Legislative Update July 2026

How many streaming services do you subscribe to right now to ensure that you can show all of the Packer games this upcoming season?

Four, five…more?

And how much is that costing you each month?

We all remember the good ol’ days when NFC games were on Fox, AFC games were on CBS or NBC, Monday Night Football was on ABC, and all you needed to watch was an antenna on the roof.

But time marches on, technology changes, and now we have to navigate a web of subscription-based streaming products to watch the vast majority of NFL games.

Due to the increasing frustration of consumers (fans and business owners alike), the United States Congress has taken an interest in reviewing the law that governs professional sports leagues’ broadcasting rights.

The Sports Broadcasting Act, signed into law in 1961, gave sports leagues an antitrust exemption that allowed them to negotiate broadcasting rights with the major TV networks, rather than leaving it up to each individual team within the league to fend for itself. The leagues would then decide internally how to divide up the broadcasting revenue to the individual franchises.

Wisconsin’s own Congressman Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and chairs a subcommittee that deals with antitrust issues, among other topics. Fitzgerald recently convened a hearing and invited stakeholders from professional sports, media, and elsewhere to comment on the efficacy of the Sports Broadcasting Act and whether or not updates need to be made to increase access and affordability for consumers.

In an interview in early June, Fitzgerald stated that the goal of holding the hearing was not to explore repealing the Sports Broadcasting Act, but rather investigate areas where the sixty-five year old law could be “tweaked” to better reflect modern mass media marketplace realities.

The Packers have pushed back strongly on Fitzgerald and the subcommittee’s actions, claiming that any changes to the Sports Broadcasting Act would create an “existential threat” to the franchise. Their rationale is straightforward – Green Bay is the NFL’s smallest media market, so the Packers would have significantly less leverage than the other thirty-one NFL teams if they had to suddenly start negotiating their own broadcasting deals.

Fitzgerald dismissed the Packers’ concerns as “hair on fire,” and noted that the “Department of Justice, the FCC, and the Ninth Circuit are all examining related issues.”

A bit of an ugly back-and-forth between Fitzgerald and Packers ensued, with the NFL also weighing in support of preserving the Sports Broadcasting Act in its current form.

As of today, it is unclear where this debate is headed, and it is not known if the House Judiciary Committee will push the matter any further. HWZ is monitoring the situation closely, and we are cognizant of the sensitivity of this topic. TLW and many TLW members maintain excellent relationships with the Green Bay Packers, but TLW members are also on the hook for ever-increasing costs in order to provide the sports content that their customers want.

We hope a resolution can be found that all stakeholders can live with.