Sports rights migration to streaming draws broadcast industry push for FCC regulatory action

The National Association of Broadcasters, Fox Corporation and Sinclair Inc. each filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to eliminate broadcast ownership caps, accelerate the transition to the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard and reexamine the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 – all in response to a Feb. 25 FCC Media Bureau public notice seeking input on how changes in the sports media marketplace have affected consumers and local television stations.

The filings were submitted in MB Docket No. 26-45, which the FCC’s Media Bureau opened to examine current and emerging trends in the distribution of live sports programming and their effect on the public interest. More than 8,500 comments have been filed in the docket since it opened.

While the three filers reached broadly similar conclusions, each brought distinct arguments and data to the record.

APTS tells FCC public television fills local sports gap streaming and pros don’t cover

Sports draws larger audiences on broadcast

All three filings drew on viewership data to support the position that live sports on over-the-air television continue to attract larger audiences than the same programming on streaming platforms.

The NAB cited NFL viewership from Thanksgiving Day 2025, when games on CBS, Fox and NBC averaged 44.7 million viewers across three games. The Kansas City Chiefs versus Dallas Cowboys matchup averaged 57.2 million viewers, a figure the NFL described as the most-watched regular season game on record. Amazon Prime Video’s Black Friday NFL game the following day drew 16.3 million viewers; the platform’s Christmas Day game averaged 21.06 million.

Fox’s filing noted that NFL broadcasts accounted for 83 of the 100 most-watched television transmissions in 2025. Sinclair’s filing cited data showing that 96 of the 100 most-watched U.S. telecasts in 2025 were sports events, with 92 of those being NFL or college football games.

Fox also pointed to results from its own programming. The World Baseball Classic final on Fox drew 10.78 million viewers, which Fox Sports described as the most-watched WBC telecast in the tournament’s history. A Bassmaster Classic broadcast on Fox the same weekend outpaced the Charlotte Hornets versus San Antonio Spurs NBA game on Amazon Prime Video — 502,000 viewers to roughly 472,000. A Michigan versus Michigan State college basketball game on Fox peaked at 3.33 million viewers, which Fox identified as the most-watched Fox College Basketball Friday game in the network’s history.

Streaming fragmentation frustrating fans, raising costs

Each filing cited survey data on consumer frustration with the fragmentation of live sports across multiple platforms.

Advertisement

A Hub Entertainment Research survey conducted in December 2025 and January 2026 found that 87 percent of sports fans were at least somewhat frustrated by the complexity of finding sports content, with 25 percent describing themselves as very frustrated. Sinclair’s filing added that nearly half of sports fans reported missing games because they were not subscribed to the correct service, and 44 percent said they already subscribe to too many platforms.

Sports fans want simpler ways to find games across streaming services

Estimates of the cost to access all NFL games during the 2025 season through streaming platforms ranged from $935 to more than $1,500, according to figures cited across the three filings.

Netflix raised its U.S. subscription prices again in March 2026, with its ad-supported plan moving to $8.99 per month and its premium tier to $26.99. Apple TV+ raised its monthly price 30 percent in August 2025 to $12.99, its third price increase in three years. Amazon announced in March 2026 that it would raise the price of its ad-free Prime Video tier to $4.99 a month, beginning April 10.

Sinclair offered a specific consumer scenario in its filing: a New York Yankees fan seeking to watch every regular season game and the playoffs in 2026 would need to navigate 10 networks and five or more subscriptions at a cost approaching $1,000 — before any potential postseason run.

“Any incremental cost increases in the sports broadcast marketplace would flow through to local affiliates, to our distributors and ultimately, to consumers and the fans,” Lachlan Murdoch, chief executive officer of Fox Corporation, said at a Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference earlier this month, as cited in Fox’s filing.

Local news tied to sports revenue

All three filers argued that the revenue generated by live sports programming is central to funding local news operations, and that the migration of sports rights to streaming platforms directly threatens that funding model.

Fox’s filing noted that its affiliated owned-and-operated stations produce an average of 60 hours per week of local news. The filing cited the 2025 Southern California wildfires as a case where sports-supported revenue enabled Fox’s KTTV in Los Angeles to sustain emergency coverage over an extended period.

