Even without NFL commissioner Roger Goodell present in Washington, D.C., for a Congressional hearing Wednesday, a key U.S. House of Representatives committee is pressing forward and again attacking the league’s media policies.
Nearly a week after Goodell declined to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, the panel solidified its plans to examine the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961—and the NFL’s compliance with it—during a Wednesday hearing. In advance of that session, the committee released a report accusing the league of abusing its antitrust exemption and artificially inflating prices for consumers.
“Today, for consumers to watch broadcast NFL games, they must navigate a complicated and expensive web of television agreements and rules,” the report reads in part.
The committee’s report takes particular aim at the NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market package, now streamed to consumers via YouTube since 2023 after a long run previously on DirecTV. That service, currently being sold at a promotional rate of $240 for new users and $378 for returning ones, carries fees that the panel claims are excessive.
“Sunday Ticket is largely not a product for the avid fan of NFL football in general; rather it is a product bought mostly by fans attempting to watch their favorite team who are stuck with no option,” the report reads. “The results shown … suggest that the current model of placing many NFL games behind a paywall, especially the Sunday Ticket service, is harming consumers by forcing them to pay for a large package of NFL games when they only want to see a handful of games from a single team.”
