The major television network owners have stated on Monday that American regulators should investigate the trend of technology giants acquiring broadcasting rights for American football, baseball, and other sports events, claiming that this could weaken local TV and newspapers.
The major broadcasting groups have submitted their views to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) before the deadline on Friday.
The FCC has initiated a review into the increasing shift of live sports to pay-TV and subscription services, to the detriment of over-the-air networks, seeking to determine the actions the agency “could take to ensure viewers continued access to live sports via free over-the-air television.”
Fox Corp stated that viewers of free over-the-air television could eventually lose access to the World Series, NFL Thanksgiving games, or the Olympics, mentioning “a world where Big Tech acquires more and more sports broadcasting rights – often as a lure to support other massive vertically integrated businesses that mainly profit from consumers’ personal data.”
Another major station owner, Sinclair, told the FCC: “Without high-value live sports on over-the-air TV, local journalism will suffer.”
The National Association of Broadcasters highlighted that global streaming giants like Amazon Prime, Alphabet, Apple, and Netflix were able to use live sports programming as a lure.
The NFL, which did not immediately comment on Monday, had declared in February that over 87% of its games are broadcast on free TV and all games are rebroadcast for free in the markets of the participating teams.
The FCC noted that in 1961, the National Football League signed a two-year broadcasting deal with CBS for $9.8 million, and by comparison, recent NFL media rights contracts are worth over $10 billion per year.
A 1961 law exempts major sports leagues from antitrust laws and allows them to bundle the TV rights of their respective teams to sell in a package.
Fox questioned the relevance of applying this law to the sports leagues’ negotiations with paid streaming platforms.
The FCC pointed out that the NFL has signed media rights agreements with Walt Disney (ABC’s parent company), Paramount (CBS’s parent company), Fox, NBCUniversal, NFL Network, Amazon, and Google, and the league is projected to earn over $100 billion in sports rights royalties over the duration of these contracts.
The FCC emphasized that many sports events, previously available on free TV or traditional distribution packages, are now only accessible through standalone streaming subscriptions, causing frustration among many sports fans.
