NFL Warned To 'Be Careful' Amid Ongoing Broadcasting Changes

The NFL is king when it comes to live sports in the United States, but that doesn't mean the league will remain on top forever.

A month ago, Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation to see if the NFL has engaged in "anticompetitive tactics that harm consumers." This investigation was launched due to the league's deals with streaming platforms such as Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube.

"To watch every NFL game during the past season, football fans spent almost $1,000 on cable and streaming subscriptions," Republican Sen. Mike Lee said, via The Wall Street Journal.

During the latest episode of John Ourand's podcast, The Athletic's Andrew Marchand warned the NFL that it's playing a dangerous game with its media rights.

Marchand believes the NFL should continue to prioritize TV networks over streaming platforms at this time.

"I would say that the NFL has to be careful as they go forward, you know, forgetting all the government noise. I just think that the power the NFL has over the networks is important for them long term," Marchand said, via Awful Announcing.

"I think it helps the NFL to be on broadcast. The numbers are still there. You know, maybe eventually Amazon Prime or Netflix or someone can deliver bigger numbers. We have not seen that yet. It takes time to adapt, takes time for people to get used to, but you're still seeing bigger numbers on the networks. And that's something that I think if I'm the NFL, I like that power structure because you go five, ten, 15 years out and you kind of essentially ruin the broadcast networks because you charged them too much or they had to relinquish the NFL because the the streamers were willing to pay more. I just think you're leaving yourself in a little bit of a precarious situation that YouTube, Amazon and whoever else, Netflix, that they're always just going to pay, because they don't necessarily need it. And so they could one day just decide we don't want it. And then where are you."

The NFL doesn't see an issue.

Hans Schroeder, the NFL's executive vice president of media distribution, recently said the league "loves" its current model with networks and streaming platforms.

"We think broadcast [networks] have been an incredible home. And, now, we also know fans are increasingly spending their time on other platforms as well. They tune into broadcast for the NFL and that's where we want to be. But we also want to be on these platforms with a limited amount of our games where we know our NFL fans are already as well," Schroeder said. "When we're going onto Netflix, we're going onto a platform that is already massively adopted and a huge number of viewers on that platform already, including a huge number of NFL fans."

For what it's worth, networks such as ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC televise 87% of the NFL's games.

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This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 1:11 PM.