The NFL’s antitrust exemption is a win for fans

Critics have long argued that the NFL gets an unfair pass under antitrust law. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 allows the league to do things that would normally raise legal red flags, including pooling all 32 teams’ television rights and negotiating media deals as one entity. That kind of coordinated behavior is exactly what the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was designed to scrutinize.

But measured by what matters most under modern antitrust law — consumer welfare — the NFL’s exemption looks far less like a sweetheart deal for billionaires and much more like a good deal for fans.

The irony of stripping the NFL’s exemption in the name of protecting fans is that fans would likely end up worse off.

Antitrust law generally asks a simple question: Does the challenged conduct hurt consumers? By that standard, the NFL’s model holds up well. Fans have more access to games at lower real prices, even as league costs have risen sharply, including large inflation-adjusted gains in player salaries.

Hometown fans can watch every one of their local team’s games free over the air each season. The typical fan can access more than 100 games a year without paying for cable or a streaming bundle. Even the avid fan who wants every regular-season game can, according to research by LightShed Partners, watch all 272 games in 2026 for less than $600.

That comes to less than $3 per game.

Compare that with 2006, when full coverage required paying roughly $60 a month for DirecTV plus $290 for Sunday Ticket. Adjusted for inflation, that is more than $1,600 in today’s dollars. In other words, the real cost of watching the full NFL season has fallen by more than 60% over the past two decades.

That is not what consumer harm usually looks like.

Some critics argue that if the NFL lost its exemption, individual teams would cut their own media deals and fans would benefit from more competition. In practice, that would likely mean 32 teams signing separate deals with different streaming services, regional networks, cable channels, and digital platforms. Fans who wanted to follow the whole season would have to assemble a patchwork of subscriptions, apps, logins, blackout rules, and geographic restrictions.

That would not help fans. It would make watching football more expensive and more frustrating.

European soccer offers a warning. Leagues there have spent years fighting over collective television licensing, and fragmented rights have often made the product harder for ordinary fans to follow while enriching a handful of powerful clubs. The irony of stripping the NFL’s exemption in the name of protecting fans is that fans would likely end up worse off.

The NFL also differs from ordinary industries in a deeper way. In most markets, antitrust law assumes independent competitors produce better outcomes than coordinated actors. A dominant firm may seek to squeeze out rivals, raise prices, and control the market. But professional sports do not work like normal markets.

The NFL’s “product” requires competition among many teams. A single team cannot produce a season. Fans do not merely want great franchises; they want close, unpredictable games. If the same teams win every year and the outcome seems predetermined, people stop watching.

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That is why the NFL needs coordination in a way most industries do not. Revenue sharing, pooled media rights, and coordinated scheduling are not tricks to suppress competition. They help preserve competitive balance. When money flows from richer franchises to smaller-market teams, the league prevents a handful of clubs from dominating year after year.

Few industries operate by having winners subsidize losers. In most markets, that would look suspicious. In professional football, it helps create the product fans want.

Antitrust law usually assumes cooperation among competitors harms consumers. In the NFL, cooperation among competitors helps produce better competition on the field.

The Sports Broadcasting Act is not a dusty relic or a lobbyist favor from another era. It reflects a real difference between sports leagues and ordinary industries. Coordination can benefit consumers when the product itself depends on balanced competition, shared scheduling, broad access, and national distribution.

The data supports that conclusion. Fans are paying less in real terms for more access than ever, despite rising league costs. Blow up the current system in the name of a simplistic demand for “more competition,” and the likely result would be higher prices, fragmented access, and a worse viewing experience.

Antitrust law exists to protect consumers, not to punish cooperation for its own sake. In the NFL’s case, coordination lowers prices and improves the product by giving fans more football, broader access, and closer games. It’s the opposite of what it does in many other industries where antitrust concerns are relevant.