A House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee has invited NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to testify before Congress, as lawmakers and the Justice Department scrutinise how major sports leagues sell their broadcasts. The voluntary invitation is for a hearing the panel is putting together for next week.
The subcommittee is chaired by Congressman Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, who said he and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan had discussed the matter at length. They concluded that the NFL commissioner was the one person who could answer many of their questions directly.
At the centre of the inquiry is the Sports Broadcasting Act, a law passed in 1961. The committee, together with the Department of Justice, which launched its own investigation over the winter, is examining the antitrust provisions the act created and how the leagues operate under them.
According to Fitzgerald, the NFL appears to have benefited the most of all the major league sports organisations from the act, and to have pushed the envelope on it. Other leagues that fall under the same provisions, including Major League Baseball and the NHL, are also part of what the committee and the Justice Department are looking into.
The law has its roots in the early 1960s. When teams from the National Football League and the American Football League were brought together, they sought a strategy that would let them grow and compete in the open market by selling their product to be broadcast collectively, with the revenue expected to come from advertising tied to televised games.
Fitzgerald said the arrangement gave the leagues a stable footing in their negotiations and allowed them to keep growing. He noted that the NFL captured around 5 million dollars in broadcast revenue in its first season in 1961, a figure that has since grown to about 10 billion dollars.