As Feds investigate NFL TV contracts, Packers say changes would be 'existential threat'

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The Green Bay Packers are at odds with Washington, and this has nothing to do with the Commanders. As Congress and the Justice Department investigate the National Football League's (NFL) television agreements with streaming platforms, the Packers say any major changes to a 65-year-old federal law could threaten their existence.

Lawmakers have been looking into whether the NFL's broadcast deals violate antitrust laws. Wisconsin GOP Congressman Scott Fitzgerald chairs the House subcommittee overseeing antitrust regulations. 

Last summer, the House Judiciary Committee informed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell it was looking into whether the league's more recent TV contracts violated the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.

That law allows the NFL to negotiate broadcast rights as a single entity representing all 32 of its teams. Before Congress and former President John F. Kennedy enacted the law, teams reached their own individual TV agreements with different networks.

As issue now is whether the league is breaking the spirit of that law by moving more and more games to streaming platforms, such as Amazon, Netflix and Peacock. 

Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. Department of Justice was conducting its own investigation. 

Fitzgerald posted to the social media site, X, Thursday welcoming the investigation.

"Wisconsin sports fans should have access to their teams’ games without having to pay for multiple cable and streaming packages," Fitzgerald's post read.

Fitzgerald's office did not respond to a request for an interview Friday.

Last month, the Green Bay Packers sent Fitzgerald a letter outlining their concerns with any congressional attempt to revisit the Sports Broadcasting Act. The team sent copies to the letter to the state's nine other members of Congress.

"Any disruption to the current SBA model," the letter read. "Would pose an existential threat to the Green Bay Packers and their existence in Green Bay as we know it."

The Packers argue any weakening of the law risks a broader deconstruction of the antitrust exemptions that allow a professional sports team in Green Bay to compete with teams in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

"Revenue sharing and the salary cap and the structure that comes with it gives the competitive balance and allows teams like the Packers, in the smallest market in pro sports, to have a basis from which to operate financially," the team's director of public affairs, Aaron Popkey, told CBS 58 in an interview Friday.

Fans along Milwaukee's stretch of bars on Bluemound Road have a different view. A common sentiment was aggravation over needing numerous subscriptions to keep up with the NFL and other pro sports leagues.

"It's about as anti-consumer as you can get," Matteo Zuehlsdorf said as he waited for a fish fry lunch at Magoo's on the Mound. "They can say our [ratings] numbers have never been higher. It's like, yeah, but how much are you charging for 17 games a season, and then that doesn't even include the playoffs because the playoffs are on different [platforms], too."

For fans CBS 58 spoke to Friday, the widening distribution of games was the most common gripe. Instead of flipping channels to get from one game to another, fans now need to open and close different apps for the different streaming services they're paying for monthly.

"At this point, it's like a second job. Like, having to log into three different apps, six different apps just to watch the game?" Justin Borges said at Magoo's while paying for a take-out order. "It feels like a whole other job when I get home. I'll do it, I'm a fan. But it's hell. It's work."

Popkey noted 87% of NFL games are still on over-the-air broadcast networks. Games on streaming services are placed on local broadcast channels in the home markets of teams playing in those games.

The Packers' home markets are Green Bay and Milwaukee, so fans in other parts of Wisconsin, like Madison, La Crosse and Wausau, don't have broadcast access to games on streaming platforms. Popkey acknowledged fans in those parts of the stateneed to make plans to watch at someone else's house or at a bar. 

Matt Mitten, a sports law professor at Marquette University, said it's unlikely Congress or the DOJ would push for any substantial changes to the Sports Broadcasting Act.

Instead, Mitten said what's happening is probably a response to growing frustration over more and more NFL games being shifted to streaming platforms.

"I think what the potential investigation by Congress would be is a little bit of saber rattling," Mitten said. "To say, 'Don't put too many of these games on Amazon, these other channels not everyone has.'"

Could the NFL really be forced to go back to a fractured broadcast landscape? The Bears making their own deal with Netflix, the Vikings on Apple TV and the Packers on Hulu?

Popkey said the Packers worry anything is on the table until federal officials confirm the core of the Sports Broadcasting Act will remain intact.

"That is the grave concern we have," he said. "Because, to this point, we haven't heard any assurances that maintaining that structure is what is in the plan."

Fans like Zuehlsdorf said they're just tired of feeling like they're being penalized by the NFL's push to make even more TV money.

"It's just so out of touch," he said. "And something's gotta be done about it."