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Pak Gazette contributor and OutKick founder Clay Travis unleashed on the National Football League in a candid testimony about the cost of watching games from home.
During his testimony, Travis “defendant[d] for the reasonable fan” in an effort to put an end to what he called illegal “pay-per-view.”
“Every day, sports fans are scammed out of the opportunity to watch their favorite teams. Fans now pay a lot more money each year for something that by law in 1961 you all guaranteed should be free,” Travis began.
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NFL fans walk outside the Super Bowl Experience at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, on February 6, 2026. (Ronald MartÃnez/Getty Images)
“Most of your constituents are frustrated. They don’t know how to find games and they have to pay too much when they get a chance to watch them. I don’t know how many of you remember those days when you could have a remote control in your hand and easily switch to any different game… They just want to be able to watch their favorite team and not have to fight to do it.”
“You have an important responsibility and opportunity to apply the law fairly and freely, and help fans across the country pay less and get more.”
Travis then said the NFL is “clearly… violating the clear intent of the law.”
Netflix and NFL signs advertise the two major Christmas Day NFL games broadcast live on Netflix in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 1, 2024. (Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images)
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“It was designed to ensure that fans have free access to games. Anything that fans have to pay for, outside of broadcast television, is arguably outside the scope of that 1961 exemption,” Travis said.
In March, the Senate Judiciary Committee requested a review of the law. Congress passed the law to allow leagues to bundle their media rights and sell them nationally, a move that helped make NFL games a staple of free network television. Today, those same collective rights agreements are increasingly splintered across streaming platforms, prompting backlash from fans frustrated by paywalls and platform hopping.
If one strictly transmitted all NFL games throughout the 2025 season on Sunday Ticket, Netflix, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, ESPN Unlimited and NFL+, it would have cost a minimum of $575, and others (previous Sunday Ticket watchers) nearly $800.
Sports leagues have capitalized on the shift to streaming, with the NFL getting $1 billion a year to stream “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon as an example. The Sports Broadcasting Act exemption passed in 1961 applies only to television broadcasts.
The NFL logo is painted on the field at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, before Super Bowl LX between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks on February 8, 2026. (Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)
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Courts have ruled in the past that it does not apply to other media, including cable, satellite and streaming. The Sports Broadcasting Act includes a rule allowing blackouts of home games, which still applies to out-of-market packages sold by leagues.
