Why the Packers are ready for a fight with Congress over 65-year-old law

The Green Bay Packers took as political a stance as we've seen against U.S. Rep Scott Fitzgerald in a fight with Congress over the NFL's media rights deal.

The Green Bay Packers have 432.6 million reasons to be worried about the future of sharing TV rights deals. That’s how much money they got a year ago from television rights, thanks to the NFL’s revenue-sharing structure. To hear the Packers tell it, that is money they need to remain solvent as a business, particularly in the smallest television market in American sports.

If, for example, they had to negotiate a regional sports contract, like the Milwaukee Bucks or Brewers, they would not stand to make that sort of money off of 17 games.

But that’s also the point being made by U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, who is on a judiciary subcommittee investigating whether the 1961 law granting the NFL unique bargaining rights over its television product remains relevant today.

At the time, Congress allowed the NFL and other sports leagues to leverage their popularity to negotiate over-air rights deals without falling afoul of antitrust laws. They would then be allowed to share that revenue amongst their member teams.

Now, though, some, including Rep. Fitzgerald, believe the NFL is no longer compliant with the law that, at the time, only covered over-the-air broadcasts. Chord cutting and premium streaming services were, in the view of some lawmakers, never supposed to be a part of the deal.

“This law absolutely deserves a serious reexamination. It was written for a media landscape that no longer exists,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D - NY) said in his opening remarks to the subcommittee.

“American sports fans are paying more, getting less, and navigating a fragmented streaming environment that the 1961 Congress could not possibly have anticipated.”

Packers fans, for example, will need CBS, NBC, and Fox, as they have for years, to watch their team this season, but they will also need Amazon to watch Thursday night games, except in local markets. They’ll need Netflix to watch Packers-Rams and Packers-Bears.

NFL teams will tell you that in order to continue revenue sharing at scale, they have to explore these premium streaming markets, that preventing them from doing so would pose a risk to small-market teams like the Packers, who rely on the 32-team revenue sharing deals to survive.