Earlier this week, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Commissioner of the National Football League asking him to offer testimony at a June 10 hearing which seeks to examine the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 and its effect on the modern broadcast market for major sports leagues.
Roger Goodell will not be there, and has said no to committee head Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Why? NFL General Counsel Ted Ullyot told Jordan in a letter sent to him Wednesday (6/3) that Goodell would not be present on Capitol Hill “due to ongoing litigation related to the topic of the hearing.”
In the letter to Jordan, Ullyot said 87% of all NFL games during the upcoming 2026 season will be accessible via free-to-air broadcast television. He also noted that even in cases where Amazon Prime Video, Peacock or Netflix carry the national distribution rights to certain games, the game can be seen on a broadcast TV station in the home DMA for each competing team.
That was the case in the 2025 NFL season. However, a team’s home fan base may extend beyond the home DMA. For instance, the Miami Dolphins’ fan base goes far to the north of Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Key West, and for those in Boca Raton and points north, access to a Dolphins game can’t be had without driving south into Broward County and visiting a sports bar.
Ullyot, in his letter to Jordan, even noted that any increase in the amount of games appearing exclusively on a streaming platform is concurrent to a small drop in games airing on cable television.
That said, the NAB has been very clear that MVPDs and walled “SVOD” gardens are not alike, as broadcast and cable TV stations can appear side-by-side on a cable TV service lineup. For the Netflix subscriber, access is limited solely to Netflix programming for the monthly fee one pays, and that’s a sore subject for the organization led by Curtis LeGeyt and his Chief Legal Officer, Rick Kaplan.
Given the NFL’s stance, the richest pro sports league in the nation when it comes to advertising revenue and broadcast ratings could be rankling the NAB. As Ullyot further states in the letter to Jordan, “The NFL’s decision to license a few more games to widely adopted streaming services is simply a reflection that those platforms now offer significantly more reach than the current pay TV ecosystem and that broadcast television remains the foundation of our media distribution.”
Meanwhile, ESPN reports that the NFL also sent a letter to Rep. Jordan signed by 21 of his colleagues in Congress suggesting the Judiciary Committee Chairman tread carefully when considering any amendments to current broadcast media regulations.
“If the league were not to handle media distribution as it has since the passage of the SBA,” the NFL’s legal chief wrote, “the result would be to harm NFL fans through increased cost and confusion and the undermining of the competitive balance that makes NFL games so exciting.”
