House Judiciary Report Calls NFL's Antitrust Shield a Liability for Consumers
The House Judiciary Committee released a report on Monday arguing that the National Football League has systematically exceeded the boundaries of the antitrust exemption granted under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, using a protection designed to keep games broadly accessible on free television to instead construct a broadcast and streaming empire that restricts consumer choice and drives up viewing costs. The report was released under the chairmanship of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
At the center of the committee's findings is the league's Sunday Ticket out-of-market package, priced at $480. The report states that data obtained through congressional oversight contradicts the NFL's public characterization of Sunday Ticket as a product primarily serving dedicated, all-game fans. According to the report, the package is purchased largely by fans who have no other option to watch a single out-of-market team. The committee also challenged the NFL's claim that 87 percent of its games are available on free broadcast television, asserting that depending on the week and geographic region, significantly fewer than half of all games are actually accessible to a consumer through a free broadcast signal.
The report draws extensively on the Sunday Ticket antitrust litigation, citing a 2024 jury verdict that found the NFL had violated antitrust law and awarded plaintiffs more than $4.796 billion in damages. That verdict was subsequently vacated by a federal judge - a decision the committee's report characterizes as wrongful. The committee describes the league's overall television rights structure as, in its words, "a house of cards built on an overstretched antitrust exemption." The NFL's most recent round of broadcast and streaming contracts was valued at approximately $110 billion. The Justice Department has separately opened a probe into the league's exclusive streaming arrangements, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has raised questions about whether the league should continue to hold the exemption.
The committee stops short of immediately calling for legislative action to strip the exemption but warns the NFL that ongoing judicial scrutiny, antitrust challenges, and congressional oversight will continue if the league does not voluntarily restructure its media model. The stakes for the league are substantial: the Sports Broadcasting Act exemption allows the NFL to negotiate broadcast rights collectively as a single entity on behalf of all 32 clubs. Without it, individual teams would be required to sell their own television rights independently, a change that would unravel the league's revenue-sharing framework and, in the committee's analysis, undermine the competitive balance that has defined the modern NFL. Rep. Jordan has separately requested that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell testify before the committee at a hearing scheduled for June 10.
