House Judiciary Committee requests briefings from NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB commissioners on broadcast blackouts

Yahoo

2 days ago

After decades of the four biggest professional leagues in the United States receiving a broadcasting antitrust exemption, the House Judiciary Committee may be looking to alter that law. The committee has formally requested briefings with the commissioners of four of the U.S.'s main professional leagues with the intention of discussing broadcasting markets and blackout exemptions.
In a statement released Monday, the Judiciary Committee included the letters sent out to each of the four commissioners: Adam Silver (NBA), Roger Goodell (NFL), Gary Bettman (NHL) and Rob Manfred (MLB). Per the statement, the committee plans to meet with the commissioners to discuss the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA), a law that gives sports leagues an antitrust exemption for broadcasting games on network television.
The SBA, which was passed in 1961, was originally passed in order to help the NFL organize its broadcast rights as a collective, streamlining the process. But now, per the statement, the House is looking into "the sufficiency of existing law" in terms of the current broadcast landscape.
"The current state of the sports broadcasting market has changed considerably since the 1960s. The majority of sports viewership now occurs outside of traditional network broadcasting," the committee writes in the statement. "As a result, most of the distribution agreements that a sports league enters into are subject to antitrust challenges, while a narrow subset are not, creating legal uncertainty, distorting the market, and effectively expanding the blind spot for potential antitrust violations."
The request was made by two Republican representatives: Jim Jordan (R-OH), the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, and Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust. Two Democratic representatives, Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Jerry Nadley (D-NY) were also named in the letters; both are ranking members of the Judiciary Committee.
In the letters, the committee requests that the commissioners speak on their individual league's "participation in the sports broadcasting market and related matters." Silvers, Goodell, Bettman and Manfred are asked to arrange for the briefing before Aug. 25.