For the first time since reporting came out about Fox’s role in the recent federal attention on the NFL’s antitrust exemption, the NFL has addressed the maneuvering of its longtime Sunday afternoon broadcast partner.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported on a meeting between Fox Corporation chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch and President Donald Trump in which Murdoch encouraged Trump to use the levers of the executive branch to reexamine the NFL’s limited antitrust exemption. The league is granted the exemption under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The provision allows the NFL and other professional sports leagues to pool broadcast rights as a collective rather than have the rights be sold on a team-by-team basis.
The news came shortly after both the FCC and DOJ began efforts to examine whether the exemption should apply to games sold to streaming services. Fox was the only NFL broadcast partner to submit its own public comment to the FCC as part of its inquiry, claiming that the transition of live sports from broadcast television to streaming threatens the ability of broadcasters to continue serving their local communities. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which represents the interests of all broadcast networks in Washington, submitted a similar defense.
During a recent conference call, NFL communications executive Jeff Miller spoke to the news that Fox is playing an active role behind the scenes in drumming up political pressure against the NFL, calling it “a little bit odd” given the league’s long-term commitment to broadcast television.
“I certainly saw the comments at the FCC that the NAB filed, that Fox filed, as well, and have heard the comments they’ve made on Capitol Hill repeated back to us, questioning, the Sports Broadcasting Act and asking for it to be revisited,” Miller said. “I guess that’s a little bit odd, given the relationship that we’ve had with the broadcasters, and the fact that we continue to keep all of our games on broadcast television. …So, you know, one would have thought that that relationship was good. I don’t know what, revisiting the SBA does for broadcasters,” he continued.
The NFL has repeatedly touted how all of its games are presented live on local broadcast networks within the markets of participating teams, even if those games are exclusive to streaming services. The league has similarly repeated that 87% of its games are allocated to broadcast television each season, though most of those games are overlapping regional windows.
To Miller’s point, outside of the executive branch dramatically altering its interpretation of the Sports Broadcasting Act to exclude non-broadcast distribution methods, which would jeopardize the NFL’s ability to sell games on both streaming and cable, a platform it has distributed games on for years, it’s unclear what Fox and the NAB are asking for.
“If the NAB or Fox or others, you know, are questioning the merits of that, I’m not sure I really understand where that comes from,” Miller said. “But we’ll continue to do what’s best for our fans, and that means continue to stay on broadcast television.”
Even if the Fox-backed pressure campaign doesn’t lead to anything tangible, it has at least forced the NFL to confront questions about its continued fragmentation of broadcast rights. This season, that seemingly led directly to the NFL slightly increasing the number of windows on broadcast television. And for Fox, it appears to have been enough of a distraction to delay the NFL’s attempt to renegotiate its media rights deals early, allowing the network to remain on a more affordable deal for now, and decide if the early negotiations are worth it later.
But the move from Murdoch and Fox to enlist the help of the federal government in what essentially amounts to a sports rights negotiation is unprecedented. How Murdoch’s gambit is ultimately received by the NFL will be a major question going forward.
