WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has warned the NFL that shifting media rights to costly streaming services could prompt the agency to take regulatory action and potentially cost the league its anti-trust exemption that allows it to negotiate media rights.
Carr made the comments in a March 29 interview on Fox News. Fox introduced the segment with a poll showing that 72% of fans would prefer to watch major sporting events on broadcast TV, versus only 27% on streaming.
The cable news net also presented a study showing that the shift of rights to streaming services and pay TV outlets was making it exorbitantly expensive for fans to watch NFL games. The study concluded consumers would have to shell out nearly $2,500 a year to subscribe to multiple apps just to watch games.
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The experience of watching sports “has become frustrating over the last several years,” Carr said in response to the data. “It's more complex, it's more costly. You effectively have to have a computer science degree to decipher this. As you noted, people have to sign up for Netflix and Hulu and YouTube and Google. It's very, very difficult these days, but historically, broadcast TV and sports leagues have had a great and mutually beneficial relationship.
“We’re at a point now where I think some of these leagues are at a tipping point where they're going to push this issue so far and start to lose their antitrust exemption,” he added. “We’re all for sports leagues getting fair market value for their product, but right now, they're benefiting from a very unique antitrust exemption to pool their bargaining together, but...we're at a tipping point where these leagues can push it so far putting games behind paywalls that they undermine their ability to claim that antitrust exemption.”
In response to a question about what could be done to address the problem, Carr noted that the FCC has an ongoing inquiry into broadcast sports rights that has attracted a lot of attention with thousands of comments, which is “a big number for the FCC. We're reviewing that right now. The vast majority so far, based on an initial assessment, support keeping a significant portion of these sports games on free over the air broadcast TV.”
He also said that “there could be actions at other portions of the government and Congress as well, if these sports leagues continue to push this issue.”
