NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will not be in attendance when Congress discusses whether the NFL is in compliance with the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 next week.
ABC reports that Goodell declined the invitation from Representative Jim Jordan which the league’s general counsel Ted Ullyot said was “due to ongoing litigation related to the topic of the hearing.”
Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and others in Congress will be looking at the league’s broadcast and streaming deals to discuss the league putting games behind service paywalls.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 applies only to broadcast networks. The act grants professional sports leagues a limited exemption from antitrust laws. It was put in place after a federal judge ruled that the NFL was violating antitrust rules by making a collective broadcasting deal with CBS. The act ensured that leagues could make collective deals like the one with CBS so that teams wouldn’t need to compete with each other over broadcast rights. However, the law only applies to broadcast networks and has not been modernized to address cable, satellite and streaming.
The AP reported in April that the Justice Department had started to look into the NFL for “potential anticompetitive practices” around broadcast rights.
In a letter to the Justice Department and the FTC in March, Utah Senator Mike Lee wrote: “The modern distribution environment differs substantially from the conditions that precipitated this exemption. Instead of a small number of free broadcast networks, the NFL now licenses games simultaneously to subscription streaming platforms, premium cable networks, and technology companies operating under different business models,” the Republican senator wrote. “To the extent collectively licensed game packages are placed behind subscription paywalls, these arrangements may no longer align with the statutory concept of sponsored telecasting or the consumer-access rationale underlying the antitrust exemption.” The letter went on to say that football fans have to spend nearly $1000 on cable and streaming to watch every game of the season.
In response to calls for the Commissioner to testify in front of Congress, general counsel Ullyot argued that 87% of this season’s games will be available to watch over-the-air. Any exclusive deals with streaming services, he says, have been made in an effort to adjust to the changing media landscape and reach a wider audience.
