WASHINGTON—In response to the Federal Communications Commission’s request for comments on how the sports rights landscape and access to free televised sports might be improved, Sinclair has filed comments highlighting the importance of free access to major sporting events as a way to keep the country unified and detailed some policies that the agency could adopt if it wants to preserve sports on broadcast TV.
“Sports programming carried on broadcast television plays a vital role in fostering civic pride, cultural cohesion, and community engagement at both the local and national levels,” Sinclair’s filing said. “In a large country, a common culture is critical for social cohesion. Sports remain one of the last remaining `monoculture' touchstones that can serve as a common reference point between strangers – the topic that the newest entry-level hire can comfortably discuss with the CEO.”
The filing argued, however, that the traditional media models that allowed broadcasters to air major sporting events are under threat by “the ongoing migration of sports content to subscription-based streaming platforms…This migration is fragmenting access, increasing consumer costs, and undermining longstanding public-interest benefits associated with broadcasting”
The breakdown of this model is also harming local journalism because “live sports programming is a critical component of the broadcast ecosystem, as major sporting events continue to drive the largest audiences and play an essential role in sustaining the economic viability of local broadcast stations. Sports programming is also critical to the financial model that supports local broadcast journalism. Without high-value live sports on broadcast television, local broadcast journalism will suffer.”
More specifically Sinclair noted that “in 2025, 96 of the 100 most-watched U.S. telecasts were sports events, and 92 of those telecasts were NFL or college football games. In an increasingly fragmented media environment, sports continue to dominate the most-watched programs of the year on television. Events such as the Super Bowl, NFL playoff games, the Olympics, the NCAA basketball tournaments, and the World Series regularly attract millions of viewers. These large audiences are in turn critical for advertising dollars for the industry. Advertisers spent approximately $17.7 billion on national linear television sports programming, and NFL games alone generate $6-7 billion in annual advertising revenue across the major broadcast networks. During the 2024-2025 season, NFL games accounted for more than 23 percent of all ad impressions across the big-four networks.”
The shift of media rights to streaming, not only threatens the financial future of broadcasting, it also is creating major problems for viewers and fans. “One survey shows that 87 percent of sports fans find it at least somewhat frustrating to figure out where to watch the games they want to see, and almost 25 percent feel very frustrated,” Sinclair said. “Nearly two-thirds of sports fans say it’s a “hassle” to use multiple services to watch games during a season, and half say that it has become harder to find the games they want to watch compared to a year ago. This fragmentation has consequences for viewers. Almost two-thirds of fans say having games on different platforms makes it more difficult to check on other games being shown at the same time.”
In addition, Sinclair stressed that “professional sports leagues operate within a longstanding public-private compact that includes both substantial taxpayer support and unique regulatory advantages.”
In addition to antitrust exemptions that allow the leagues to negotiate media rights for all the teams, Sinclair noted that “state and local governments have committed tens of billions of dollars, estimated at approximately $30–35 billion, to the construction and financing of major league sports facilities in the United States. The median public contribution to sports venue construction costs between 1970 and 2020 was 73 percent of total construction costs. Public subsidies for professional sports facilities also frequently take the form of property tax abatements and preferential tax treatment, further increasing the public cost of stadium developments. In many jurisdictions, stadiums are either fully exempt from local property taxes or subject to long-term abatements that significantly reduce teams’ tax liabilities. At the federal level, additional subsidies arise through the use of tax-exempt municipal bonds, which have cost the U.S. Treasury billions in foregone revenue. Economic research find that these public investments rarely generate meaningful economic returns in terms of job creation or local growth. Economic research is unequivocal: These subsidies are a boondoggle for taxpayers.”
To address those issues and to strengthen the ability of broadcasters to acquire high-profile sports rights, Sinclair repeated longstanding industry arguments that ending station ownership caps would create larger and more financially powerful station groups. “Modernizing the Commission’s ownership rules would enable broadcasters to achieve the scale necessary to better compete for sports rights,” Sinclair argued.
In addition, the FCC should take steps to speed the transition to NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0.
“NextGen TV will enable broadcasters to offer improved picture quality, enhanced audio, and interactive features that will make broadcast a more attractive and competitive distribution platform for major sports leagues,” Sinclair argued. “NextGen TV also, for the first time, allows broadcasters the ability to offer content protection to rights holders – something literally every other player in the video ecosystem can already do.”
The full filing is available here.
