[Editor’s Note: As is noted in the biography of all of his stories, Pat Kreitlow served in the Wisconsin Legislature. During his term in the Senate, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald was Senate Republican Leader before he was later elected to Congress.]
US Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) has been a reliable carrier of corporate America’s message that mergers benefit consumers and federal oversight should be minimal. However, even some fellow Republicans are uncomfortable with his latest assault on a federal business regulation, one that could come with a crippling price tag to the National Football League team in its smallest market, the Green Bay Packers.
On Wednesday, Fitzgerald presided over a House subcommittee meeting with a seemingly popular central topic: Are consumers being hurt when the NFL moves games from free broadcast TV networks to paid streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime? But reopening the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 also has the potential to undo a funding system that for generations has ensured the Packers get an equal piece of the pie when it comes to the league’s broadcasting revenue.
The law provides antitrust immunity to the NFL so that it can negotiate collectively with companies that want to televise games. The league then splits the TV money evenly among all of its teams, whatever their market size. The Packers received $432 million for their 2024-25 fiscal year.
Without the legal shield, each team would have to negotiate its own broadcast deals which, as seen in baseball, can result in local contracts with massive disparities that range from an estimated $33 million for the Milwaukee Brewers (in Major League Baseball’s smallest market) in 2025 to a figure ten times that size for the Los Angeles Dodgers, $334 million.
“I don’t know why a subcommittee chairman who represents the people of Wisconsin would be interested in doing harm to the Sports Broadcasting Act. But that’s where we are,” said Jeff Miller, a Wisconsin native and NFL executive vice president of public affairs, to CBS 58 in Milwaukee.
The potential to undo the current revenue sharing arrangement has been noticed by Fitzgerald’s colleagues of both parties, including Republican Rep. Tony Wied of Green Bay, who joined 20 other members of Congress in sending a letter to Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asking for protection of “the robust revenue sharing [that] is the foundation of competitive balance in the NFL.”
Make games ‘for the fans’
Whatever the ramifications for his state’s beloved Green and Gold, Fitzgerald is keeping his focus on potentially breaking up federal oversight because of the moves from broadcast TV to streaming services.
“Sixty five years later,” Fitzgerald said, “it is fair for this body to ask whether the professional sports leagues have kept up their end of the bargain. In my opinion, they have not, and sports fans are paying the price because of it.”
Sports fans have been increasingly angered at the move toward subscription services. The league argues that games are still available on TV outlets in their home markets, but Packer fans live well beyond the Green Bay and Milwaukee broadcast boundaries.
Read: Packers legend Vince Lombardi was the original “DEI” defender
Rather than remove the revenue sharing made possible by the antitrust exemption, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin has proposed a law called the For the Fans Act that would expand the definition to include an entire state, like Wisconsin. Her bill would also force leagues to make games available on their streaming services instead of blacking them out and forcing fans to the paid subscription platforms.
Fitzgerald fights consumer oversight
While Fitzgerald has found a popular cause in challenging streaming platforms, it belies his core philosophy of letting corporations decide what is best in the marketplace and resisting federal protections for consumers and employees.
For example, Fitzgerald favors the media mergers that could impact Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Netflix, and others, writing in a January Wall Street Journal column he considers it a faulty premise that consolidation would cause harm to consumers because a marketplace packed with competitors is too confusing and mergers simplify consumer choices.
“That’s why consolidation is good,” Fitzgerald wrote. “When streaming services like Netflix and Warner’s HBO Max combine, they pool their content libraries, eliminate redundant expenses, and create a more stable business model that benefits viewers and consumers alike.”
Fitzgerald has been at the forefront of removing oversight from the financial services industry. He authored a bill that would remove federal review of bank mergers below a predetermined amount, such as $10 billion. Critics say that will only lead to creative multi-pronged mergers to stay under the threshold while removing a review of whether the merger would reduce competition and customer service.
Another bill would speed up the timeline or eliminate a competitive analysis of bank mergers by the US Department of Justice.
And while the Biden administration made the first significant changes in nearly 50 years to improve federal oversight of corporate mergers, Fitzgerald authored legislation to roll it back. The rule changes would have collected more information about how proposed mergers would decrease competition and hurt consumers, according to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), and others who urged its passing three years ago.
“This update to the premerger notification process is necessary to respond to increased consolidation and the digital transformation of our economy,” they wrote in September 2023. “Over the last quarter century, 75 percent of American industries have become more concentrated, and since 2008, American companies have engaged in mergers and acquisitions worth over $10 trillion.”
Business groups sued and in February a federal judge in Texas blocked the rule changes. The case is on appeal.
In contrast to Fitzgerald’s approach, Baldwin has authored legislation that would empower federal regulators to review mergers that have already been completed and investigate whether companies kept their promises to not reduce competition, raise consumer prices, or force significant job losses.
While neither Baldwin’s merger bill nor her “For the Fans” legislation is likely to pass a Republican-controlled Congress, Fitzgerald is also unlikely to win a reopening of the Sports Broadcasting Act, given its bipartisan support in place that include the frozen tundra of Packers fandom.
