Amazon, Netflix, YouTube form lobbying group
Amazon, Netflix, YouTube form lobbying group
The Streaming Access and Choice Alliance (SACA) will advocate for streamers amidst an outcry of sports shifting to their platforms.
Streaming services are adding more live sports, and viewers are noticing the impact on subscription prices. Congress has taken an interest is increasingly focused on the contentious question of sports access, and streamers are now banding together to advocate for themselves. Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube have formed a new group to lobby lawmakers as sports shift from TV to streamers.
Key Details:
- Join together: Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube have formed a new streaming lobbying group.
- Counterpoint: The group will argue that streaming provides audiences more choice and control.
- Worth talking about: Leagues are facing a possible loss of antitrust exemptions as more games migrate to streaming.
Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube have formed the Streaming Access and Choice Alliance (SACA), a trade group comprising 106 members that will lobby lawmakers and regulators who have expressed some level of skepticism about the shift of sports from TV to streaming.
Each company has made significant investments in sports in recent years; Prime Video and Netflix both have NFL packages, and YouTube TV is the exclusive host of NFL Sunday Ticket. But concerns about fragmentation and price have led customers to seek intervention from legislators to slow the migration of sports to streaming.
SACA will advance the argument that streaming services actually provide customers with more choice and more control over which events they’ll actually see. Since more households have a broadband connection than a pay-TV subscription, the group says that moving sports to streamers is a way to expand audiences.
So far, lawmakers have appeared skeptical about the benefits of moving sports to streaming. Some American legislators have questioned whether the shift of football games to streamers is aligned with the spirit of the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act, which gives antitrust exemptions to multiple professional sports leagues if they continue to offer broad access to their games.
SACA has some work to do to bring lawmakers back to the side of streaming services. Rising prices have not endeared the public to streamers either, and though fans have followed top events to streamers for the most part, the very fact that Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube felt the need to form a lobbying group shows that the pressure is not easing.
Netflix
Netflix is a leading subscription-based video streaming service that offers on-demand access to an extensive library of over 3,000 movies, 2,000+ TV shows, and a growing collection of acclaimed Netflix originals. Renowned for producing groundbreaking content, Netflix has become a cultural powerhouse with hit originals like “Stranger Things,” “Wednesday,” “Squid Game,” “The Crown,” “Tiger King,” “Bridgerton,” “The Witcher,” and “Black Mirror.”
