NFL faces pressure at House hearing over rising cost of televised games

Lawmakers in both parties on Wednesday blasted the NFL over the rising costs for watching televised games, arguing their constituents are being hurt as a result of the league’s new streaming deals.

Republicans and Democrats alike during a House Judiciary Committee hearing argued the changing landscape has created an anticompetitive economic environment that is harming consumers.

“We all love football, but we’re trying to ask the question: Does it work for our constituents? Because we know it works for the NFL,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chair of the committee.

“It seems fundamentally unfair that the league should get billion-dollar deals, but the fans are left out in the cold,” added Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member on the panel.

At the heart of the debate is the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, a law passed by Congress well before the widespread proliferation of cable television and the internet that granted professional football teams the ability to collectively license the sponsored telecasts of their games to national broadcast networks.   

The NFL, the nation’s most popular sports league, has been making lucrative deals with traditional media and new entities, such as Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, raking in more than $100 billion in media rights deals in recent years.

Critics argue the league is deliberately ignoring the downstream impact of its dealmaking, leaving consumers not only with higher costs, but also confusion when it comes to finding their favorite teams.

Fans who wanted to watch every NFL game last season had to pay more than $1,000 and........

© The Hill