For generations, sports have brought Americans together. Families gather around the television on Sunday afternoons to watch football. Friends head to the ballpark. As America’s monoculture collapses, sports remain one of the few shared experiences we have left.
Or at least, it was. Because increasingly, they’re becoming harder to watch. Sports are disappearing behind subscription paywalls as major leagues strike deals with streaming platforms. Games that were once freely available are now scattered across multiple services, forcing fans to navigate a confusing and expensive web of subscriptions.
The average sports fan now spends $88 a month on streaming services — $24 more than non-sports viewers. That’s more than $1,000 a year to watch games that were once free.
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The consequences extend beyond today’s fans.
Children who watch sports often become children who play them. They find role models, build friendships, develop healthy habits, and discover lifelong passions. But that only happens when games are easy to access. When sports become fragmented and expensive, fewer young people are inspired to participate. The result is a gradual erosion of the community connections, shared experiences, and healthy activities that sports provide.
Those concerns were front and center last week as the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee examined whether the NFL’s streaming agreements remain consistent with the Sports Broadcasting Act, the Kennedy-era law that granted the league an antitrust exemption.
Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked whether the law continues to benefit consumers as intended or has evolved into a tool primarily serving leagues’ commercial interests. Unfortunately, the NFL was not there to answer, arguing the hearing was not “balanced.”
During the hearing, OutKick founder Clay Travis pointed to the Buffalo Bills’ new stadium to highlight growing fan frustration. Across the country, taxpayers help finance stadiums and support the infrastructure that allows professional sports franchises to thrive. Yet many of those same taxpayers are now being asked to pay additional subscription fees simply to watch the teams they helped support through their tax dollars.
Jim Hallers, founder and managing partner of Tailgators Pub & Grill and Citizens Grill in the Houston area, testified that sports bars and neighborhood restaurants are increasingly being forced to spend thousands of dollars on technology upgrades and subscription services simply to show the games their customers expect to see. For small businesses operating on razor-thin margins, imposing new costs for access to games can seriously hurt their bottom line.
The debate over sports broadcasting is often framed as a battle between old technology and new technology. But that misses the point. The real question is whether America’s sports marketplace will continue to serve fans or increasingly serve corporate bottom lines, and whether an act passed in the early 1960s — which explicitly covers “telecasting” — applies to modern streaming technologies.
Sports are more than just another product to be sold to the highest bidder. They are one of the few institutions that still bring Americans together across communities, generations, and political divides. They inspire children to play, give families traditions to share, and provide common ground in an increasingly fragmented society.
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If we lose that accessibility, we lose more than just games. We lose one of the last shared experiences that binds us together.
That’s worth protecting.
Anthony Constantini is a policy analyst at the Bull Moose Institute.