The DOJ vs. The NFL: Inside the Antitrust Fight That Could Reshape Sports Media
The NFL’s $100 billion media empire was built on a narrow legal exemption. Now that foundation is being tested in ways that could ripple across every major sports league.
The U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation last week into whether the NFL has engaged in anticompetitive tactics to harm consumers. Specifically, the DOJ is looking into whether spreading games across multiple subscription-only platforms raises costs and limits access for fans, potentially violating a 65-year-old special antitrust exemption that helped power the NFL’s historic growth.
“To watch every NFL game during this past season, football fans spent almost $1,000 on cable and streaming subscriptions,” Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said last month, claiming the current situation has led to “confusion and increasing costs.”
The announcement of this investigation was buried last week by the Masters, but it will likely be the most important sports business storyline this year. If the DOJ forces the NFL to limit the number of games it offers on subscription services, the league could see a double-digit drop in annual revenue (and potentially much more if it results in a loss of leverage over broadcast partners in negotiations).
But that’s the type of coverage you can get anywhere. The more interesting detail surrounding this investigation is that it appears to be coming from within. The NFL is currently trying to renegotiate its collection of media rights deals several years early, and many NFL insiders believe this investigation is a politically motivated attack orchestrated by one of the league’s current broadcast partners.