This blog is the latest in the Hub & Spoke’s continuing coverage of antitrust and sports. For previous blogs and podcasts, see here, here, and here.
The marriage of America’s longstanding love of sports and its newfound love of streaming has drawn scrutiny from the Department of Justice. The economic stakes are massive. “Depending on how broadly it’s measured, sports account for roughly 1% to 2% of the U.S. GDP, a footprint comparable to the entire American auto industry.”[1]
Leading the pack among professional sports leagues, the NFL earned nearly $14 billion in revenue last season, with media rights agreements contributing the lion’s share.[2] CBS, Fox, and NBC each pay the league over $2 billion per year,[3] and the NFL is reportedly demanding even more money, including a 50% increase in its annual fees with CBS Sports.[4]
America’s pastime is also generating record revenue. In 2024, the MLB reported $12.1 billion, marking a $500 million increase from 2023. The MLB’s new media rights deal brings in roughly $750 million per year from ESPN and Netflix. These short-term deals will expire in 2028—the same year as its long-term deals with Fox and TNT—setting up a major inflection point for baseball’s distribution model.[5]
The Streaming Disruption
At the same time, streaming services have been growing in popularity. For the first time ever, streaming outpaced the combined share of broadcast and cable TV in June 2025.[6] This growth has been fueled in part by streaming platform’s success winning deals to stream live sports. Apple TV streams Friday Night Baseball match ups and launched MLS Season Pass in 2023.[7] Amazon secured exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football for $1 billion per year. The shift is not just a change in delivery technology; it is a change in business model — from advertiser-supported, free-to-air broadcasts to subscription-based services that consumers must pay to access.
That shift is now drawing federal antitrust attention.
The DOJ Investigations
The honeymoon period for sports streaming may be coming to an end. Earlier this month news broke that the DOJ would be investigating whether the NFL’s television contracts violated the antitrust laws.[8] Shortly thereafter came news that the MLB was also under DOJ scrutiny.[9]
This probe is immediately preceded by Senator Mike Lee’s call to investigate whether major league sports teams are exceeding the exception granted to them under the Sports Broadcasting Act. Senator Lee’s letter foregrounded the cost to consumers, noting that “football fans spend almost $1,000 on cable and streaming subscriptions” to watch every NFL game from the 2025 season.[10] He also identified the structural change in distribution: “Instead of a small number of free broadcast networks, the NFL now licenses games simultaneously to subscription streaming platforms, premium cable networks, and technology companies operating under different business models.”
What Counts as “Sponsored Telecasting”?
The issue turns on the scope of an exception to the antitrust laws created by the Sports broadcasting act of 1961, the relevant provision of which provides that Section 1 of the Sherman Act does not apply to professional football, baseball, basketball, or hockey teams when they sell their sponsored telecasting rights to television networks.[11] Specifically, the question is whether streaming services are “sponsored telecasts” covered by this exemption.
Courts have limited sponsored telecasts to “broadcasts which are financed by business enterprise (the ‘sponsors’) in return for advertising time and are therefore provided free to the general public.” Shaw v. Dallas Cowboys Football Club, Ltd., 172 F.3d 299, 301 (3d Cir. 1999). Accordingly, courts have held “the SBA does not exempt league contracts with cable or satellite television services, for which subscribers are charged a fee, from antitrust liability.” Nat’l Football League’s Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litig. v. DirecTV, LLC, 933 F.3d 1136, 1147 (9th Cir. 2019).
No Court has squarely addressed whether streaming services fall within the SBA antitrust exemption, but many argue they likely do not. Like Sunday Ticket, most streaming services require a paid subscription — a condition that, on its own, could be sufficient to place those services outside the scope of the SBA.
Lessons from the Sunday Ticket Litigation
The ongoing NFL Sunday Ticket litigation provides some insight into how exclusive streaming deals may be challenged.[12] Sunday Ticket concerned the NFL’s agreement with DirecTV, which allowed fans who purchased Sunday Ticket to watch games that were outside their market. Fans without Sunday Ticket would be limited to “at most, two to three local games each Sunday afternoon, in any given geographic area.” Sunday Ticket, 933 F.3d at 1148. The plaintiffs argued that because the NFL-DirectTV arrangement is not covered by the SBA exemption, the antitrust laws apply and require the NFL to permit each team to compete for deals and enhance smaller networks’ ability to bid for broadcasting rights. In June 2024, a federal jury in California returned a verdict of more than $4.7 billion in damages, but this verdict was vacated because it was based on expert testimony that the Court later found should have been excluded.[13]
A Closer Call: Causation and But-For-World Pricing
If courts deem agreements between the NFL and streaming services are not covered by the SBA, the principal stumbling block will be whether plaintiffs can show that absent the challenged agreement, they would have been able to access the games at a lower price.
That difficulty is precisely what derailed the plaintiffs in the Sunday Ticket litigation at the post-trial stage, where the district court entered judgment as a matter of law after concluding that the plaintiffs’ experts had failed to establish class-wide injury and damages with sound methodology.
The strength of the plaintiff’s case will hinge on whether the NFL-streaming platform agreement reduces access to sports contests (e.g. by reducing the number of games that are otherwise accessible via linear television), whether the agreement results in a better or worse product (e.g., what suite of related products is included in the subscription), and whether any benefits of the agreement can be provided through less restrictive means (primarily simulcasting).
Looking Forward
Whether the DOJ’s investigations result in enforcement action, a negotiated resolution, or a renewed push for legislative reform of the SBA, the underlying question is unlikely to recede. As streaming continues to displace traditional broadcast distribution, more and more of the professional leagues’ media revenue will flow through arrangements that fall outside the 1961 statute’s exemption. Courts, regulators, and Congress will all have a role to play in deciding how — and whether — antitrust law adapts.
[1] https://fiplanpartners.com/sports-spending-and-the-gdp/
[2] https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/as-nfl-revenue-rises-current-media-rights-deals-ensure-future-success
[3] Id.
[4] https://www.sportspro.com/news/broadcast-ott/nfl-cbs-paramount-media-rights-price-march-2026/
[5] https://boardroom.tv/mlb-media-rights-tv-espn-nbc-netflix-rob-manfred/
[6] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/streaming-broadcast-cable-tv.html#:~:text=Streaming%20surpasses%20combined%20broadcast%20and%20cable%20viewing,and%20its%20fourth%20consecutive%20monthly%20share%20increase.
[7] https://boardroom.tv/tech-talk-future-of-sports-streaming-apple-netflix-amazon-paramount-espn-youtube-peacock/
[8] https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/48440303/sources-doj-opens-antitrust-investigation-nfl-tv-deals
[9] https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/doj-expands-antitrust-probe-mlb-125252433.html
[10] https://www.lee.senate.gov/services/files/A820C118-2F19-4243-BC9E-C51A085C2D13
[11] 15 U.S.C. § 1291
[12] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/entertainment_sports_lawyer/esl-39-1-issue.pdf
[13] https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/announcement/view/734#_ftn7.
