Disney, Paramount among broadcasters lobbying for Protect College Sports Act

A week after Nick Saban and Pat McAfee practically did an infomercial for the Protect College Sports Act during College GameDay, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), was given the chance to make a full-throated defense of the bill and why it needed to be passed by the Senate and House, with Cruz previously saying that if passed, President Donald Trump would sign it into law on a future episode of ESPN’s flagship college football show.

Even by the standards of College GameDay, which has been known to put its thumb on the scale when it wanted, this whole affair has been wildly inappropriate. It’s one thing for Kirk Herbstreit to chastise football players for opting out of meaningless bowl games; it’s another thing for the show to put its full weight behind a Congressional bill without providing ample time to those proponents and opponents, especially when those who oppose the bill do so on the grounds that it will negatively impact the earning ability of the athletes who make the sport work.

However, it helps you understand this all-out blitz when you realize where ESPN’s parent company is putting its money.

Joedy McCreary at OpenSecrets recently laid out the fight surrounding the PCSA, spelling out which entities are pushing for it and which are pushing back.

Per McCreary, several major broadcasting and cable companies are putting their money where their mouth is. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and NCTA – the Internet and Television Association lobbied for the legislation. Amazon, Paramount Skydance, and Disney (which owns ESPN) listed the college sports measure among the dozens of bills they worked on between April 1 and June 30.

A total of “60 colleges and university systems lobbied the measure during the second quarter,” including “36 members of the NCAA’s four most powerful conferences.”

McCreary also notes that Saving College Sports, the group founded by Texas Tech billionaire booster Cody Campbell, has been leading the financial charge on lobbying for the PCSA and other sports-related acts. As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, SCS is not required to disclose its donors, so it’s unknown exactly where its funds come from and from whom. In September 2025, the organization replaced Campbell and two other directors with four Republicans, including executive director David Polyansky – Ted Cruz’s former chief of staff.

According to the Washington Sun, Michele Roberts and DeMaurice Smith, former heads of the NBA and NFL players’ unions, are lobbying against the PCSA. The AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and the Congressional Black Caucus have all spoken out against the PCSA, saying that it “disproportionately affects Black athletes” and instead “grants sweeping new legal protections to powerful institutions while failing to adequately protect the athletes whose talent fuels this multibillion-dollar industry.”

The U.S. Senate is expected to take up the bill soon, with supporters claiming it has enough votes to pass there. The House appears to be a different story. Supporters also seemed equally confident it could pass in the previous legislative session before it was shelved.