The United States Department of Justice has opened up an investigation into the NFL, The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Toonkel and Dana Mattioli reported on Thursday.
While the full scope of the investigation is unknown, with both the league and DOJ declining comment, it’s believed it relates to whether or not the NFL is engaging in uncompetitive practices that harm consumers.
The piece cites the Sports Broadcast Act, passed in 1961, which grants the league an antitrust exemption to collectively negotiate TV rights packages. The fragmentation of the broadcast package to include streamers at the expense of over-the-air broadcasters led to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, to write a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and DOJ last month asking for a review of the NFL’s antitrust exemption.
“To watch every NFL game during this past season, football fans spent almost $1,000 on cable and streaming subscriptions,” Lee wrote in the letter dated Mar. 2. “In practice, this requires subscribing to multiple streaming services and maintaining high-speed internet in addition to a traditional cable or satellite bundle. The resulting fragmentation has produced consumer confusion and increasing costs for viewers attempting to watch their teams.”
The letter comes on the heels of the Federal Communications Commission opening a review of the move of major leagues’ broadcasting rights to streaming services. The FTC sought comments from the public on steps the commission “could take to ensure continued access by viewers to live sports through free over-the-air broadcast TV.”
In response to the review, the NFL noted that 87 per cent of its games are available on free broadcast TV and all games are available in local markets.
“The NFL has the most accessible, fan-friendly distribution model across all of sports and entertainment,” the league said in a statement to Reuters.