Policyband

Would Anyone Dare Call It Bay of Pigskin?

JFK’s embrace of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, an NFL-friendly antitrust law, is coming back to haunt the New Frontier in the age of Netflix, YouTube TV, and Amazon Prime Video

Ted Hearn

Mar 4, 2026 — 9 min read

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NFL: Would anyone dare call it Bay of Pigskin? JFK’s endorsement of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, an NFL-friendly antitrust law, is coming back to haunt the New Frontier in the age of Netflix, Peacock, and Amazon Prime Video. A week after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr launched a review of the costly fragmentation of marquee sports programming as a serious consumer annoyance, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) urged the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to study the same issue from an antitrust perspective. “In 1961, Congress enacted the Sports Broadcasting Act, granting limited antitrust immunity to allow professional football teams to collectively license the ‘sponsored telecasts’ of their games to national broadcast networks,” Lee said in a letter Monday to Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Omeed Assefi and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson. (More after paywall)