As the NFL faces an unprecedented political attack on its 65-year-old broadcast antitrust exemption, the league and its teams are for the most part saying nothing — especially not publicly.
Beyond the “87 percent” talking point (which is technically true when looking at the entire nation but inaccurate as to any given market), no one connected to the NFL is saying much.
That made Tuesday’s lead item in a Packers.com mailbag column even more significant. Under the subtitle “SBA gives small fish a fair shake,” this is the first question for the day: "[D]o you think there is anything to the FCC and DOJ reevaluating the NFL’s special treatment under antitrust laws? The NFL has benefitted greatly from special exemptions that not many get under the understanding that the NFL would maintain reasonable customer access to their broadcasts. Is requiring five different streaming services reasonable access in your opinion?”
That’s a fairly pointed question, one that easily could have been ignored. Instead, it was embraced. Here’s the full, one-long-paragraph response from Wes Hodkiewicz of the Packers’ official in-house website:
“The Sports Broadcasting Act is a complicated subject but also a critical one to address because of the possible implications for a small-market franchise like the Packers. In many ways, the SBA has been the cage protecting the Packers from perilous waters. We’ve seen in other leagues how difficult it can be for small-market teams to survive when there is no salary cap and clubs must negotiate their own media contracts. When that happens, it’s the viewers who ultimately lose. My 95-year-old grandmother from Pulaski can flip on the Packers game every Sunday without fail. However, she was thrown into a tizzy this offseason because the Brewers games were no longer readily available due to MLB broadcasting deals. I commend the Brewers for the job they’ve done swimming against the current, but there’s a final boss in the Los Angeles Dodgers — with nearly four times the payroll — awaiting them in the postseason thanks to the Dodgers’ TV deal. The NFL has a tremendous product, and it’s led to unprecedented growth over the past 30 years. A big part of that formula for success, however, is the parity created through revenue-sharing and a structured salary cap. The SBA gives small fish such as Green Bay, Kansas City, and Cincinnati a fair shake in this vast NFL ocean. I understand the plight of fans to watch their favorite teams in today’s media landscape. We’ve spoken about it often over the past year. But it’s also important to acknowledge the valves and levers that allow the Packers to operate. The SBA plays into that. While it’s popular for politicians on both sides of the aisle to say, ‘Make all the games free for everyone,’ it feels more like a kid wistfully desiring every toy under the Christmas tree without knowledge of what it took to get them there. The reality is we live in a society where more and more households are cutting cords and switching their media consumption to streaming. Netflix now has more than 80 million domestic subscribers to cable’s 55 million. The NFL, like every media entity, is doing what it must to meet tomorrow’s consumers where they are today. No different than the challenge the Packers face with private equity money flowing into the league, they must keep finding ways to keep pace with these NFL titans. Losing the SBA, without any proper plan, would jeopardize that. That’s why this is such an important topic to discuss. We’ll see where Congress goes following the hearing this week, but this feels more and more like messaging to me than meaningful attempts at legislation or oversight. Truly a solution in search of [a] problem. What’s most quizzical to me is why a member of Congress from Wisconsin, whose constituents can already watch every Packers game for free within the Milwaukee market, is thrusting himself into the center of this conversation? If the SBA goes away, it’s teams like the Packers that would suffer most. Because make no mistake, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago will be fine. Without the SBA, it undoubtedly will be more difficult for the Packers to compete financially while likely being more expensive for fans who are accustomed to watching the Packers for free. So, it begs a simple question…what exactly are we doing here?”
The SBA wasn’t designed to save small-market teams; it was put in place to ostensibly save the league at a time when it wasn’t nearly as popular and successful as it now is. Yes, the equal sharing of TV revenue helps all teams. But the exemption was aimed at avoiding a reality in which the teams would be forced to let the market determine the revenue that each team would receive for their home games, and in which some of them would have to fold.
If the exemption were to be rescinded now, would it really hurt the Packers? Although the market is small, the Packers would be in a position to negotiate a very strong individual package for their games.
They’re basically the Notre Dame of the NFL. A historic team with a national profile that plays in a stadium generally regarded as pro football’s Mecca. Someone would pay big money to broadcast Packers home games in Wisconsin and beyond.
Despite the effort to dismiss the current Congressional focus on the SBA, there’s a real question as to whether the NFL has exceeded its antitrust exemption by selling packages of games to cable, satellite, and streaming companies. And while the current model ensures that Packers fans living in and around Green Bay and Milwaukee will see all games on a traditional, over-the-air broadcast network, displaced residents (and folks who became Cheeseheads from afar) have to spend plenty of money to see all Packers games.
They need to have access to ESPN, Prime Video, Netflix, and (most importantly) Sunday Ticket, which has been deliberately overpriced to persuade Packers fans in Pasadena to choose to instead watch the “free” games on CBS and Fox in lieu of purchasing the privilege to watch all Packers games that don’t appear on their local broadcast affiliates.
If the antitrust exemption were to go away, the Packers would likely benefit financially. They could do a national deal to put all of their home games on a broadcast network, allowing Packers fans throughout America to see all games for free and making a bunch of money from Fox, CBS, NBC, or ABC. At the end of the day, the Packers would likely earn more TV money than their current 1/32nd share of total TV revenue.
The NFL and its teams are committed to keeping the broadcast antitrust exemption. Losing it would create a certain degree of chaos. (That said, having it enforced as to Sunday Ticket could result in all games being available on the networks contained in most basic cable packages, every Sunday.)
The point for now is that, despite the arguments aimed at downplaying the issue by one of the NFL’s 32 teams, the fact that the Packers have devoted digital real estate to the issue shows that there’s a level of concern within the organization as to what will happen — which means there’s a level of concern throughout the league.
Wednesday’s hearing and its aftermath could make that concern even more pronounced.
