Rusty Weiss
The National Football League is facing a Justice Department investigation into whether its aggressive shift toward streaming has crossed into anticompetitive territory, leaving everyday fans paying the price.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the DOJ opened the probe on Thursday. They are focusing on the league’s media rights deals that increasingly force viewers to juggle costly subscriptions just to catch all the action.
Fans have grown increasingly vocal about the frustration of needing multiple platforms — Amazon Prime Video for Thursday Night Football, Peacock, Netflix for select games, and YouTube TV’s expensive NFL Sunday Ticket package — to watch a full slate of games.
It’s ridiculous.
The Justice Department has opened an inquiry into whether the NFL violated anticompetitive practices in its TV deals and then required customers to pay too much in subscription costs, according to three sources familiar with the probe. https://t.co/ikZ09hp1oe
— ABC News (@ABC) April 10, 2026
Fans Celebrate as DOJ Launches NFL Streaming Probe
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told Fox & Friends last month that his department was reviewing public comments in which fans believe a significant share of sports broadcasts should remain “free.”
And we’ll put the word “free” in quotes because they’ll still be paying for at least one television bill (whether cable, satellite, or a streaming platform), not to mention the revenue generated by advertising. The NFL isn’t hurting. Spreading out games across a dozen outlets is wholly unnecessary.
“We actually got thousands and thousands of comments. It was a big number for the FCC… The vast majority so far, based on an initial assessment, support keeping a significant portion of these sports games on free, over-the-air broadcast TV,” Carr said.
“You effectively have to have a computer science degree to decipher this,” he added. “We’re at a tipping point where these leagues can push it so far, putting games behind paywalls, that they undermine their ability to claim that antitrust exemption.”
Public comments to the FCC have highlighted the sense that the NFL’s pivot to multiple streaming sources feels more like a money grab than fan-friendly innovation. It’s always a money grab with the NFL (see their divisive Super Bowl entertainment, not designed for actual football fans, and international games).
The NFL pushed back, insisting its distribution model remains the most accessible in sports. A league spokesperson noted that over 87% of games — including 100% in the markets of competing teams — still air on free broadcast television, and that the 2025 season was the most-viewed since 1989.
The league maintains it continues to put fans first, even as regulators and lawmakers examine whether the streaming-heavy approach has gone too far.
Are you buying this?
