YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon team up to charm Capitol Hill over sports rights

Brace yourself: YouTube and Netflix are working together.

Mom and Dad have temporarily set aside their content creator custody battle to unite as founding members of Streaming Access and Choice Alliance (SACA). They’re joined by fellow streamer/tech giant Amazon as well as TechNet, which describes itself as a “national, bipartisan network of tech CEOs & senior executives that promotes American innovation.”

SACA is a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group that says its focus is “promot[ing] high-quality and high-value entertainment experiences for consumers.”

What that really means is it’ll chat up Capitol Hill and try to convince U.S. lawmakers that streaming services have the right to sign exclusive air deals with major sports leagues.

As you may know, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and other streamers have signed increasingly larger deals to distribute live sports content. Among the biggest are YouTube’s seven-year lockdown of NFL Sunday Ticket, Netflix’s $5 billion deal for 10 years of WWE Raw, and Amazon’s 11-year NBA agreement.

Each streamer has also signed smaller exclusive streaming deals for individual matches or handfuls of games, and they’re all planning to put in for World Cup 2030 and 2034 streaming rights.

As these streaming sports deals have gotten larger, they’ve also come under more intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators.

In April, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) introduced a bill “to stop professional sports leagues from blacking out games for fans, end the complicated web of streaming services and cut costs for viewers across the country.”

The bill’s ultimate goal: mandating that leagues provide local fans with free access to all of their teams’ games in one single location, on streaming or on a traditional TV network.

In her supporting evidence, Baldwin said her Wisconsin constituents would need to shell out over $1,500, spread across multiple channels and streaming services, to watch all Packers, Brewers, and Bucks games in a single season.

“The bill comes after the Packers’ playoff game in January against the Bears was solely available on Amazon Prime for five of Wisconsin’s seven media markets,” Baldwin’s office said in a statement

. “This bill also comes as more than 400,000 Green Bay Packers fans in 13 Wisconsin counties are assigned to an out-of-state local TV market, which means these Wisconsin households could get Minnesota Vikings or Detroit Lions games, not Packers games, when those teams are playing at the same time.”

Two months later, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee began probing the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which makes sports leagues exempt from antitrust laws when selling media rights.

The committee’s report said that the current state of sports streaming rights is “a special-interest antitrust exemption gone awry.”

SACA, of course, believes no such thing.

“Americans want more content choices and flexibility in how and where they watch their favorite programming, including sports and other live events,” Mike Ward, TechNet’s Senior VP of Federal Policy and Government Relations, said in a statement.

“Streaming and digital entertainment companies offer audiences better features and value for their money,” he added. “The industry and its customers deserve a dedicated voice in Washington, D.C., advocating for policies that enable innovation and address the needs of today’s consumers.”

This quandary goes beyond sports rights. Streaming services that once seemed like the promised land for cord-cutters are now collectively more expensive than cable, with rights to movies and TV shows constantly changing hands (when’s the last time you logged on to Netflix, or Peacock, or Paramount+, or Disney+, or HBO Max, and didn’t see a “Leaving soon” label on at least one title?).

The end result is that the vast majority of consumers are paying for at least one streaming service a month, with many paying for three or more. This is annoying but not catastrophic for things like movies and TV shows, which are licensed in their entirety to once service. For live sports, though? Baldwin makes a good point. Sports fans are famously dedicated, and that dedication now comes at a steep price with streamers securing more and more exclusive deals.