The Ohio legislature can be a pretty wacky place. Just how wacky? Wacky enough to try a years long effort to legislate its way around Ohio State football games appearing on Peacock.
Former Ohio Speaker of the House, Republican Larry Householder, is currently serving a 20 year prison sentence for rampant corruption, gerrymandering is out of control, and the legislature is currently trying to controversially take over higher education.
But with all of that going on, there is still time to focus on the issues most important to Ohioans: getting Ohio State football games off of streaming platforms.
State Senator Bill DeMora, a Democratic lawmaker from Columbus, is making yet another attempt to ban Ohio State football games from airing exclusively on a streaming service. With the new legislative session underway, DeMora introduced Senate Bill 94, which would prevent state universities from signing media deals that allowed for streaming exclusive games in the future. It would also seek to give students free access to games from the universities themselves.
To the extent permitted by federal law, no state university shall enter into or renew a contract under which the media rights to broadcast a university athletic event are granted exclusively to a streaming service. This division applies only to contracts entered into or renewed on or after the effective date of this section.
Each state university shall provide enrolled students, at no cost to the students, with access to observe any university athletic events that are broadcast in accordance with a contract entered into or renewed in accordance with division of this section. Each state university shall determine the manner in which such access is provided to students.
It’s at least the second time that DeMora has introduced legislation to ban streaming games and according to NBC4 in Columbus, it comes from his own personal experience being frustrated having to watch Buckeyes games on Peacock. Ohio State played Purdue in 2023 and Michigan State in 2024 on the NBC-owned streamer.
“It was the first time in over 20 years that I couldn’t watch an Ohio State football game on a regular channel,” DeMora said. “I refuse to pay all these streaming networks to watch Ohio State and other sports. … Streaming television is not good for sports.”
Unfortunately for DeMora, the streaming horse has already left the barn and there’s no going back. Ohio State and its Big Ten brethren are getting a billion dollars a year in their new television deal, and Ohio State games on streaming platforms is a huge part of that. While you could understand some of the initial anger and dissatisfaction originally around streaming exclusive games, it’s now so commonplace at Peacock, Netflix, Amazon, and others that it’s largely become accepted.
Maybe it’s inconvenient that not all games are on “regular channels” but maybe that’s more about finding the games than paying the $5.99 monthly fee. And if you ask anyone at Ohio State, they’d probably rather have the millions of dollars in revenue and sacrifice a game or two on Peacock than have their state legislators try to meddle in their television deals.
The anti-Peacock bill is not quite on the frivolous level of DeMora’s congressional colleague, Republican state representative Josh Williams, who brought forth a bill to make flag planting a felony after Ohio State lost to Michigan and that act led to a postgame fracas. But it’s also just about as likely to succeed.
