Less together

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Sports have a power in American life that’s becoming more rare: They bring together people who may agree on almost nothing else. But as more games move behind streaming paywalls, that shared experience is getting harder to access.

Here is WORLD Opinions commentator Daniel Suhr.

DANIEL SUHR: Federal regulators are starting to question whether fans are being priced out of the games they love.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the National Football League over how it sells media rights…

And FCC chairman Brendan Carr is warning leagues not to push too many games behind paywalls.

Here he is in an interview with CNBC:

CARR: There’s been a great partnership between broadcasters and sports leagues. It’s helped grow their fan base. Americans have enjoyed turning on TV and quickly finding their favorite team—usually for free. That experience has become frustrating. People feel like they’re paying more and signing up for multiple streaming services. There’s a tipping point where too many games behind a paywall raises serious questions about that exemption.

That “exemption” matters.

For decades, Congress has allowed leagues like the NFL to pool their media rights—because games were widely available on free, over-the-air television.

But that model is changing.

More games are moving to subscription platforms. And for fans, that means confusion… and rising costs.

A fan of the New York Yankees trying to watch every game this season could need access to as many as eight different networks—costing hundreds of dollars.

NFL fans may face even more fragmentation, with games spread across a growing list of streaming services.

At the same time, fan behavior is changing—and not always for the better.

Fantasy sports started the shift. But the rapid rise of sports betting has taken it much further.

Millions of fans now have money riding on games across the league. They are not just watching their hometown team—they are tracking individual players, point spreads, and outcomes in multiple matchups at once.

That fuels demand for more access … more games … more platforms.

But it also changes the nature of the experience. What used to be a shared civic pastime risks becoming something more transactional—more individualized, and in some cases, more addictive.

All of that demand is colliding with a system built to maximize revenue … not fan access or affordability.

Now regulators are asking whether the balance has tipped too far.

The Justice Department is reviewing whether the NFL’s antitrust exemption—written for an earlier era—still applies when games are sold off to tech platforms.

And the FCC is watching closely, especially because local broadcasters still rely on sports to fund local news.

So here is the tension.

In a free market, leagues and networks should be able to strike their own deals.

But sports have never been just another product.

Teams rely on taxpayer-funded stadiums. And for generations, the games themselves have been part of a shared public experience.

At the close of the Olympics, NBC’s Mike Tirico put it this way:

TIRICO: Our country loves sports—and it brings us together unlike anything else… and if you didn’t know that, you saw it in Team USA hockey winning the gold.

If that shared experience disappears behind a maze of paywalls, fans will not be the only ones who notice.

Congress will.

For WORLD, I’m Daniel Suhr.

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