As fans, leagues, media companies and various branches of the government grapple with an increasingly complicated and frustrating sports TV landscape, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, plans to introduce the “For the Fans” Act that is designed to decrease consumer TV costs and make local games easier to access, while ending blackouts for fans with out-of-market subscriptions.
In an interview with The Athletic, Baldwin said that sports can be a unifying experience for fans, like in her backyard with the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Bucks, but also said that too often these days it is bringing people together for the wrong reason.
“The other thing that has been unifying us recently is absolute frustration about how confusing it is to watch your games and how costly it is to follow your teams and keep up to date with these streaming services and blackouts,” Baldwin said.
With the decrease in cable television subscriptions, leagues have turned to exclusive streaming deals to make up for lost cable revenue and to reflect that is where fans are increasingly headed. However, the transition has made it more expensive, more difficult to keep track of and ultimately more frustrating. The bill is designed to work with the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which gives the NFL certain antitrust exemptions, particularly around media rights, and is viewed as favorable to smaller teams, like the Packers in Baldwin’s home state.
If enacted, the new bill would impact the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLS and NWSL, among other leagues. All nationally televised games involving pro teams from a state would be made available for free statewide, via broadcasting or streaming and on a consistent channel or service. This is similar to the NFL’s policy with TV partners that mandates free local access for fans of participating teams in nationally streamed games, like “Thursday Night Football” airing on Amazon Prime Video.
“It is leveling the playing field for fans,” Baldwin said. “Sports leagues and teams of all sizes will continue to be able to make money from advertising and media rights. We just want to have some basic ground rules to bring down costs for fans.”
Another function of the bill would make it so services, like NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass, MLB.TV and other platforms that offer the majority of games for out-of-market fans would no longer have national blackouts when games appear exclusively on a streaming service requiring an additional fee. For League Pass, as an example, the service, under the bill, would make it so a subscriber would not need Amazon Prime, Peacock or ESPN to watch their team’s games on those networks.
Effectively, the bill would ensure that fans outside their team’s home market who are paying for “complete” out-of-market packages don’t lose access to their team’s games — often some of the best games of the season — that have been cherry-picked to appear exclusively on a streaming service requiring additional payment.
“If you are a super fan and pay for a streaming service, like MLB.TV or NBA League Pass, you can’t be blacked out of a game,” Baldwin said.
This past January, the issue was in the spotlight in Wisconsin. The Chicago Bears faced the Packers in a Saturday playoff game on Amazon Prime Video. By NFL rule, the game has to be offered in its local market on a free outlet, such as a broadcast network. However, this rule only applied to Green Bay and Milwaukee, leaving out Wisconsin’s five other media markets, according to Baldwin.
“For many fans in Wisconsin, the only place to watch the game was on Amazon Prime, so families were forced to pay Jeff Bezos just to watch the game,” Baldwin said. “It’s extremely frustrating to not know how or where to watch the games we love. It’s also damn expensive.”
Under her plan, if the Bucks were on Peacock on a Monday or the Brewers were exclusive to Apple TV on a Friday, it would be available across the whole state without a charge, either on a free, ad-supported streaming service or through an over-the-air broadcast. The streamers producing the game broadcast could sell advertising against it, and their production would be the one airing to fans, but in the state, all of a team’s games would be freely accessible through the same platform.
The bill also accounts for the reality that “local” fandom does not necessarily end at a state border. For example, the Charlotte Hornets and Carolina Hurricanes have meaningful fan bases in South Carolina; the Boston Red Sox have fans all over New England, not just Massachusetts; and the Yankees have fans across the “tri-state” area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The bill would have the FCC weigh in on the parameters of “local” to realistically serve all regional fans who care about the team.
As for the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 — which has drawn scrutiny from interest groups, particularly rooted in college football — Baldwin is a proponent of keeping it, as in her view it is better for a market, like Green Bay, for the NFL to negotiate on all teams’ behalf.
“I want to see the status quo remain,” Baldwin said about the 65-year-old law.
