Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961

Travis is also a lawyer.

He argues the league's move to streaming runs afoul of the Sports Broadcasting Act, the 1961 law that gives leagues an antitrust exemption to package and sell their TV rights to free over-the-air broadcasters.

And he says the NFL's own numbers make his case.

And the NFL says their numbers, to be fair to them, well, 87% of our games are on broadcast television.

And there's been these little breadcrumbs here and there.

We've talked about them on the show of the league wanting to go to Wednesday night games, Friday night games, if they can get the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 changed.

And I think, I think it would be horrible long-term for the league.

I, it is like late stage peak popularity, MLB, like mid two thousands MLB level decision, just completely missing the point.

Maybe 1% to 2% have benefited, but 40% go into the portal, never come out, lose their scholarships.

All this antitrust... exemption does is protect gives the universities which are not allowed today the ability to make talk to each other to make universal eligibility and transfer rules there's a third antitrust exemption which is similar to that in the Sports Broadcasting Act, which basically says if voluntarily the universities want to pool their media rights, voluntarily, if and when that happens, they can work together to do that.

Otherwise, that's the full extent of this antitrust exemption, because it's the only way to stop what's going on The rogue going on all over the country and making up a new rule every day.

And it's interesting because...

Today, I'm very pleased to be joined by Katie Van Dyck, senior legal fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, longtime friend of The Capital Forum.

She recently wrote the article How An Obscure Law Lets Sports Leagues Rob Fans Blind, which examines how the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 helped shape today's fragmented and increasingly expensive sports media ecosystem.

Katie, thanks so much for doing this today.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

We already have a couple questions from our listeners, but if you have additional questions, please put them in the chat or in the, uh, Q&A thing here, and we'll get to them later in the discussion.

To start us off, Katie, I think it would be great if you could walk us through the original purpose of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.

What was Congress doing with that law, and why did it come about?

That's the real issue here.

Gotta change the Sports Broadcasting Act.

That's what...

Oh.

They receive the same check and they basically negotiate as a bloc with these media outlets.

And what we're hoping to do is using the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, getting buy-in from our Division I entities.

We need over 75% to be able to unlock this.

Because in every single economic project that we put together and essentially walk through the potential for how much money could be made and how much is being left on the sideline by not negotiating as a bloc, We found that billions of dollars are being left on the sideline.

I do not...

I would absolutely not call it a friend-fan, a fan-friendly bill, particularly the portion of the bill that expands the Sports Broadcasting Act to college sports.

Um, that-

Okay.

Talk a- t-talk about that then

So there's a whole other Title II to this bill.

It expands the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.

That law was passed to allow the NFL, and I think the NBA, to pool their teams' media rights and collect and bargain for the broadcast of those rights with the networks without violating the antitrust laws.