The House Judiciary Committee is requesting a briefing from the heads of the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League on whether they should still get an antitrust exemption for coordinating TV broadcast rights, including a rule that allows for game blackouts.
The Sports Broadcasting Act gives leagues immunity for broadcasting deals for games on network television, including provisions that permit blackouts of home games in that team’s broadcast area. Such blackout requirements were meant to ensure that ticket sales remained robust in a market.
In letters sent on Monday, Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), who chairs an antitrust subcommittee, wrote that despite the rise of subscription services and online streaming, “it is sometimes more difficult and more expensive for some fans to watch their teams during the season. In some major sports leagues, a fan may need to sign up for multiple streaming platforms and purchase an over-the-air antenna to watch every game at home. Even then, because every major sports league has its own blackout restrictions, there are certain games that fans cannot watch at home regardless of how much they are willing to pay or how many streaming services they purchase.”
The Sports Broadcasting Act antitrust exemption applies to “sponsored telecasting,” Jordan and Fitzgerald noted, noting that courts have ruled that it does not apply to cable, satellite, pay-per-view and streaming.
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“The majority of sports viewership now occurs outside of traditional network broadcasting,” they wrote.
“As a result, most of the distribution agreements that a sports league enters into are subject to antitrust challenges, while a narrow subset are not, creating legal uncertainty, distorting the market, and ‘effectively expanding the blind spot for potential antitrust violations.’”
Tehir letter gave the league heads until August 25 to set up a briefing.