The DOJ Is Coming for MLB's Streaming Rights Too

Quick answer: The Justice Department's antitrust investigation into professional sports broadcasting has expanded to MLB. FCC chair Brendan Carr confirmed the probe covers all leagues operating under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 -- not just the NFL.

The federal government's antitrust tour of professional sports made its next stop this week: Major League Baseball.

According to Bloomberg News, the Justice Department plans to extend the same scrutiny it opened against the NFL last week to MLB and the other leagues operating under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. FCC chair Brendan Carr confirmed it directly: his office's focus was always broader than football.

"The NFL is something that everyone is aware of and focuses on," Carr told Bloomberg. "And so I speak of it just as a shorthand, but we are focused more broadly on other leagues as well."

We wrote about the NFL investigation when it broke -- if you missed it, that piece is worth reading first.

What the Sports Broadcasting Act actually says

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 grants professional leagues a specific antitrust exemption. It allows teams to bundle their broadcast rights and sell them as a single national package without running afoul of antitrust law. That's why you can have one NFL Sunday contract with CBS rather than 32 separate teams negotiating with 32 broadcasters.

The exemption exists because Congress decided in 1961 that national sports packages were good for fans and good for the country.

The problem Carr keeps pointing to is the word "telecast." The law was written before cable television existed. It was definitely written before streaming. Carr's argument -- and the argument underlying the FCC's formal inquiry launched in February -- is that the exemption may not have been intended to cover games that air exclusively on paid streaming platforms. If that reading holds, leagues distributing games behind streaming paywalls might be operating outside their legal protections.

Why MLB is a particularly good target for this argument

The NFL investigation makes political sense for several reasons we've covered before. But if the goal is finding a league that has pushed streaming fragmentation to its limit, MLB is actually the more compelling case.

In the last 14 months, commissioner Rob Manfred called ESPN a "shrinking platform," walked away from a $550 million-per-year deal, and set off a scramble for new partners. The result: MLB games are now split across Netflix, NBC/Peacock, ESPN, Fox, TBS, Apple TV+, and MLB Network simultaneously. There is no other major American sport where a fan of a single team needs to track this many platforms to watch a full season.

That fragmentation was a deliberate strategy -- Manfred wanted maximum leverage heading into 2028 negotiations. What it produced instead was the exact evidence regulators point to when arguing that leagues have pushed their antitrust protections further than the law intended.

Carr acknowledged the response he's been getting: "One thing that did surprise me was the level of interest of baseball fans in particular."

It's not surprising from where I sit. If you use this site, you already know what it takes to watch a full Mariners or Brewers or Cardinals season. The confusion Carr is describing in the abstract is something fans deal with every single night.

What it might actually change

Federal investigations move slowly, and there's no guarantee this one produces anything fans notice before the 2028 rights cycle. The more immediate pressure is political and procedural -- leagues that know they're under a microscope may recalibrate how aggressively they push games to streaming-only platforms.

The optimistic read: sustained federal attention pushes leagues toward more broadcast-friendly distribution. The pessimistic read: this is leverage in a separate negotiation between regulators, networks, and leagues that has nothing to do with whether fans can find their team's game on a Tuesday night.

Either way, the era when sports leagues could fragment their broadcasts without anyone in Washington paying attention appears to be over.

If you want to know where your team's games actually are tonight -- regardless of how fragmented the landscape gets -- that's what this site is for. Search your team above.

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