New Report | The Sports Broadcasting Act: A Special-Interest Antitrust Exemption Gone Awry

Congress passed the SBA in 1961 after the NFL lobbied for legislation after a court found that the league’s rules and agreements unlawfully restricted individual teams’ broadcasting rights. The SBA grants professional sports leagues a limited antitrust exemption for sponsored telecasting, allowing the leagues to collectively sell rights for free over-the-air broadcasts. At the time, the exemption was necessary to help teams in smaller markets remain financially viable and to preserve the overall stability and competitiveness of professional sports leagues.

However, in the 65 years since the SBA was first enacted, the sports broadcasting market has changed considerably and now includes cable, satellite television, and streaming services. At the same time, professional sports leagues are in a much stronger financial position than they were in 1961. Yet, some NFL fans must now pay more than $600 per season to watch all of their favorite team’s games. Many fans describe the current broadcasting landscape as expensive, fragmented, and difficult to navigate.

In August 2025, the Committee and its Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust opened an investigation into the broadcasting practices of the professional sports leagues, which are governed by the SBA. As part of this oversight, the Committee sought to examine whether anticompetitive broadcasting conduct by the NFL has harmed American football consumers and undermined the letter and spirit of the antitrust laws and the SBA.

The NFL boasts that 100 percent of its "local market games" are available free, over-the-air; 87 percent of games have "primary distribution" on broadcast television; and overall it offers "the most fan- and broadcaster-friendly [model] in the entire sports and entertainment industry."

However, the NFL's claim of a fan-friendly distribution model defies the reality experienced by millions of NFL fans. The NFL's own data show that the average NFL game reaches only 39 percent of U.S. households. In 2016, broadcasters aired 113 of the NFL's 256 regular-season games in fewer than 20 percent of U.S. households. When the NFL claims that 87 percent of games receive "primary distribution" on broadcast television, it means only that a broadcast station carries those games somewhere in the country – not that most fans can watch them.

Through its oversight, the Committee and Subcommittee obtained data showing that:

The Committee and Subcommittee will continue their oversight of the Sports Broadcasting Act and whether the antitrust exemption it created continues to benefit American sports consumers. This oversight may inform legislative reforms to the SBA to improve the sports broadcasting experience for football and other sports fans.

Read the full report here.

Read the full appendix here.