In recent months, the NFL has found itself under unprecedented scrutiny regarding its longstanding broadcast antitrust exemption. From the question of whether the exemption applies to packages sold to streaming companies to whether (as raised by Fox owner Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal) it should end entirely, the most important piece of the league’s revenue-sharing model has come under assault, on several different federal fronts.
So what’s it all about? In the wake of Friday’s effort by multiple league executives to defend the current broadcast model during a conference call to discuss the 2026 regular-season schedule, it makes sense to understand what’s motivating it.
What follows is my own personal assessment of the situation, based on everything I’ve seen and heard since the broadcast antitrust exemption first landed on the radar screens of certain members of Congress, of the FCC, of the Department of Justice, and (most recently) of the President. Despite the presence of a peacock in the upper left corner of the page, this is a PFT analysis — not an NBC opinion.
Obviously, NBC has an interest in the NFL continuing its longstanding commitment to traditional, FCC-regulated, broadcast network television, and in NBC continuing to be a profitable, and viable, network. I’ve set those realities aside for these purposes. (And, at some level, thrown caution to the wind in the name of calling it like I see it.)
The situation, in my view, results from the confluence of multiple political considerations. The 2022 shift of the Thursday night package from Fox to Prime Video required fans for the first time to purchase a streaming package in order to have access to each of the usual weekly windows. (Before that, cable access was needed for some Thursday night games on NFL Network and for the Monday night games televised by ESPN and not simulcast on ABC.) The placement of eventized© games (starting with the Christmas doubleheader) on Netflix added another layer of cost to consumers, as did the periodic Peacock-exclusive games purchased by NBC.
This year, Netflix will have five standalone games spread across September, November, December, and January. To see them all, the consumer will have to purchase the service for most of the upcoming football season.
The financial impact on consumers has attracted the attention of multiple members of Congress. Most recently, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin objected to the decision to put the Packers-Rams night-before-Thanksgiving game on Netflix, which will require state residents not served by the Green Bay/Milwaukee broadcast affiliates to buy Netflix in order to watch. (She has separately introduced legislation that would require all nationally-televised games to be available at no cost to all residents of the state in which the involved teams are headquartered.)
The other source of political pressure comes from the NFL’s decision, following the significant spike in the recent NBA TV deals, to go back to the table with its broadcast partners and get more for the current weekly packages — not upon expiration of the deals but immediately. And the current broadcast partners (Fox, CBS, NBC, Prime Video, YouTube, and ESPN/ABC) generally aren’t thrilled about the possibility of significantly increasing payments that had supposedly been set in stone through the 2029 season.
The most obvious “or else” comes from the possibility that, as of 2030, one or more of the current partners will lose their packages. Possibly to streaming companies like Netflix or Prime Video or Apple TV or whoever else can manage to find the money the NFL hopes to make for what is the most attractive property not only in sports but in all of entertainment. Nothing pulls a massive live audience together like the NFL. Even as the broader audience fractures amid the many on-demand options, pro football continues to be a superconducting magnet.
Every week, many millions tune in to watch games live. There’s real value in that, and the NFL hopes to maximize it. As it absolutely should.
But there’s a limit. A moment at which the golden goose runs out of eggs. An instant in which the waterfowl flatlines.
This has prompted Murdoch to sound the alarm, and to mobilize politically against the NFL’s effort to get more money for settled deals with the not-so-subtle suggestion that broadcast networks will find Khartoum’s head in their bed unless they pony up. Murdoch, on Fox’s behalf, has framed it as an existential threat. (Nowadays, what threat isn’t existential? It’s become the knee-jerk justification for anything and everything that anyone wants to do. Which makes it harder than ever to figure out when a threat is truly existential.)
The effort has gotten real traction in D.C. The NFL recently made its case to the FCC regarding the current business model. During Friday’s conference call about the 2026 schedule, the first question asked (by Ian Rapoport of NFL Network/ESPN) gave NFL Media executive V.P. and COO Hans Schroeder an opportunity to state the league’s position.
“We love our model,” Schroeder said. “We think we have the most fan-friendly model there is of any sport or entertainment as far as distribution. One hundred percent of our games are on over-the-air in the home markets. Eighty-seven [percent] are distributed primarily through broadcast, and we think that’s the place to be.”
Schroeder also recognized, citing the Christmas Day audience of 27.5 million for Lions-Vikings on Netflix, that the fans are already on certain paid platforms. (It’s unknown, however, how many fans specifically purchased a month of Netflix to watch the Christmas NFL doubleheader.)
It becomes a chicken-and-egg question. Is the league establishing a streaming footprint to meet the fans where they are, or to get them to go there? For streamers like Netflix, Prime Video, and Peacock, the financial investment becomes justified in part by the potential uptick in customers. Put simply, they buy the service to watch the NFL game, and then they hopefully stick around.
Currently, the broadcast networks don’t seem to be trying to claw back the number of games the NFL sells to streaming platforms. It’s more about playing defense than going on the offensive. To draw a line in the sand when it comes to streaming. And, ultimately, to get the league to back away from the unspoken threat to remove full packages from broadcast TV and sell them to streamers.
If nothing else, the Murdoch-led political push has forced the league to declare its commitment to the broadcast networks. The obvious goal is to short circuit the presumption that they’ll bust their budgets to increase their current rates by upwards of 50 percent and that, if they don’t, one or more will lose their packages come 2030 to streaming companies.
That seems to be the heart of the issue. The broadcast networks don’t want the NFL to be able to use the streaming companies as leverage to get more for the traditional packages of games. And the broadcast networks need the NFL to realize that, while the streamers may have the capital to win a no-holds-barred auction for the weekly windows, the pressure to compete with streamers could leave the traditional broadcast networks teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
On one hand, the networks should take the NFL at its word regarding the ongoing commitment to broadcast TV. On the other hand, the networks should brace for an ever-changing reality in which the streaming companies have both the cash and the subscriber base to allow the NFL to get the same kind of reach that it has through broadcast TV, with a greater financial return.
The long-term question is whether it’s inevitable that the networks will eventually yield to the streaming companies. Already, the networks have become a shell of what they were. Prime-time programming, which was once upon a time appointment viewing, is now part of the ever-growing menu of options for consumers to watch at a time that fits with their schedules. Late-night programming could be scrapped. (Stephen Colbert’s show ends this week due to chronic financial losses, if we’re to believe that the decision was only about red ink and not about The Color Orange.) Nightly news broadcasts, the primary vehicle of yesteryear to keep Americans up to speed about the world in which we live, could go the way of the dodo bird.
While network TV is far from dead, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in economics to know it’s diminishing.
Thus, regardless of whether the NFL currently has a commitment to broadcast television, there’s a deeper issue that truly is existential for the traditional three-letter networks. That makes the ongoing political pressure seem not like offense or defense but good, old-fashioned desperation.
At some point, getting the government to do something could be viewed as a Hail Mary play to save the entire broadcast model from a fate that is beginning to feel more like a question of when, not if. That move would carry real risk for the league. If the government ever limits or scraps the broadcast antitrust exemption, the NFL would suddenly be facing an existential threat of its own.
That’s why the best result for the NFL and the networks would be to accept the reality that they need each other, and to work together to keep both the league and broadcast TV as potent as they can be, for as long as possible. All football fans should be rooting hard for that outcome.