STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Justice Department is investigating the National Football League, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Justice Department is trying to determine if the NFL's deals with streaming services are leading fans to pay too much to watch pro football on TV. Jessica Toonkel is one of the reporters who broke the story for the Journal, and she's with us. Good morning.
JESSICA TOONKEL: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. So I don't know if you're a big NFL viewer, but I think there may be something to the complaint here. It is sometimes - you got to fish around a little bit. You can find a pro football game nearly always, but you got to fish around a little bit to find it.
TOONKEL: Yeah. It's really confusing. You should see my inbox after we broke our story.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
TOONKEL: I have readers all over the place saying, we should get them. Like, we can't find our games. The most educated people in the world can't find our games. It's very confusing to figure out where your favorite teams are playing these days.
INSKEEP: And let's just explain this for people who are not pro football viewers. Used to be it was just always on your local station unless the stadium wasn't full locally - the local game. You could get some national games on different stations. Now it's broken up among streaming services. But what exactly would be wrong with that? Why would that be possibly illegal?
TOONKEL: Well, so what the issue is is it goes back to this law from 1961 called the Sports Broadcasting Act. So as you pointed out, back in 1961, you would turn on your television and you could just watch football on a broadcast station. But as time has gone and the NFL has sold more and more of their games in smaller packages, you have companies like Amazon and Peacock and YouTube TV and all these new players that are buying these games and licensing them. So what's happening here is in 1961, the NFL was given immunity to say, OK, all the teams can negotiate for the media rights together.
INSKEEP: Ah.
TOONKEL: What - but now some members of Congress, and now the DOJ is asking, well, maybe they shouldn't have that immunity because this isn't the same marketplace anymore.
INSKEEP: When you say immunity, what you're saying is the NFL gets to act like a monopoly, and they're now accused of...
TOONKEL: They have limited antitrust protections, yes...
INSKEEP: Got it.
TOONKEL: ...Under that act.
INSKEEP: And now it seems they're accused of taking too much advantage of that monopoly power.
TOONKEL: Exactly. And again, like, it's a very different market than it was when you just had three broadcast stations that everyone watched.
INSKEEP: This has been evolving for a number of years, though. Why would the lawsuit be happening now?
TOONKEL: So this is coming to a head now because the NFL has indicated that it wants to open up some of its - all of its deals with its networks. Right now, under the current deals, the league can opt out of their deals after the '29, '30 football season. And what they're saying is, hey, networks. What if we renegotiate now? You pay more now, and we'll take that opt-out clause out. But that could mean - that will definitely mean that all of these media partners would have to pay more for those rights. And you know where that comes from. Comes from consumers' pockets.
INSKEEP: Ah. So the networks are unhappy, and that's why the Justice Department is acting here?
TOONKEL: I think it's a mix of the networks being unhappy. I think it's also a mix of where we started this conversation. A lot of consumers are complaining about how confusing it is and how expensive it is, and members of Congress are weighing in.
INSKEEP: How does the NFL defend itself?
TOONKEL: You know, the NFL makes the point that first of all, for every game that is local, those two teams - the fans of those two teams can still watch it on local broadcasts. They do make it available there. And 87% of its games are available on local TV.
INSKEEP: Jessica Toonkel of The Wall Street Journal, thanks for the reporting. Really appreciate it.
TOONKEL: Thank you so much.
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