The Department of Justice opened an investigation into the NFL last month over whether its media distribution practices violate antitrust law, essentially asking whether the league has been systematically pushing games behind streaming paywalls at the expense of fans who can\u2019t afford them. It\u2019s a legitimate and important question for America\u2019s most-watched sport.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Sharyl Attkisson posed the question to President Donald Trump on Full Measure \u2014 and Trump \u2014 never one to let a coherent answer get in the way of a good tangent, responded by ranting about the kickoff rule<\/a> (again!<\/a>) and claiming fans are paying $1,000 a game to watch football on streaming.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cThey have that stupid kickoff thing that you can\u2019t watch,\u201d Trump said. \u201cIt\u2019s unwatchable. I hate the games where they have the new phony kickoff. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s any safer. I hope college football doesn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n He eventually found his way back to the actual question.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something very sad when they take football away from many, many people, he continued. \u201cVery sad. I don\u2019t like it\u2026 They\u2019re making a lot of money. They could make a little bit less. They could let the people see. You have people that live for Sunday. They live. They can\u2019t think about anything else, and then all of a sudden they\u2019re gonna have to pay $1,000 a game. It\u2019s crazy, so I\u2019m not happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Senator Mike Lee has cited research<\/a>\u00a0showing fans spent close to $1,000 on cable and streaming subscriptions to watch every game last season, meaning the full 272-game regular season slate plus playoffs, not a single game. Trump appears to have heard \u201ca thousand dollars\u201d and stopped listening.<\/p>\n It\u2019s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?<\/p>\n The actual DOJ investigation<\/a> is a real and significant story, even if Trump\u2019s grasp of it is loose. The investigation centers on whether the NFL\u2019s antitrust exemption under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 applies to games sold exclusively to streaming services. FCC chairman Brendan Carr has been making this argument for months<\/a>, arguing the NFL may have already tipped the scales by putting too many games behind a paywall. The NFL requested a meeting with the FCC<\/a> to defend its practices and has been loudly pointing out that 87% of games last season aired on free over-the-air broadcast television. The 2026 schedule will reportedly include a slight increase in broadcast exposure<\/a> as the league tries to get ahead of the scrutiny.<\/p>\n As Matt Yoder wrote<\/a> this week, the Trump administration\u2019s interest in this investigation has less to do with protecting football fans and more to do with protecting Rupert Murdoch\u2019s bottom line<\/a>. Trump\u2019s interest here seems to stem from the belief that somewhere out there, a family is taking out a second mortgage to watch Jaguars-Titans on Peacock.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The post Donald Trump claims NFL fans are paying \u2018$1,000 a game\u2019 to watch football<\/a> appeared first on Awful Announcing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Justice opened an investigation into the NFL last month over whether its media distribution practices…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,1376,1112,514,82,244270],"class_list":["post-660599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-game","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-the-department-of-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}