More information is emerging about the Department of Justice’s investigation of the NFL.
ABC News, confirming the existence of the probe, reports that the effort centers on “affordability and creating an even playing field for providers.”
“The NFL’s media distribution model is the most fan and broadcaster-friendly in the entire sports and entertainment industry,” the NFL said, via ABC. “With over 87 percent of our games on free, broadcast television, including 100 percent 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. The 2025 season was our most viewed since 1989 and reflects the strength of the NFL distribution model and its wide availability to all fans.”
That’s fine, but that’s not the question. The question is whether the NFL has exceeded the scope of its antitrust exemption, which applies (in theory) only to efforts to bundle the offering of 32 independent businesses for sale to FCC-regulated, over-the-air broadcast networks.
The statutory exemption flows from the fact that the FCC owns the airwaves and licenses their use to networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. The consumer benefits from the exemption by getting access to NFL games at no charge. Any effort by the NFL to sell games as a non-negotiable bundle (with the league deciding the specific games provided) to cable, satellite, or TV providers arguably does not enjoy an exemption from the antitrust laws. Which (in theory) makes the NFL’s sale of its games to Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, and even ESPN (which the NFL now partially owns) an antitrust violation.
The version of the report posted on the ESPN website includes this sentence: “Courts have ruled in the past that [the exemption] does not apply to other media, including cable, satellite and streaming.” In 2024, a California jury found an antitrust violation as to the pricing of the Sunday Ticket package. The ESPN article mentions that outcome (which is pending on appeal as to the judge’s decision to throw out a damages award that would have resulted in liability of more than $14 billion), but it cites no other instances of rulings that cable, satellite, or streaming deals violate the antitrust laws.
Regardless of any legal decisions, the NFL has never abandoned that practice of selling games in bulk to cable, satellite, or streaming providers.
The current investigation could, in theory, result in a ruling that the NFL must stop selling games that way. That would shut out every provider that isn’t an over-the-air network — and which (in theory) would allow individual teams to strike cable, satellite, and/or streaming deals for their home games.
The increased governmental pressure comes at a time when the NFL is trying to renegotiate existing deals with the broadcast networks. It has started with CBS, thanks to a change-in-control provision that expressly allows the NFL to return to the table and ask CBS for more, given that CBS’s parent company has been sold to Skydance.
Fox is expected to be the next target for a request to pay much more for deals already struck. And Fox’s ultimate owner, Rupert Murdoch, is believed to be pushing the political buttons in an effort to get the league to back down. Last week, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published an editorial specifically attacking the entire exemption.
Where it goes from here remains to be seen. But it’s a problem for the NFL. And it may force the NFL scramble to find an off ramp from its existing effort to squeeze more juice from the three-letter lemons or face having a significant portion of its broadcast model dry up completely.