The US government’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an investigation into whether the NFL’s domestic broadcast distribution model is forcing American football fans to pay too much in subscription fees.
The news, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, said the “nature and scope” of the DOJ’s investigation were unknown but that it would be looking into whether the league has engaged in anticompetitive practices related to its rights contracts, which require consumers to pay a subscription fee to watch some games.
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Later, a US government official told the ABC News outlet: “This is about affordability and creating an even playing field for providers.”
The NFL currently has an antitrust exemption under the Sport Broadcast Act of 1996 for negotiating its broadcast rights contracts, but it doesn’t cover cable, satellite, or streaming, with the latter option fast becoming the go-to provider of live sports in the US.
The NFL has contracts with several broadcasters to provide coverage of its large slate of games per season, including Disney-owned ESPN/ABC, Comcast's NBC Sports, Paramount-owned CBS Sports, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix.
The NFL regular season consists of 272 games, with each of the league's 32 teams playing 17 games during an 18-week period with one 'bye' week off.
The NFL playoffs include 12 games played in three rounds before the Super Bowl – the Wild Card Weekend, the Divisional Round, and the Conference Championship game.
It is estimated that the NFL gains almost $11 billion per season on average for its media rights deals, with most of its contracts running through 2033. ESPN, meanwhile, has a contract through 2034.
Currently, fans are required to buy subscriptions to watch 'Monday Night Football' games on ESPN that are not being shown on ABC, 'Thursday Night Football', and the Black Friday games aired by Prime Video, and Netflix’s Christmas games.
Select international games aired by ESPN-owned NFL Network and some postseason games also require a subscription.
All games broadcast by local stations in the teams' broadcast markets remain free-to-air as part of the Sport Broadcasting Act.
The move comes a month after Senator Mike Lee, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, wrote a letter to the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission urging a review of whether the NFL’s rights distribution violated the Sports Broadcasting Act.
At the time, Lee said fans were being made to spend almost $1000 on cable and streaming subscriptions per season to gain access to all games.
In a statement, the NFL said: “The NFL's media distribution model is the most fan and broadcaster-friendly in the entire sports and entertainment industry.
“With over 87% of our games on free, broadcast television, including 100% of games in the markets of the competing teams, the NFL has for decades put our fans front and center in how we distribute our content. The 2025 season was our most-viewed since 1989 and reflects the strength of the NFL distribution model and its wide availability to all fans."
This is not the first time that the NFL has been accused of violating antitrust laws – in 2024, a jury in the US District Court in Los Angeles ruled the league had done so when it sold out-of-market Sunday afternoon games to a premium subscription service, DirecTV, between the 2011 and 2022 seasons.
While the NFL was ordered to pay $4.7 billion in damages to 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses in the US who paid for the package, a federal judge overturned the decision due to two witnesses for the subscribers using flawed mythology in their testimony.
The Sunday Ticket package is now distributed by YouTube TV.
The NFL’s 2025 regular season was the second most-watched campaign on record, averaging 18.7 million viewers per game broadcast window.
This included all nationally telecast games except for the YouTube-exclusive season opener in Brazil between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs, which supposedly used flawed methodology in its measurements, and as such was discounted.
That 18.7 million figure is up 10% year-on-year from the 2024-25 campaign, and 7% on the year prior.
Crucially, it also makes the 2025-26 regular season the most-watched since 1989, when the record average of 19 million was set.
Viewership for this year’s Super Bowl, meanwhile, failed to set a new domestic record, but the telecast did become the most-watched program in the history of NBC.
The latest edition of the glamorous annual NFL finale – in which the Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots 29-13 in San Francisco – brought in an average of 124.9 million viewers across the linear NBC channel, the Peacock streaming service, the Telemundo Spanish-language affiliate broadcaster, NBC Sports Digital, and the NFL+ platform.
This falls short of the all-time Super Bowl viewing record, set only last year, which saw an average of 127.7 million tune in to watch the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs. This ended a four-year streak of consecutive audience increases for the Super Bowl.
