Roger Goodell will not be testifying before Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee next week, and on Wednesday, the NFL explained why in writing.
According to Puck’s John Ourand, NFL general counsel Ted Ullyot sent a letter to Jordan formally declining the committee’s invitation for Goodell to appear at its June 10 hearing on the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, disputing the committee’s argument that the league’s move toward streaming has come at the expense of traditional broadcasters.
“As technologies have presented new ways to distribute video content, viewing habits have changed, and we have adjusted our approach, but to be clear, this has not come at the expense of our dedication to broadcast television,” Ullyot wrote, according to Puck. Streaming services, the letter continued, “offer significantly more reach than the current pay-TV ecosystem. … Broadcast television remains the foundation of our media distribution.”
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 grants the four major North American professional sports leagues a limited antitrust exemption, allowing them to sell broadcast rights collectively rather than on a team-by-team basis. The exemption was written before cable, satellite, or streaming existed as distribution methods, and whether it covers games sold to Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube is the question at the heart of these hearings.
Local broadcasters and their congressional allies have argued it doesn’t, and that the league has been exploiting a legal framework never intended to accommodate streaming. The NFL’s counter, delivered through Ullyot’s letter, is that streaming has only broadened the league’s reach and that broadcast television hasn’t lost a single game because of it.
The league has been fending off scrutiny from multiple directions. The DOJ launched a formal investigation into the NFL’s broadcast practices earlier this year, shortly after FCC chairman Brendan Carr opened his own inquiry. On Capitol Hill, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced legislation to guarantee fans in a team’s home state access to all game telecasts at no charge. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D- MA) and Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) demanded FCC action, while Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) called on the DOJ and FTC to take a fresh look at the league’s antitrust exemptions.
None of it has gotten the NFL into a hearing room. The league was the only one to skip last year’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on sports fragmentation, a choice that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) noted pointedly afterward. “I wish they had come,” Cruz told Awful Announcing. “I think the issues that were discussed apply to them just like they apply to the leagues that were here.”
Despite Congress’s failed efforts to get NFL officials to speak on the record at a hearing, the league has certainly been active behind closed doors in its lobbying in Washington. In April, following the announcement of an FCC inquiry, the league sent top officials to meet with the agency and present a case for why its broadcast practices are the most fan-friendly among major sports leagues, and why fragmentation would only accelerate should the league’s antitrust exemption be taken away.
Instead, the NFL will continue to work its Washington strategy in silence, which has been very effective in the past.
Jordan’s committee is proceeding with the June 10 hearing regardless, with OutKick founder Clay Travis among those expected to testify in Goodell’s absence.