NAB’s LeGeyt says broadcasters need scale to survive streaming era

Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, used a recent podcast appearance to argue that broadcast television stations need greater scale to remain competitive for sports rights as streaming platforms claim a larger share of the market.

Speaking on “The Varsity,” a Puck podcast hosted by sports media journalist John Ourand, LeGeyt addressed consolidation, the migration of sports rights to streaming and what he said is an uneven playing field between broadcasters and tech companies.

The case for consolidation

LeGeyt was direct on the subject of broadcaster consolidation, describing it as a practical necessity rather than a strategic preference.

“If we’re going to compete for those NFL sports rights, if we’re going to compete locally to ensure that teams feel like they have a local distribution option that is freely available through local broadcast, broadcasters need some scale in order to compete for that,” he said.

The comments came after federal regulators approved a merger between Tegna and Nexstar, two of the country’s largest local broadcast station groups.

DirecTV has filed a lawsuit challenging that deal. LeGeyt did not address the litigation directly but said consolidation across the industry, at both the local and national level, is essential to broadcasters remaining viable competitors for high-cost programming.

He pointed to reports that the NFL has asked CBS for a $1 billion annual increase in rights fees as evidence of the financial pressure bearing down on broadcast networks and their affiliates.

“Our member companies need scale if we’re going to compete for that type of dollar to maintain this must-have programming,” he said.

Advertisement

Consolidation at the national level is also in motion. Discussions around the future of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, have continued in recent months. LeGeyt suggested that activity at both levels of the industry reflects the same underlying dynamic: broadcast companies need to grow if they are going to stay in the bidding for rights that are becoming more expensive with each negotiating cycle.

He also pointed to the local sports market as an area where scale will increasingly matter.

With regional sports networks operated by companies such as Warner Bros. Discovery having shut down, local broadcast stations have begun striking deals with professional sports teams for select game packages. LeGeyt described the current situation as an early experiment, with both broadcasters and teams still working out the economics.

“Those sports rights, even at a local level, are extremely expensive,” he said. “More scale will help to ensure that broadcasters can maintain those relationships in a way that is economically viable.”

Streaming vs. broadcast

On the question of whether consumers would object to more sports rights moving behind a streaming paywall, LeGeyt pushed back on the premise that the shift is neutral or beneficial for viewers.

He cited audience data to support the argument that sports events on broadcast television consistently draw larger audiences than those carried exclusively on streaming platforms. NFL Thanksgiving games on broadcast networks, he said, averaged 45 million and 57 million viewers respectively. By comparison, a Christmas Day game on Netflix drew 27.5 million viewers and a Black Friday game on Amazon drew 21 million.

He noted similar patterns in other sports.

The Big East Championship on Fox drew its highest viewership in more than a decade, he said, and the World Baseball Classic final on Fox set all-time viewership records for that event.

“When premier sports are on broadcast, the viewership is higher,” he said. “Consumers are actually showing up with their eyeballs and demonstrating that they do have a preference in continuing to access their games through broadcast.”

Ourand raised a counterpoint that some sports – NFL games on ESPN, for example – have long sat behind a pay TV subscription, and asked why the economics should work differently when a tech company is the rightsholder instead. LeGeyt said the distinction lies in how those platforms are structured.

“My member companies are anchored by their distribution through broadcast,” he said. “Netflix, Amazon, Google – they don’t have that broadcast distribution sitting alongside their streaming services. When sports rights migrate over there, that’s entirely behind a paywall.”

He acknowledged that streaming has expanded access to sports in certain contexts, particularly for fans who no longer live in their home markets. But he argued that the core problem for most consumers is cost and complexity.

Advertisement

“Consumers are frustrated by suddenly having to sign up for a new subscription service, multiple of them in certain cases, just to watch their same favorite team,” he said.

An uneven playing field

LeGeyt framed the competitive gap between broadcasters and tech companies as structural, not simply a matter of available capital.

Companies like Netflix, Amazon and Google operate at global scale, with revenue streams and content budgets that extend well beyond sports or even entertainment.

“If we are just in a game dollar for dollar, broadcast is going to be at a severe disadvantage,” he said.

He said the NAB has been pressing the FCC to modernize ownership rules that limit how large broadcast groups can grow, arguing that regulations written before streaming existed are no longer suited to the current market. He also said the commission has shown more willingness to engage with those arguments under current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

“We’ve got to make sure that consumers, the leagues and policymakers understand that there’s more at stake here than just dollars,” LeGeyt said. “That consumers and fan engagement have a very particular preference, and they benefit through broadcast.”

Whether that argument gains traction in Washington, and whether regulatory relief arrives before the next round of major rights negotiations, remains to be seen.