The National Football League is going on offense as regulators from the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission are scrutinizing the company’s practices and media rights strategy and how sports’ shift to streaming is impacting consumers.
NFL executives Ted Ullyot, Hans Schroeder and Jeff Miller met with FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s chief of staff Greg Watson and attorney advisor Allison Howell, as well as the FCC Media Bureau’s Deputy Bureau Chief Evan Morris on April 17 to discuss its distribution approach for its live games and how it benefits fans and local broadcasters.
“Since its founding, the NFL has strived to put its fans at the center of everything we do. Nowhere is that more evident than in the NFL’s media distribution strategy, which for more than 50 years has served as a foundation and catalyst for the League’s growth and popularity,” the league wrote in a Tuesday letter. “While nothing can replace the excitement of attending a game, the vast majority of fans rely on this media distribution model to watch live games and follow the sport they love.”
The league noted that it has relied on free, over-the-air broadcast television as the primary means of distributing its games to over 200 million fans in the U.S.
“For many years, 100% of NFL games have aired on broadcast television in the home markets of the competing teams. Most of those games are distributed to a significantly broader geographic area, if not nationally,” the letter continues. “Ourcontracts with ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC account for the distribution of more than 87% of all NFL games, a number that has varied little in the past two decades. This distribution model is good for our fans, for local television broadcasters, for our 32 clubs in small and large markets alike, and for the competitiveness of the game itself. The success of our fan- and broadcast-friendly strategy is evident as the 2025 season was the most viewed since 1989 and one of the most competitive in League history.”
It argued that having 32 teams negotiate their own rights deals individually would result in more viewer confusion and higher costs.
In addition to the letter, the NFL shared a presentation with the FCC detailing how traditional TV consumption has fallen from 77% in 2015 to 47% in 2025, while streaming consumption has climbed from 23% to 53% over the same period.
During that time, the number of pay TV households has fallen from 99 million to 65 million, per the presentation. Despite these trends, it noted that 86 of the top 100 TV programs in 2025 were NFL games.
According to the presentation, Amazon’s Thursday Night Football saw a 16% year over year ratings increase to 15.4 million average viewers in 2025. It notes that Prime Video has roughly 180 million subscribers. Meanwhile, CBS’ Sunday package grew 11% to 21.3 million average viewers, Fox’s Sunday package grew 6% to 19.6 million viewers, NBC’s Sunday Night Football grew 11% to 23.5 million viewers, ESPN’s Monday Night Football grew 13% to 16.5 million viewers and the NFL Network grew o.1% to 7.6 million viewers.
It also notes that Netflix has roughly 85 million subscribers in the U.S., while YouTube has roughly 255 million monthly active users in the U.S. Netflix’s NFL games averaged 23.7 million U.S. viewers in 2025, while YouTube’s averaged 18.5 million U.S. viewers.
The meeting comes as final replies for the FCC’s public comment period were due April 13.
The agency said that NFL games aired on 10 different services in 2025, which could cost a consumer over $1,500 to watch everything. It added that 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.
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