A group of senators pressured representatives from the NBA, MLB, and NHL over the increasingly confusing and expensive array of streaming platforms fans must navigate to watch their games.
“In an era of deep partisan division, sports might be the most powerful cultural unifier that we have,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. “Whether on the couch or in the stands, Americans come together to cheer, to hope, to believe.”
“But those millions of fans are asking a simple question,” he added, “Why does it seem to be getting harder and more expensive to just watch the game?”
To answer that question, representatives from three professional sports leagues were dragged before the committee to make their case.
Cruz repeatedly mentioned the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, legislation that granted sports leagues an antitrust exemption in order to sell league-wide broadcasting rights. He asked whether college sports might benefit from such an exemption, and how the legislation applies in a digital age.
The hearing stayed mostly cordial, but included some complaints from senators about cost and availability.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said that NFL fans subscribing to every streaming service available, such as NFL Sunday Ticket, YouTube TV, ESPN+, and others, would pay $850 for the 2024 season alone. Some fans have to subscribe to three different streaming services just to watch every game for a single team’s season, often having to download multiple phone apps and keep up with multiple usernames and passwords in the process.
Sports fans are no longer “forced into bloated cable bundles,” Public Knowledge legal director John Bergmayer said, but “the transition to streaming hasn’t been smooth.”
Fans today can watch more games than ever before, if they’re willing to pay for them. The NBA’s William Koenig said that his league’s finals were broadcast on tape delay well into the 1980s, which was later augmented by cable TV networks like ESPN and now by streaming networks.
As recently as 10 years ago, more than 100 million U.S. households had cable and satellite subscriptions, while 60 million had a streaming service. Today, paid TV only reaches 45 million households, while 120 million subscribe to at least one streaming service.
But how that access reaches viewers was a topic of concern across the committee. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the committee’s ranking member, said that the monopoly powers were granted to sports leagues in an era when TV was broadcast over the air for free, with viewers “paying” for it by agreeing to watch advertisements.
Cantwell questioned whether or not it would make sense if monopoly powers were turned over to streaming services that customers are forced to pay for, accusing the sports leagues of “clobbering the consumer” and “collecting checks.”
The issue gets complicated fast. League representatives explained that there are three tiers of games: those broadcast nationally, those broadcast locally, and those that can be purchased via a subscription for out-of-town fans.
Even though leagues can negotiate as a single entity, they still leave control over local broadcasts to local teams, with different franchises using different approaches.
“A fan anywhere in the country can access every game played by his or her favorite team or any other team in the league through a subscription to one or more [streaming] packages,” Koenig said.
But, along with the Sports Broadcasting Act, the senators said the government has a say in how expensive it is for fans to watch games because most teams accept taxpayer funding for their stadiums, meaning their product is, in some ways, publicly funded.
“Fans are right to ask if these teams have a civic responsibility to their communities that includes making games accessible,” Cruz said.
For a time, teams relied on regional sports networks to broadcast local games, a model that has broken down as people cut cable and as advertising revenue has plummeted. Some regional networks have gone bankrupt, leaving the teams scrambling to make accommodations for local broadcasts.
The hearing included some forays into other topics, and some partisan sniping over funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) peppered the NBA’s Koenig over how much the league bends to the will of the Chinese Communist Party in order to broadcast its games in China, and asked how much league ownership had invested in the country.
Koenig said that the NBA believes in free speech but that it keeps its broadcast revenue figures private.
Several Democratic committee members used their time to bring up the Trump administration’s efforts to cut funding for public broadcasting, saying it would affect rural and low-income communities the most.
Trump’s austerity argument on tariffs may be ‘dangerous politically’
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) also offered a warning to the sports leagues, saying they could fix the issue the easy way or the hard way.
“You guys solving this problem and making it more available, easier, and with less friction, will be dramatically less painful than if this institution decides to give you rules and guardrails,” he said. “So, option one, you solve it, and that’s great. Option B? Not so great.”