Senators take sports leagues to task over access to games
Senators take sports leagues to task over access to games
Legislators think it’s getting too hard for audiences to watch games with the continued fragmentation of sports rights.
Tonight’s NBA playoff game is on Max, but what about tomorrow night? Is the opening NFL game of the season exclusive to Peacock or Prime Video? Increasingly, sports fans are being forced to ask these questions, as streaming services get more and more access to sports rights that were once exclusively available on linear TV. League executives from across the sports world were called in front of Congress this week to discuss the growing fragmentation of their rights, and senators made it clear that they were keeping an eye on the issue of fan access.
Key Details:
- What about the fans?: Sen. Ted Cruz pointed out that fans should get something in return for the special treatment sports leagues get.
- Lock it up: Sen. Bernie Moreno advised leagues to give fans more access to games for free.
- Take care: Cruz also warned that the NFL has been flirting with violations of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.
Senators took a tone of concern with sports leagues over the fact that rights are now being distributed across more streaming services and linear channels than ever before. Take the new NBA broadcast deal, for example; the deal splits the league’s national rights among ESPN, NBC, and Prime Video, and games will also stream on Peacock and the forthcoming ESPN standalone streaming service.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that if the government were continuing to give sports leagues special treatment under the law, the average viewer should be able to get something back in exchange.
“Given that sports can get special treatment under the law — whether it be antitrust protection, nonprofit status or taxpayer financing of stadiums — what do the fans deserve in return?” Cruz said.
Cruz suggested that one idea would be to require teams to provide fans in home markets a way to watch games for free, should the government be compelled to step in. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) said that leagues should try to take steps to improve access to games themselves, which would be “dramatically less painful” than if the Senate decided to step in with legislation.
The NFL did not escape scrutiny in the proceedings either. Cruz said the league had been “tiptoeing up to the line” that protects high school and college football from encroachment by pro football. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prohibits the NFL from scheduling games on Friday night or Saturday from the second week of September through the second weekend in December, but the league’s Black Friday game on Prime Video comes awfully close to breaking that rule.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) pointed out that anyone who wanted to watch every NFL game of the 2024 season had to pay around $850 for every streaming and pay-TV service necessary to watch.
“I want fans to stream their sports, but we also want to make sure that consumers benefit from low prices, and innovation comes from competition,” Klobuchar said.
The continued decline of pay TV, combined with leagues’ desire to continue boosting the value of media deals has led to a situation where the best way to maximize value is to sell packages to multiple outlets. That increases fan confusion, but public officials are not deaf to the pleas of audiences who just want to know where to watch tonight’s game.
Prime Video
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