Hey NFL: You can't pawn off outrage over streaming madness as background noise anymore

The backlash is bigger than Goodell will admit. But former stars are speaking out.

Watching NFL games used to require one thing: finding the right channel in the right region.

Now, depending on the week, team, or popular “importance” of the game, it may require remembering who bought the rights to kickoff. And then paying them for access.

The NFL insists its patchwork of partners and streaming exclusives is the most fan-friendly model in sports. They’re pretty much the only ones who feel that way, as anyone who uses social media knows. The unrest is getting louder by the day. And why not? The idea that you have to subscribe to 75 different add-on services to see a continuous season of this single product is nuts. Especially considering it’s a product shored up with public money and that relies on public support, even from non-fans.

See it’s not just subscription fatigue at play, this is genuine outrage. I mean, if you’re an NFL fan who happens to be conservative, you’ve already felt a thousand times that the league doesn’t respect you and takes advantage of you. But even if you’re not conservative, if you’re not political at all, it doesn’t matter anymore. People don’t like being taken for a ride. And the NFL’s TV/Streaming/Blackouts/Subscription schemes feel like they’re straight out of a spam email: designed just to rip you off.

It’s not just crazed fans or right wing X posts saying so. Politicians feel the way the wind is blowing and some have even introduced legislation. A Democrat, mind you.

Oh, and actual football legends, too.

“I don’t like it,” Hall of Famer Dwight Freeney joining the chorus last week in a Fox News interview. "To be honest with you, I think it should be accessible to all fans, no matter what your economic bracket is,” he said.

Freeney’s comments echo a common frustration and complaint as we all juggle broadcast networks, cable channels, Peacock, Prime Video, Netflix, NFL Network, Paramount+, ESPN, and all the other services and upcoming exclusive providers just to follow a single team for a single season.

And yes, Trump has weighed in too, okay? It happens. He made a similar point earlier this year during an interview with The National Desk, calling it “sad” that football is increasingly being priced out of reach and suggesting the league’s strategy basically amounts to price gouging. But his agreement shouldn’t deter anyone from their objections because this goes way beyond the weekly White House outrages.

Sen. Mike Lee, also a Republican of course, has argued that fans can spend hundreds of dollars or more to follow a season. Those concerns helped prompt a Justice Department antitrust investigation into the league’s broadcast practices, congressional hearings examining whether the NFL is still honoring the public-interest bargain behind its antitrust exemption, and most recently, a sharply critical report from the House Judiciary Committee.

That report, by the way, argues the league has drifted well beyond the narrow purpose Congress envisioned when it passed the Sports Broadcasting Act in 1961, granting the NFL unique antitrust protections in exchange for making games broadly available to the public.

Among the more striking findings are allegations the league actively resisted lower-cost options for fans that were on the table. ESPN allegedly proposed offering NFL Sunday Ticket for roughly $70 per season, while other proposals would have allowed fans to purchase access to only their favorite team’s out-of-market games instead of an expensive league-wide package.

!!!!!! Yeah. Read that again. Imagine getting the chance to buy just the out of market games for the Carolina Panthers and Buffalo Bills? (Hey that’s who WE watch anyway.)

The report is that the NFL rejected such reasonable and fan-friendly pitches in favor of their big expensive mess. It’s all in court now, so whether the allegations have any teeth remains to be seen. But still.

It’s not just Republicans, Democrats, too, question whether the NFL is satisfying the public obligations that justified government protections. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has introduced legislation aimed at addressing sports blackouts and the burden these exclusive streaming contracts represent for fans.

Yet through all of the backlash, the NFL has maintained that its strategy benefits viewers by making games available across more platforms than ever before. Commissioner Roger Goodell declined an invitation to testify before Congress on the issue, leaving the league’s public defense basically unchanged.

Goodell doesn’t seem to get that this isn’t just another political or culture war fight for a league that has faced many over the last 20 years. And he and the league think playing the Trump game makes them immune. Time and again, they play act at being the adults in the room refusing to bend against criticism from the right — all while continue to kowtow to the left.

That ain’t gonna work this time. This time, it’s not about players protesting the flag or DEI or raunchy halftime shows or political ads or any other cultural flashpoint. This time it’s about regular people who watch a sport wanting to, well, WATCH THAT SPORT.

Football legend Michael Irvin is among those hinting at an even worse future for fans as the NFL plows ahead. Speaking with On3, Irvin predicted that once the NFL’s current media rights agreements expire, the league could eventually award exclusive Super Bowl rights to a streaming platform such as Netflix, potentially ending the era of the championship game airing on traditional television altogether.

“They’re going to open that up for bids. And I guarantee you where the bids go, when the streaming service, it’s going to be … I don’t know if it’ll ever be on regular TV again, to be honest with you, because ABC can’t capitalize fully. They can get it in the region or the area. CBS can’t capitalize,” he said.

Um. Yikes.

Maybe that won’t happen. But you think it might, don’t you? Me too. And that’s a damning realization.

When millions of fans, former players and stars, sports writers and reporters, a sitting president, a Senate antitrust chairman, a progressive Democrat from a small-market football state all say the same thing about a $20 billion business with a federal antitrust carve-out, the league claiming it has nothing to fix isn’t confidence. It’s the same habit that’s gotten the NFL into trouble with the White House for years: assuming fans, and the law, will just adjust to whatever the league decides is best. It’s a bad call and poorly designed play.