Congressional Republicans and Democrats grilled key figures related to lucrative NFL television contracts and whether Congress should end the exemptions to the federal communications laws that allow for such deals.
“When beneficiaries of an exemption begin using it to restrict access, increase prices and strengthen their own market power beyond what Congress intended, lawmakers, Congress, have an obligation to reconsider whether that exemption remains justified,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, said at the beginning of the hearing.
At issue is the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 – which allows professional sports leagues to pool and collectively sell television rights without violating federal antitrust laws – and whether the National Football League’s decades-old antitrust exemption to it still benefits consumers, who are now paying hundreds a season, some as much as $1000, to watch games over a complicated and expensive mix of cable and streaming TV services.
Fitzgerald, a Wisconsin Republican, said the bill was “enacted in a very different time in American history,” when fans were watching games on a few networks with a TV set and an antenna.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, a key figure in the matter, was absent from the hearing, citing “ongoing litigation related to the topic of the hearing,” as Just the News reported last week.
