On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The NFL’s broadcast antitrust exemption will be a focal point of the proceedings.
And it will not be pretty.
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The Committee has released a 26-page interim staff report regarding the SBA, with the title calling it a “special-interest antitrust exemption gone awry.” The report deals solely with the NFL — how the broadcast antitrust exemption came to be, how it has evolved, and whether the NFL has violated its terms by putting games behind paywalls.
The report at page one contains a strong accusation: “Through this oversight, the Committee and Subcommittee have uncovered evidence that the National Football League (NFL) has harmed consumers and misled Congress regarding its television agreements and league rules.”
The report explains that the NFL initially sought the exemption “to stave off the league’s impending financial collapse by allowing the independently managed and owned teams to collude on broadcasting agreements without violating the antitrust laws.” Today, there’s no danger of financial instability.
“Under the NFL’s proposed broadcasting contract in 1961, which was blocked by a court prior to the exemption’s enactment, each team would have received approximately $3.37 million in 2026 dollars,” the report explains. “Compare that amount to 2025, when each team received $433 million from the league’s national media, sponsorship, and licensing revenue for the 2024 season.”
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The report devotes extensive attention to the Sunday Ticket class action, which nearly two years ago resulted in a verdict that, if converted to a final judgment, would have exceeded $14 billion. Based on that case, the report asks whether the NFL misrepresented to Congress the motivation of fans to purchase the Sunday Ticket package, which is deliberately overpriced to encourage fans to watch “free” games in their local markets on CBS and Fox.
The report cites feedback from Sunday Ticket subscribers, which shows that more than 70 percent purchased Sunday Ticket to watch out-of-market games involving their favorite teams. The league, however, has taken the position that consumers buy Sunday Ticket to watch all of the games played on a given Sunday.
On that point, the report includes a series of loaded questions: “Did the NFL simply not know consumers demanded a different product but were stuck buying Sunday Ticket from the NFL? Did the NFL understand consumer preferences but continuously offered a product that consumers did not desire and, through collusion, prevented individual teams from providing the single-team product consumers actually wanted to buy? Did the NFL intend to mislead Congress during the Committee’s investigation of the SBA by making claims about the target consumer?”
The report concludes with a fairly ominous warning for the NFL.
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“When notifying an NFL team about a punishment in 2012, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated, ‘No one is above the game or the rules that govern it. Respect for the game and the people who participate in it will not be compromised,'” the report explains. “The NFL should revisit this warning when analyzing the antitrust laws. Except for a narrow exemption, the NFL is not above the antitrust laws, and the law should not be compromised to harm the American consumers who spend money to enjoy these games. The NFL now faces the potential for litigation that could upend its business model. One potential path forward is for the 32 independent NFL teams to follow another piece of advice from Commissioner Goodell that he gave to the NFL owners during a presentation in 2006: ‘Change before you’re forced to change.'”
Yes, Wednesday’s hearing could get interesting. However it goes, two major questions will remain. First, has the antitrust exemption been violated by the league selling full packages to entities other than broadcast networks? Second, will the federal government eventually take away the exemption entirely?
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