Sinclair’s filing stated that local broadcast stations remain among the largest producers of original local journalism in the United States and are the primary or sole source of regularly produced local news in many communities. Sinclair also cited data showing that local television lost more than half its share of overall local media spend from 2017 to 2025, while streaming’s share grew from 15 percent to 50 percent over the same period.

The NAB noted that live sports accounted for nearly 40 percent of all U.S. national TV ad spend during the NFL season in the fourth quarters of 2022 and 2023, and that broadcast television’s share of total viewing consistently rises with the return of football each fall. According to Nielsen data cited by Sinclair, the start of the NFL season produced a 20 percent month-over-month surge in broadcast viewing. NFL games across the major broadcast networks generated an estimated $6 billion to $7 billion in annual advertising revenue, per figures in Sinclair’s filing.

Ownership rules and ATSC 3.0 as the immediate asks

All three filers called on the FCC to eliminate its national and local broadcast ownership caps, arguing the rules prevent station groups from achieving the scale necessary to compete financially for sports rights against streaming platforms backed by technology and retail businesses.

S&P Global projected in 2025 that U.S. TV and streaming sports rights fees would reach $37.1 billion by 2030, up from $29.2 billion in 2025 and $14.6 billion in 2015. The NAB noted that the NFL’s move to renegotiate its media rights ahead of schedule in 2026 — with reports suggesting the league could seek roughly a 50 percent revenue increase — could push those projections higher.

On ATSC 3.0, all three filers argued that completing the transition to the NextGen TV standard is necessary for broadcasters to remain competitive in rights negotiations. The standard supports higher picture resolution, high dynamic range video and immersive audio. Sinclair and the NAB each noted that ATSC 3.0 also enables content protection, which the NAB said sports leagues require as a condition of rights deals. Streaming platforms already have this capability; over-the-air broadcasters currently do not.

Advertisement

All three filers called for the FCC to set a firm sunset date for the ATSC 1.0 standard to drive coordinated adoption across the broadcast and device ecosystem.

Sports Broadcasting Act scrutiny

Each filer raised questions about the continued scope and applicability of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which gives professional sports leagues an antitrust exemption when selling pooled telecast rights.

Fox’s filing went furthest in framing the legal question, noting that the statute’s text applies to broadcasting and does not clearly extend to streaming negotiations. As leagues place more content on paid streaming platforms and as consumer costs increase, Fox wrote, both the legal basis and public-policy rationale behind the exemption are appropriate to examine.

Sinclair cited federal court decisions holding that the SBA does not exempt leagues from antitrust scrutiny for paid distribution services. Courts have found that the act’s “sponsored telecasting” language applies to network broadcast television and does not extend to cable, pay-per-view or streaming.

The NAB stopped short of calling for the SBA’s repeal, recommending instead that policymakers convene antitrust experts to evaluate whether the exemption remains in the public interest.

“NFL games shouldn’t be something you make money off of if you’re a network, we should be a loss-leader,” Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys and a member of the NFL Media Committee, said in a previously published interview cited in the NAB filing.

The NAB also cited FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who said publicly the day before the comment deadline that broadcasters might benefit from a collective bargaining exemption to negotiate with sports leagues, a structure that would parallel the exemption leagues hold under the SBA.

Sinclair’s filing included two arguments not raised in the NAB or Fox submissions.

The first was a detailed accounting of public investment in professional sports facilities. State and local governments have committed an estimated $30 billion to $35 billion to the construction and financing of major league sports venues in the United States, according to figures Sinclair cited. The median public contribution to venue construction costs between 1970 and 2020 was 73 percent of total project costs. Sports stadiums have accumulated an estimated $18 billion in property tax breaks over their operational lifetimes, with additional subsidies flowing through tax-exempt municipal bonds. Sinclair argued that the migration of sports to paywalled streaming platforms, given this level of public financial support for leagues, raises public interest concerns that go beyond consumer cost and broadcaster economics.

The second was a survey of international regulatory frameworks designed to keep major sports on free-to-air television.

Advertisement

Australia maintains an anti-siphoning framework that gives free-to-air broadcasters priority rights for events of national and cultural significance. The United Kingdom and Ireland maintain listed-events rules requiring certain major sporting events — including the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics — to remain available on free-to-air television. The European Union’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive expressly permits member states to designate events of major importance for society that must remain widely accessible on free television, and Germany has implemented such protections in its national media law framework.

The FCC has not announced a timeline for action in docket MB 26-45.