The Department of Justice has reportedly opened an investigation into the NFL over accusations it engaged in anticompetitive tactics in selling broadcasting rights, the latest installment in President Donald Trump’s long-running feud with the franchise.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the DOJ will pursue the probe amid growing discontent over the ever-rising cost of watching sports as the marketplace becomes more fragmented, requiring fans to pay for multiple subscriptions to different streaming services just to follow the league.
Trump has a long history of weighing in on the fortunes of football, trashing Colin Kaepernick’s “take a knee” national anthem protest during his first term and calling for a boycott over a gesture he considered “a total disrespect of our heritage.”
More recently, he has attempted to pressure the Washington Commanders to change their name back to the less politically correct Washington Redskins, even threatening to block them from building a new stadium in the nation’s capital if they do not bow to his demands.
But the president’s grievance with the NFL stretches back further, to at least 1984, when he met with the league’s then-commissioner Pete Rozelle in an attempt to bring a new franchise to the league.
Writer Jeff Pearlman told Newsweek in 2017: “I interviewed a guy who was at the meeting, and he was like, Rozelle said to him, ‘You will never be an owner in the NFL. As long as I’m affiliated with the NFL or my family is affiliated with the NFL, you will never have a team in the NFL.’
“Because they just saw him as this scumbag huckster. He was this New York, fast-talking, kind of con-man. You know? He was just a huckster and they didn’t really want that. The NFL never really wanted Trump. He’s kind of [Dallas Cowboys owner] Jerry Jones without the dignity.”
Trump subsequently became the owner of the New Jersey Generals in the rival United States Football League and then tried to force a merger between the two leagues by accusing the NFL of holding an unfair monopoly.
The USFL won its case but was awarded just $3 in compensation, some way short of the $1.69 billion it had sought and not enough to save it from ultimate dissolution.
Trump has also tried unsuccessfully to acquire the Baltimore Colts, New England Patriots, and Buffalo Bills over the years.
Meanwhile, Michael Cohen, the president’s estranged former personal attorney, alleged during congressional testimony in February 2019 that Trump had inflated his net worth during his aborted 2014 negotiations to buy the Bills, in the hope of securing a loan from Deutsche Bank that would have enabled him to complete the deal.
He ultimately lost out anyway to natural gas billionaire Terry Pegula.
The news of the DOJ’s investigation into the cost of watching the NFL comes after research from Deloitte, published earlier Thursday, revealed that 40 percent of Americans had been forced to cut back on subscription streaming services in the last three months as the high cost of living continues to eat into strained household budgets.
Broadcasters, regulators and members of Congress like Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee have all raised concerns of late about how expensive it has become for the public as organizers split smaller packages of league games between different streamers.
Voters have consistently told pollsters that affordability is a major cause of anxiety and that they do not feel Trump has done enough to tackle the problem.
His war in Iran, driving up fuel prices, has arguably made the situation even more acute.
The Independent has reached out to the DOJ and the NFL for comment.
