Brendan Carr questions if Sports Broadcasting Act’s antitrust exemption applies to streaming

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 is front and center on multiple fronts in the world of sports business these days.

On one hand, the legislation is central to an ongoing lawsuit the NFL faces over its bundling practices for NFL Sunday Ticket, the out-of-market package that allows fans to access live games not available within their market. On another hand, the legislation is pivotal to an ongoing effort by certain college football stakeholders to allow the sport to bundle its media rights, rather than sell them on a conference-by-conference basis. And on a third hand, both elected officials in the legislative branch and appointed officials in the executive branch have taken interest in how the Sports Broadcasting Act is both written and enforced.

Put simply, the longstanding federal legislation allows professional sports leagues to package their media rights together to sell to broadcasters through an antitrust exemption. It’s why the NFL itself negotiates broadcast deals with CBS, NBC, Fox, etc., rather than each individual franchise negotiating broadcast deals for its own games.

It’s a fundamental reason why professional sports leagues have been able to secure enormously lucrative television contracts. But like most antitrust exemptions, there’s an expectation that leagues continue to act in the best interest of consumers if they want to continue to be afforded the special treatment.

As sports rights become more fragmented, some officials have questioned whether or not leagues are holding up their end of the bargain.

Last month, FCC chairman Brendan Carr opened an inquiry into the fragmentation of live sports rights across broadcast, cable and streaming, seeking comment from consumers about their experiences navigating the current sports viewing landscape.

“For decades, Americans have enjoyed turning on their television sets and quickly finding the games they wanted to watch for free on an over-the-air broadcast,” the agency wrote. “Yet watching your favorite sports team play is not as easy these days. Many games are still available for free over broadcast TV, but there has been a surge in recent years of games going behind the paywalls of various streaming services. While this can increase the number of games and sports available to fans, many consumers today find it more difficult to find the events they want to watch and are now paying to sign up for one or more video distribution platforms that consumers can find difficult to navigate.”

The following week, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition, Policy, and Consumer Rights, called on the DOJ and FTC to reexamine the Sports Broadcasting Act, questioning whether the legislation applies if leagues are selling rights to streaming services.

“The modern distribution environment differs substantially from the conditions that precipitated this exemption,” Lee wrote in a letter, alluding to how the means of video distribution in 2026 are much different from when leagues were granted their exemption in 1961. “Instead of a small number of free broadcast networks, the NFL now licenses games simultaneously to subscription streaming platforms, premium cable networks, and technology companies operating under different business models. To the extent collectively licensed game packages are placed behind subscription paywalls, these arrangements may no longer align with the statutory concept of sponsored telecasting or the consumer-access rationale underlying the antitrust exemption.”

Now, one week following Lee’s letter, Brendan Carr offered his most blunt assessment of the legislation yet, acknowledging that the law could be interpreted to only apply to games airing on broadcast television, not streaming services. Appearing at a policy discussion held by Breitbart on Tuesday, Carr said the following:

“There’s an antitrust exemption that applies to sports leagues, for instance,” Carr began. “Some of the key triggering language in there is about telecast (emphasis added). So there is a question that people are debating in the FCC record, which is to say, if you take a NFL game and you put it on a streaming service rather than broadcast TV, does the NFL still get to benefit from the broad antitrust exemption?

“These are all issues that we expect to get hashed out a bit in the FCC’s record. You know, there’s limits on what we can do from an authority perspective, but there is an important relationship between sports leagues, local broadcasting, investment in local newsgathering, that we thought it made sense to tee this up and open it up for people to comment on.”

While Carr acknowledged the limits on the FCC’s ability to enact change, it’s yet another instance in which federal officials are taking notice of the issue of fragmentation in live sports. And if the attention from federal officials persists, the future of the Sports Broadcasting Act will become a real concern for sports leagues.