain games, conduct that may fall outside the protections the 1961 law was designed to provide. The investigation landed as the NFL was reportedly seeking to renegotiate its media rights deals ahead of schedule.

Regulators weren't the only ones paying attention. The FCC's Media Bureau opened a public comment period in February 2026 on "current and emerging trends in the distribution of live sports programming," asking how the shift to streaming has affected local broadcasters and consumers. The comment period closed in late March, and the filings that came in drew a sharp line in the sand.

The National Association of Broadcasters, joined by all 50 state broadcasters' associations along with those of D.C. and Puerto Rico, filed comments urging the FCC to halt the migration of sports behind streaming paywalls. The NAB then went further in May, publicly calling on Congress to reexamine the Sports Broadcasting Act, arguing it no longer serves its original purpose.

"As the marketplace evolves, and more games move behind streaming paywalls, Congress should reexamine whether fans are still receiving the broad access and affordability the law was intended to protect," an NAB spokesperson was quoted as saying by Fox News.

Jordan Invites Goodell

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan formalized the congressional response on June 1, sending a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell inviting him to testify.

"In particular, this hearing will examine how the distribution of professional sports has evolved since the SBA was first enacted 65 years ago," Jordan wrote, according to reporting by NBC Sports and The Athletic.

Goodell, per NBC Sports, is expected to politely decline the invitation. His anticipated absence will itself be a story at the hearing, as members are likely to use the NFL's non-participation to underscore their concerns about league accountability.

Fox News reported that the hearing will scrutinize the NFL's broadcast contracts, estimated at $110 billion, and whether the antitrust exemption remains appropriate given how dramatically the distribution landscape has changed.

Failed Reform Attempts

The legal and legislative history here matters. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 has been the subject of repeated reform efforts, none of which have been enacted. A series of bills known as the FANS Act (the Furthering Access and Networks for Sports Act) was introduced across multiple Congresses, each time seeking to condition the antitrust exemption on leagues not using blackouts to cut off fans. The furthest any version progressed was a single Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in December 2014.

The most current relevant legislation is S. 4301, the "For the Fans Act," introduced in April 2026 by Sen. Tammy Baldwin. The bill would prohibit professional sports leagues from blacking out games on their official streaming services and would require leagues to provide free access to local fans, defined as individuals in the same state as a team, through either a single streaming service or a local ad-supported broadcast. Enforcement would fall to the FTC and FCC. The bill was referred to the Senate Commerce Committee weeks before the June 10 hearing was scheduled and has seen no further action.

A Forbes analysis published in April 2026 added legal context, arguing that the NFL's streaming shift may put the antitrust exemption at risk, given that the Supreme Court previously ruled in Radovich v. NFL that the NFL is subject to antitrust law outside the specific scope of the exemption. The NFL Sunday Ticket litigation (in which a jury found the league violated antitrust law through its pooling of out-of-market broadcast rights) has also left the legal landscape unsettled, with a judge later concluding jurors may have been confused by expert testimony.

The Hearing

The subcommittee is chaired by Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), with Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) serving as Ranking Member. Other members include Reps. Jim Jordan, Darrell Issa, Zoe Lofgren, and Jamie Raskin. No witnesses have been publicly announced ahead of the hearing.

The National Football League has reported spending $420,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2026, with disclosure filings citing "broadcast policies, IP protection, and federal ticketing reforms" among the issues it has tracked. Fox Corp. reported $1.18 million in lobbying expenditures in the same period, covering antitrust enforcement, content carriage issues, retransmission consent, and streaming - the precise terrain this hearing is set to cover.

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