Apr 10, 2026, 12:40 PM ET
As the NFL gets ready to negotiate billions of dollars in new media contracts, which determine where fans will watch games and how much they'll pay to do so, a new entity has joined those talks: the federal government.
The Department of Justice has opened a probe into whether the NFL is harming consumers in the way it sells its broadcast rights.
A growing chorus of lawmakers and fans have expressed concern over the NFL and other leagues putting more games on subscription streaming services, leading to potentially increased costs for viewers. While the full scope of the probe is unclear, the NFL and other leagues have a limited antitrust exemption as part of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which allows them to sell the broadcast rights to all games together to make them more widely available to fans.
The NFL currently has television contracts with ESPN/ABC, NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, Prime Video and Netflix to air its games. Subscriptions are required to watch "Monday Night Football" games on ESPN that aren't simulcast on ABC, "Thursday Night Football" and the Black Friday game on Amazon's Prime Video, and Christmas games on Netflix. Some international games also air on NFL Network, which is owned by ESPN. Select postseason games also require subscriptions. The NFL has also awarded select games to ESPN+, YouTube and Peacock in the past.
All games air free on the local stations in the broadcast markets of the teams playing.
The feeling inside the NFL league office is that the Murdoch family, which owns Fox Corporation, is the key driver behind the DOJ probe, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Fox currently pays more than $2 billion for its Sunday afternoon package, but the league has telegraphed that it plans to exercise an opt-out clause in its current deals after the 2029 season.
A spokesperson for Fox declined to comment.
In February, Fox Corp. chief executive officer Lachlan Murdoch said Fox would be able to "offset" any cost increases that accompany a renegotiation: "We would certainly consider balancing or rebalancing our portfolio as we move forward when those opportunities become available," he said.
One person with direct knowledge of the league's thinking described the internal reaction to the DOJ actions as "surprised," but the person added that there had already been general dismay and a belief within the NFL that Fox was drumming up Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to examine the league's antitrust exemption.
According to another source with direct knowledge of league matters, the NFL's general counsel, Ted Ullyot, gave an update on the matter and the potential for a DOJ investigation during league meetings last week in Phoenix.
"Ted didn't seem that concerned during his update, but we shall see," the source said.
The league's rights deals currently pay the league more than $10 billion per year and run through 2033, with ESPN's deal going through 2034. As part of those opt-out clause talks, the league will undoubtedly ask media companies for more money, given the NFL's vast popularity. Eighty-three of the 100 most-watched TV events last year were NFL games, according to Nielsen. But the league could also create new packages of games by taking them away from Sunday afternoon, where they currently air on CBS and Fox. Fox also remains the only media company without a subscription streaming service, where the NFL has increasingly experimented with new games. Prime Video broadcasts Thursday night games and Google-owned YouTube owns the rights to Sunday Ticket, a paid subscription that gives viewers access to out-of-market Sunday games.
League officials who spoke to ESPN were quick to note that the Murdoch media empire has turned the cost of streaming into a hobby horse issue. The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by the Murdoch family, ran an editorial earlier this month on the issue: "The assumption is that [NFL commissioner Roger Goodell] thinks he can get more money from big tech's streaming services than he can from his long-time TV partners. That would hurt the networks, especially local stations, that rely on the NFL for ad revenue. ... It would also mean higher prices for football viewers tuning into the NFL, and consumer benefit is one of the lodestars of antitrust law," the publication's editorial board wrote. Fox News has run segments about the rising cost of sports viewership. Fox Corporation filed an official comment with the FCC, arguing that pay-walling sports threatens broadcast TV, which is critical to local communities.
"So far in the media distribution evolution the big winner has been big-time live sports," said Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive-turned media consultant. "This is pushback by the networks against those aggressive increasing rights fees, including and especially the NFL."
The NFL in a statement Thursday said: "The NFL's media distribution model is the most fan and broadcaster-friendly in the entire sports and entertainment industry," noting that nearly 90 percent of its games are on free, broadcast television.
NBC Sports and Fox Sports declined to comment. ESPN referred a request for comment to parent company Disney, which declined to comment. CBS Sports, Amazon, Netflix and YouTube did not respond to requests for a comment. The NFL owns a 10 percent stake in ESPN. It's unclear how the NFL's new partnership with ESPN will impact any future rights renegotiations with the network.
The league is currently in negotiations with CBS owner Paramount Skydance about a new rights fee because of a change-in-ownership clause after Skydance acquired CBS. Other partners are bracing for similar talks this year ahead of the opt-outs. Among the questions they are considering, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations: Can they extend their deals if they have to pay more in a renegotiation? And if they don't renegotiate with the NFL, do they risk not getting the best games for the remainder of their deals? Networks are confronting the NFL asking for more money at the same time the traditional TV business continues to decline.
The backdrop for all of this maneuvering, meanwhile, is a growing bipartisan anti-streaming sentiment in Washington. This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to the FCC asking the commission to investigate the cost of streaming for fans.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, has also called for the DOJ to review the NFL's media distribution.
The Donald Trump administration has at times targeted the league - both in 2017 when Trump said NFL owners should fire any player who knelt during the National Anthem, and this past season when he criticized the league's choice of Bad Bunny as its Super Bowl halftime performer. The difference with the Sports Broadcasting Act is there are Democrats aligned with the Department of Justice.
Congressman Patrick Ryan, D-NY, reiterated his support this week for repealing the Act.
"We're seeing the same story over and over again: billionaires in boardrooms making decisions to maximize their profits without thinking for a second about the fans," he said in a statement to ESPN. "The Sports Broadcasting Act may have made sense in the '60s, but what we're essentially seeing play out here is a classic case of a monopolized industry using their power and control to take advantage of the American people."
Congress could vote to repeal the NFL's limited antitrust exemption. And then in order to fundamentally change how the league distributes its games, a lawsuit would need to be filed against the league. (A separate lawsuit over how the league sells its Sunday Ticket package is also currently under appeal in federal court.) So fans might not notice any significant difference to the way they watch games anytime soon.
Frank Hawkins, the former head of media for the NFL who now works for the law firm Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, said: "The NFL can sell its games to whoever it wants, they just have to be ready to defend it in an antitrust case. And they are the most fan friendly of the sports leagues in the way they set up their television, so they would have a good case."
ESPN's Don Van Natta Jr. contributed to this report.
