(The Center Square) – One of Wisconsin’s Republican congressmen is leading the questions about how many NFL fans are being left out by games on streaming services.
Southeast Wisconsin Congressman Scott Fitzgerald led the Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on The Sports Broadcasting Act on Wednesday afternoon.
“When the NFL came to Congress in 1961 they warned that smaller teams wouldn’t survive if the league could not pool their broadcast rights. So, they created shared revenue,” Fitzgerald said during the hearing. “But today, professional sports leagues are amongst the most profitable in the world. Is it safe to say that the survival of professional sports is no longer dependent on a special exemption from Congress?”
Congress held the hearing because of complaints from fans that they now need several streaming services and have to spend hundreds of dollars a year to watch all of their favorite teams.
The NFL, for example, has games on broadcast TV, as well as games on YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Peacock.
The 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act requires the NFL to provide games on broadcast TV, essentially for free. The NFL claims it still does, pointing out that 87% of games are available on broadcast TV.
But Fitzgerald said that means 13% of games are not.
“To me the straw that kinda broke the camel’s back was when the NFL signed a contract with Netflix,” Fitzgerald added. “At that point, I think, they went from pushing on the edge of the law to jumping head first through it.”
There is a unique Wisconsin tie to this hearing.
When NFL games are on streaming, fans in their team’s home market can watch them on broadcast TV. But in Wisconsin, that means only fans in the Green Bay and Milwaukee markets can get the games for free. Fans in Madison, Eau Claire, La Crosse, and northern Wisconsin are blacked out.
You also have some other Packer fans who are blacked out of broadcast games as well. Some people in northwestern Wisconsin are included in the Minneapolis TV market, and they get Minnesota Vikings games. There are also some fans near the Upper Pennisula who are in a Michigan TV market and get Lions games.
Wisconsin Democrat U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has tried to fix that issue for years with her Go Pack Go Act that would allow all fans in Wisconsin to watch the Packers on their local TV stations.
