A House Judiciary subcommittee will examine the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 on Wednesday, and a newly released staff report puts the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package at the center of the debate.
The 27-page preliminary report focuses solely on the NFL. It devotes extensive attention to the Sunday Ticket class action that produced a 2024 jury verdict potentially worth more than $14 billion if it had stood as a final judgment. A judge later overturned that verdict. Plaintiffs appealed, and oral arguments reached the Ninth Circuit earlier this year. The case remains unresolved.
The Report’s Sharp Questions on Sunday Ticket
Staff investigators argue the NFL may have misrepresented fan behavior to Congress both historically and in recent years. The report claims Sunday Ticket was deliberately priced high — around $480 in recent seasons — to steer most fans toward “free” local broadcasts on CBS and Fox instead of letting them buy individual out-of-market games at a lower cost.
Internal data cited in the report tells a clear story. Most subscribers were not general football enthusiasts looking to watch every Sunday game. They were fans of one specific team playing outside their home market. More than 70 percent of buyers fell into that category, according to the committee’s findings. The report asks pointed questions: Did the NFL understand this preference but still bundle everything into one expensive package? Did it intentionally limit cheaper single-team options that could have given fans more choice?
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The document also challenges the league’s repeated claim that 87 percent of games air on broadcast television. Staff concluded the actual number available over free broadcast TV is significantly lower in many markets and weeks, depending on local rights and scheduling.
A Law Born in 1961 Meets a $25 Billion League
Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act in 1961 to give the then-struggling NFL and other leagues a narrow antitrust exemption. The goal was simple: let teams pool their television rights so weaker clubs would not get left behind and so games would stay widely available on free local TV to protect attendance.
That narrow carve-out helped the league survive and eventually thrive. Today the NFL generates enormous national media revenue — hundreds of millions per team annually from broadcast and streaming deals. The report argues the league has stretched the original guardrails far beyond what lawmakers intended in a different media era.
NFL Defends Its Model as Fan-Friendly
The league has pushed back hard. Last month at the league meetings, NFL Executive Vice President of Media Distribution Hans Schroeder described the current setup as the most fan-friendly in sports.
“The NFL’s media distribution policies continue to be the most fan-friendly in all of sports with 100% of all games available for free in, at the very least, the competing teams’ home market and 87% of all games primarily distributed on broadcast television,” Schroeder said.
League officials note that every game is available somewhere without a separate premium purchase for fans inside the home markets of the two teams playing. They also point to expanding streaming options in recent years while maintaining the core local broadcast structure that has driven massive rights fees.
Commissioner Roger Goodell declined an invitation to testify at Wednesday’s hearing, citing ongoing litigation.
What Fans Actually Experience
Step back from the hearing room and the legal filings. The real friction lives with fans. A supporter in one city who follows a team based two time zones away has long faced a stark choice: black out the local window or pay the full Sunday Ticket price for the whole package. Many have grumbled for years that the product felt forced rather than optional.
The report surfaces data that aligns with those complaints. It suggests the pricing and bundling strategy was never primarily about giving casual viewers more football. It was about protecting the value of the local broadcast rights sold to CBS and Fox. Those deals remain the financial backbone of the league’s media model.
If fans could easily and cheaply buy just their team’s road games, the argument goes, it could soften demand for the expensive full package and complicate negotiations for exclusive local windows. The committee report frames this as potential consumer harm flowing from an exemption originally sold to Congress on different terms.
The Stakes Beyond Wednesday
Wednesday’s hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust will not rewrite the law overnight. But it signals growing congressional impatience with how the 1961 exemption operates in a world of cord-cutting, streaming bundles, and direct-to-consumer options.
The Sunday Ticket litigation adds pressure. Even with the jury verdict overturned, the appeal keeps the underlying antitrust questions alive. A narrower reading of the exemption or new legislation could force adjustments to how the NFL packages and prices out-of-market games.
For now, the league will lean on its record of broad availability in home markets and the revenue-sharing system the current model supports. Critics on Capitol Hill will argue that the original deal with Congress came with expectations the NFL has long since outgrown.
The hearing starts at 10 a.m. ET on June 10. Expect lawmakers to press exactly where the 27-page report left off: Did the NFL sell Congress one story about why fans buy Sunday Ticket while building a product that served a different purpose?