Sports Rights Issue Comes Up to Bat

The increasing costs and complexity of watching your favorite team has caught the attention of Washington.  Today, viewers must subscribe to multiple streaming and cable services in order to watch their favorite team.

In February, the FCC’s Media Bureau issued a public notice soliciting comments on the state of sports rights.  NAB has urged the FCC to act:

“Live sports likewise have helped support the local news and other local programming.  And this symbiotic relationship between broadcast TV and live sports has all served to provide more, higher quality live sports programming for the benefit of consumers.  By contrast, the migration of live sports to pureplay streaming services disserves consumers.  Pureplay streaming services use live sports programming as a loss leader to sell products and attract subscribers to their platforms.  Consumers, on the other hand, pay exorbitant subscription fees and struggle to find games among a maze of services.”

In addition to the FCC, Congress is getting involved.  Sen. Tammy Baldwin has introduced the For the Fans Act, which would reduce costs and make it easier to access local games.  When introducing the bill Sen. Baldwin stated:  

“Gigantic streaming services and big sports leagues have created a complicated and expensive maze of subscriptions that either stop fans from watching their teams altogether or gouge fans to simply watch the teams they love,” said Senator Baldwin.  “That’s why I’m introducing the For the Fans Act, because it shouldn’t take ten different subscriptions and a second mortgage to watch sports.  My bill will stop the big streaming platforms and sports leagues from blacking out games for fans and ensure local fans always have a single place they can go to watch their team for free.”

There is little doubt that this is the beginning of a movement to reduce the costs and complexity of watching our favorite teams on television.

You can see the FCC’s Public Notice soliciting comments here.

You can see NAB’s comments in response to the Media Bureaus Public Notice here.

You can see Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s statement regarding the For the Fans Act here.