Associations representing ABC, CBS, FBC and NBC have filed reply comments with the Federal Communications Commission arguing that the ongoing shift of major sporting rights from broadcast to streaming service is not in the “public interest” because it is forcing consumers to sign up for expensive streaming services and threatens the economy viability of the local TV stations who use the profits from sports to fund local news.
The filing also laid out a series of policy recommendations that would preserve major sports on broadcast TV. Those include: ending station ownership caps, speeding up the transition to NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0, changing the rules on how retrans fees are negotiated with vMVPDs, and giving local stations more power to preempt network programming so they can air local sports and ensuring that
Changing rules regarding station ownership caps and the ATSC 3.0 transition were also major policy recommendations made by the NAB and other broadcasters.
“[W]hile live sports have never been so critical to local broadcasting, the Public Notice comes at a time when the continued availability of marquee national live professional and collegiate sporting events on local broadcast television faces unprecedented uncertainty,” the associations stressed in their filing. “The Affiliates Associations echo NAB’s observation that Internet streaming of sports content threatens to completely upend the system of local sports distribution that has served America so well. The increasing placement of major sports programming behind paywalls on multiple different streaming platforms, including those owned by the Big 4 Networks themselves, threatens to further fragment audiences while forcing consumers to spend more and more just to watch what used to be and should remain free. Sporting events can’t unify Americans if the cost of watching them turns us into a nation of haves and have-nots. And those sporting events locked up behind paywalls won’t help fund local television service because, quite simply, none of the streaming platforms is required to operate in the public interest and none provide any local service to any local communities.”
Like the NAB, the affiliates also blasted the Consumer Technology Association and others who argued the rise of sports on streaming media has given consumers more choice and that the FCC does not have the authority to dictate where those sports air.
“in 2025, NFL games appeared on 10 different paywalled platforms, and the cost of the subscriptions necessary to watch every NFL game approached $1,500,” the affiliates contented. “These developments threaten to get worse because streaming platforms owned by Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and the like have nearly limitless budgets and face no regulations that would check their growth. Indeed, they are already increasingly outbidding Big 4 Networks for major sports rights and cutting local broadcasting out of the picture entirely.”
“When the Big 4 Networks are forced to outbid streaming platforms for sports rights, those Networks inevitably pass those costs on to their Affiliates in the form of spiraling and unsustainable affiliation fees,” the filing said. “Since these affiliation fees grow more quickly than local station revenue, local Affiliates have no choice but to cut costs and reduce local service. Marquee sporting events must remain on local broadcast television to sustain important, but costly, local news operations, but the more sports rights cost and the higher affiliation fees rise, the less local news and fewer jobs will remain.”
“The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) argue that this is nothing more than the marketplace providing more and better choices to consumers and that the Commission is powerless to step in,” the affiliates complained. “Consumers know better, which is why thousands of individuals have filed comments in this proceeding urging the Commission to take action to help keep national sports programming on local broadcast television. The Commission should reject the arrogant and simplistic `free market’ rhetoric of CCIA and CTA. Despite the claims of CCIA and CTA that all of this `competition’ among streaming platforms will increase choice and lower prices, the reality is that consumers always end up paying more for less, and they’re sick of this same old song and dance.”
The filing did highlight the fact that the decline of pay TV and regional sports networks has allowed local stations to successfully acquire sports rights in recent years. “Even here, however, there are hurdles to local stations acquiring local sports rights,” the affiliate reported. “In particular, Big 4 Network preemption policies can make it impossible for stations to air more than a handful of games of local sports programming on their main channels, forcing them to instead broadcast that programming on multicast channels or commonly owned independent channels.0 These alternate channels are carried less frequently by traditional MVPDs and even less frequently by virtual MVPDs. The combination of Network preemption
policies and vMVPDs’ refusal to negotiate directly with local television stations significantly complicates local stations’ efforts to acquire sports programming on local broadcast stations.”
“The Commission must recognize that additional steps must be taken in order to preserve – and grow – sports on local television stations while at the same time helping ensure stations are financially healthy enough to afford that programming and are positioned to acquire that programming when certain rights become available,” the affiliates stressed in one of their major policy recommendations.
“That requires the Commission to address two pressing issues that the Affiliates Associations’ members face every day," they said. "First, the Commission should ensure that local television stations, including Network Affiliates, have the right to negotiate for local sports programming without third-party interference. In support of this right, the Commission should make clear that local stations’ preemption rights under the Commission’s rules extend to preempting Network programming for local and regional sports content. Existing rules require that broadcasters must have the right to preempt Network programming in favor of programming that a licensee deems, in its mandate to serve the local community, of greater importance to its local community than Network programming. The Commission should clarify unequivocally that this right applies when a local station rejects Network programming in favor of airing local and regional sports programming. This step will allow local broadcasters to compete for local sports rights without the fear that doing so could negatively impact their relationship with their affiliated Networks.”
The full filing is available here.
The 8,600 plus filings received by the FCC in it "Sports Broadcasting Practices and Marketplace Developments" proceeding (Docket 26-45) is available here.
