Congress Grills NFL Over Antitrust Exemption as Goodell Skips Hearing
The House Judiciary Committee convened a hearing to examine whether major professional sports leagues, and the NFL in particular, are violating the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 by moving games behind paid streaming services. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell declined the committee's invitation to testify, and the league sent no representative in his place. The NFL did not respond to requests for comment following the hearing.
The absence left lawmakers and witnesses unchallenged for the duration of the roughly two-hour session. In an unusual display of bipartisan alignment, Republican and Democratic members of the committee voiced consistent concern that the NFL is exploiting its antitrust exemption under the Sports Broadcasting Act while operating outside the statute's scope. The Act, passed in 1961, granted professional sports leagues a limited exemption from antitrust law specifically to enable joint television broadcast agreements - on the condition that games remain widely available to the public through sponsored telecasting. Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., said in his opening statement that the leagues had not kept their end of that bargain. "Sports fans are paying the price because of it," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald challenged the NFL's public claim that 100 percent of its local market games are available free over the air and that 87 percent of games carry primary distribution on broadcast television. He cited language from the NFL's own Sunday Ticket promotional website, which warns prospective subscribers that during the season's opening month, 94 percent of teams have games on CBS and Fox that are shown to less than half the country - a statement that directly undercuts the league's position before the committee. Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, told the committee that the Sports Broadcasting Act is being "misused" and called on lawmakers to enforce its original guardrails. "It is not meant to enable sports to be hidden behind paywalls," LeGeyt said. Fox News contributor and OutKick founder Clay Travis, also testifying, argued the committee should evaluate the issue "through the prism of the reasonable sports fan - regular fans who just want to be able to watch their favorite teams for a reasonable price without being extorted." Travis cited the case of the Buffalo Bills' inaugural game at their new stadium, scheduled for Sept. 17, 2026, against the Detroit Lions on Thursday Night Football. The $2.2 billion stadium received $600 million in New York state funding and $200 million from Erie County taxpayers, yet Bills fans in nearby Rochester and Syracuse - taxpayers contributing to the facility - will be required to hold a paid streaming subscription to watch the game from home, as it will not be broadcast over the air in those markets.
With no NFL voice present to contest witness testimony or address committee questions, the hearing produced an uncontested record of criticism that lawmakers could draw on in any subsequent legislative action. The committee has not announced a timeline for next steps, but the bipartisan tenor of the session and a prior Judiciary Committee report accusing the NFL of stretching its antitrust exemption signal that congressional scrutiny of the league's broadcasting arrangements is unlikely to subside.
