GAINESVILLE, VA. — On Super Bowl Sunday, February 8, a real estate agent in this Prince William County, Va., community couldn’t figure out how to tune to WRC-4 in Washington, D.C., the market’s NBC station, on her living room television. Despite numerous attempts by her and guests gathered to watch the Seattle Seahawks take on the New England Patriots, accessing the NBCUniversal station couldn’t be had. With no other choice, a paid month-long access fee to the NBCU Peacock app was acquired, delivering access to one of the world’s biggest sporting events of the year.
Does this benefit or harm consumers? How may this facilitate or inhibit the ability of local broadcast TV stations to meet their public interest obligations — a key tenet of the Carr Commission? The FCC’s Media Bureau wants to know.
Introducing MB Docket No. 26-45, which sees the Bureau led by Acting Chief Erin Boone open a comment window so interested parties can offer comments on sports broadcasting practices and marketplace developments.
- Comments Due: March 27, 2026
- Reply Comments Due: April 13, 2026
The Commission’s look into the current sports media marketplace, particularly to video programming rather than audio programming, could have very positive consequences on local broadcast TV.
In recent years, companies including The E.W. Scripps Co. and Gray Media have benefited from the collapse of the regional sports network (RSN) model, acquiring the play-by-play rights to a variety of professional sports franchises and semi-pro leagues. In the case of Scripps, its ION Network is the broadcast home of the WNBA.
At the same time, big-ticket sports have increasingly fallen behind a paywall, with the National Football League and Major League Baseball reaching agreements with the likes of Amazon’s Prime Video, Netflix and Apple TV.
As the Media Bureau states in its public notice for MB Docket No. 26-45, “Many games are still available for free over broadcast TV, but there has been a surge in recent years of games going behind the paywalls of various streaming services. While this can increase the number of games and sports available to fans, many consumers today find it more difficult to find the events they want to watch and are now paying to sign up for one or more video distribution platforms that consumers can find difficult to navigate.”
From a historic perspective, the Bureau adds, live sports and broadcast television have enjoyed a long and mutually beneficial relationship—one that worked well for consumers too. Sports leagues leveraged the wide distribution of broadcast TV to help grow their fan base and expand their revenues. In turn, broadcast television stations used the popularity of live sports and the advertising revenues from the programming to support their own industry and operations, including funding the local news and reporting that are so important to our country. “It is against this backdrop that the Media Bureau issues this Public Notice today,” it says.
A broad range of questions are asked by the Media Bureau, including:
- With respect to the sports media marketplace, how have recent developments in the marketplace affected the ability of broadcasters to obtain media rights to sports programming?
- How have changes in the marketplace affected viewers’ ability to watch nationally televised live sports, as well as their local team(s), on broadcast TV?
- What type of rights (e.g. exclusive, simulcast, replay) are included in agreements between leagues or conferences and national video programming distributors?
- How prevalent are sports media rights deals between local TV broadcasters and local sports teams and what are their terms and conditions?
- How have changes in the marketplace impacted costs to consumers?
“Given the nexus between sports programming and the local media marketplace—as well as the FCC’s ongoing work to support local news and reporting—we believe it is important for us to evaluate the sports media landscape and understand how changes have impacted consumers and broadcasters,” the Bureau explains.
How the Commission moves forward could very much lead many to question its authority in governing sports rights agreements. Does the FCC have the right to tell the NFL that it cannot enter into exclusivity agreements with Netflix — even as league rules require that a broadcast station in each team’s DMA carry the game via a third-party arrangement?
The Carr Commission could be thinking so, given the commentary in the Public Notice. “In 2025, NFL games aired on 10 different services, which, according to some estimates, could cost a consumer over $1,500 to watch all games. In addition, 20 NFL regular season games and one playoff game were nationally distributed, exclusively, on four different streaming services—Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Peacock, and Netflix. While the NFL requires streamers to syndicate/simulcast games over TV broadcast stations in the local markets of the competing teams, this is a private contractual arrangement between the NFL and its distributors. Do any other professional or collegiate sports also have such a requirement?”
The Bureau also wonders if there are there relevant differences between games being distributed on linear streamlining services versus other streaming platforms, and if there are there any SBA implications associated with games distributed through non-broadcast channels?
“Given the nexus between sports programming and the local media marketplace—as well as the FCC’s ongoing work to support local news and reporting—we believe it is important for us to evaluate the sports media landscape and understand how changes have impacted consumers and broadcasters,” the Public Notice reads.
LEGEYT PRAISES CARR FOR MEDIA BUREAU ACTION
The President/CEO of the NAB wasted no time in offering his thanks to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr himself for the Media Bureau’s sports broadcasting docket, singling out his leadership “in examining the rapid changes in the sports broadcasting marketplace and what they mean for American viewers and local communities.”
Curtis LeGeyt noted that consumer access to premier games through free, over-the-air television has long been a cornerstone of the American sports fan experience. “As distribution becomes more fragmented across streaming services and paywalls, fans face higher costs and greater confusion just to follow the teams they care about,” he said. “Local broadcasters provide the widest reach for live events, bringing fans together to celebrate their favorite teams.”
As the Commission evaluates these marketplace trends, LeGeyt and the NAB believe it is important to ensure that local stations have a fair opportunity to compete for premium sports rights. “That includes modernizing outdated ownership restrictions that limit broadcasters’ ability to achieve the scale necessary to compete in today’s media marketplace,” LeGeyt said. “We look forward to participating in this proceeding and providing real-world insight into how disruption in the media landscape is affecting viewers and local stations.”
The timing of the Media Bureau docket comes just weeks after U.S. Senators debated the exclusivity of sports behind a paywall as part of a bigger discussion of the local TV marketplace and if the 39% national ownership reach cap should be lifted or removed altogether.
Read the entire Public Notice on MB No. 26-45 by clicking here.
