FCC Chair Brendan Carr doubled down Tuesday on his argument that the NFL could lose its antitrust exemption if it moves too many games behind streaming service paywalls.
The Department of Justice is investigating the league amid outcry that it has become too pricey and complicated for sports fans to watch their favorite teams – and Carr warned that oversight could extend to the FCC and Congress, too, if the shift to streaming worsens.
“That experience has become frustrating for lots of Americans over the years,” he said of watching games to CNBC.
“I do think there’s a point at which the NFL reaches a tipping point where they’re sticking too many games behind a paywall, in which case it really raises a lot of questions about the scope of that [exemption],” Carr added.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr said the NFL could lose its antitrust exemption if it moves too many games behind a streaming service paywall. ZUMAPRESS.com “DOJ and Congress could also look at the antitrust exemption. We want to be informed about this because we ultimately do regulate the local broadcast TV market, so we’re going to look at it and potentially we could inform Congress or DOJ, as well.”
Leagues are currently protected from antitrust action under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which has allowed teams to pool their media rights together into massive TV packages.
But Carr told The Post late last month that the NFL could lose this protection if it shifts too many games to streaming, as fans shell out as much as $1,500 a year to watch every pro football game across several online services.
Carr has argued that the shift to streaming harms not only consumers, but local broadcasters, too.
“We’re looking at this at the FCC from the perspective of the health of the local broadcast market,” Carr said Tuesday.
“We want to make sure that there continues to be the ability of local broadcasters to invest in local news and local reporting, which is expensive, so they’re paying too much ultimately for NFL rights, for other sports’ rights. That’s a problem.”
Football fans needed to cough up $14.99 for Amazon Prime this year to watch Thursday Night Football and January’s Wild Card game between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers.
The DOJ is investigating the NFL amid outcry that it has become too pricey and complicated for sports fans to watch their favorite teams. Getty Images But they also had to fork over at least $8.99 for a basic Netflix plan to catch the double-header games on Christmas, and last fall, the Week 1 game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers was only available on YouTube.
The NFL has argued that streamers have largely begun to replace broadcasters as consumers’ preferred way to watch content, and that teams need to meet viewers where they are.
“The NFL’s media distribution model is the most fan- and broadcaster-friendly in the entire sports and entertainment industry,” the league said in a statement.
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“With over 87% of our games on free, broadcast television, including 100% of games in the markets of the competing teams, the NFL has for decades put our fans front and center in how we distribute our content.”
In February, the Federal Communications Commission asked the public for comment on how the shift from traditional broadcasts to streamers has impacted sports fans — a potential first step before a more serious probe.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who chairs the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, filed a letter with the DOJ and FTC last month requesting a review of the NFL’s protections.
In the meantime, streamers have continued to hike prices, with Netflix last month raising all of its monthly subscription tiers by at least $1.
The NFL’s media rights agreements with streamers owned by Disney, Paramount, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, NFL Network, Amazon, Google and Netflix are expected to rake in more than $100 billion under their current contracts, the FCC said in February.
Fox Corporation shares common ownership with The Post’s parent company, News Corp.
Pricey media rights deals have turned the NFL into a serious money-making business, with nearly all of the league’s 32 teams run by billionaires — including Walmart heir Rob Walton, who owns the Denver Broncos, and the Hunt family, which owns the Kansas City Chiefs.
