The House Judiciary Committee released a 26-page interim staff report on Monday that accuses the National Football League of harming consumers and misleading Congress about its television agreements and the Sunday Ticket package, and the panel will put the league under oath at a hearing on the Sports Broadcasting Act Of 1961 on Wednesday.
"Through this oversight, the Committee and Subcommittee have uncovered evidence that the National Football League (NFL) has harmed consumers and misled Congress regarding its television agreements and league rules," the report states, and it calls the Sports Broadcasting Act a "special-interest antitrust exemption gone awry." The staff document centers on Sunday Ticket, cites a 2024 jury verdict that found the NFL violated antitrust law (a verdict later vacated by a judge), and warns that the league now faces litigation that could upend its business model.
The report lays out stark numbers to support its case: under a blocked 1961 proposal each team would have received roughly $3.37 million in 2026 dollars, while the report notes that for the 2024 season each team received $433 million from the league’s national media, sponsorship and licensing revenue paid in 2025. It also highlights subscriber feedback showing that more than 70 percent of Sunday Ticket buyers purchased the package to watch out‑of‑market games involving their favorite teams — a statistic the committee uses to question the league’s stated justification for the product.
Context matters here: Congress enacted the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to allow a struggling league to collude on broadcast deals so games remained available on free television. The report argues that the exemption, meant as a narrow remedy, now shields a $25 billion annual business from ordinary antitrust rules while the league sells nationally distributed games, streaming packages and local broadcast rights. The staff brief also notes the Justice Department is probing the NFL’s exclusive streaming deals, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has publicly questioned the exemption, and EverPass Media is set to become the exclusive commercial provider for NFL Sunday Ticket beginning with the 2026 season.
The committee sharpens its criticism around the mismatch between why the league says fans buy Sunday Ticket and why subscribers say they do. The NFL has taken the position that consumers purchase Sunday Ticket to watch every game played on a given Sunday. The report challenges that claim, pointing to survey feedback and asking blunt, pointed questions: "Did the NFL simply not know consumers demanded a different product but were stuck buying Sunday Ticket from the NFL? Did the NFL understand consumer preferences but continuously offered a product that consumers did not desire and, through collusion, prevented individual teams from providing the single‑team product consumers actually wanted to buy?"
The staff report also contends Sunday Ticket is intentionally priced to push fans toward watching free local games on CBS and FOX rather than giving them a reasonably priced single‑team option. It invokes Commissioner Roger Goodell’s 2012 admonition — "No one is above the game or the rules that govern it" — urging the league to apply that standard to its business practices. The committee frames this not as an abstract policy dispute but as consumer harm: most subscribers, the report says, are paying for access to a single out‑of‑market team, not the all‑games product.
What happens next is procedural but consequential. The Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Wednesday will examine the narrow antitrust carve‑out established in 1961 and whether it still serves the public interest. The report leaves a clear trail for lawmakers and litigators: a vacated $4.796 billion jury award from 2024, subscriber data showing more than 70 percent buy Sunday Ticket for single teams, an ongoing DOJ probe, and regulatory scrutiny from the FCC.
Congressional staff framed the choice plainly: preserve a decades‑old, tightly drawn exemption that once kept games on free TV, or rethink the rule that lets a 32‑team league negotiate national distribution as a single entity. The committee’s hearing will test whether lawmakers have the appetite to narrow or rescind that exemption — and if they do, the evidence collected in this report gives both plaintiffs and regulators new leverage to force change.
