Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora has had enough.
Watching the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the playoffs this week required navigating Amazon Prime Video for Game 1, Peacock for Game 2, and back to Amazon for Game 3. And DeMora, a Democrat from Columbus, is now looking into whether Ohio has any legal leverage to act on it.
“It’s a bunch of bullsh*t, is what it is,” DeMora told News5 Cleveland. “It’s getting ridiculous for the everyday fan nowadays to watch sports because they have to have a dozen different services, streaming services or otherwise.”
The frustration is not unique to Ohio or to state legislatures. The federal government has spent the better part of the last year building a case that professional sports leagues have pushed their antitrust protections past the limits of the law by moving too many games behind streaming paywalls. The FCC opened a formal inquiry into sports broadcasting fragmentation in February, with chairman Brendan Carr arguing that the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 — which grants leagues their antitrust exemption — was written at a time when broadcast television was the only kind of television, and that moving games to paid streaming services may not be covered by its protections.
Sen. Mike Lee called on the DOJ and FTC to reexamine the exemption in March. Shortly after, the DOJ opened a formal antitrust investigation into the NFL, and it has since indicated it plans to extend that scrutiny to MLB and the other major leagues as well.
DeMora’s approach is a little different from those in Washington, working within what jurisdiction the state might actually have. He pointed to the NFL’s existing arrangement with local broadcast affiliates — under which a Thursday Night Football game on Amazon can also air on the local NBC station — as a model other leagues could follow. He is also considering Rocket Arena’s status as a publicly owned facility as a potential leverage point over the Cavaliers.
“When regular people are hurting, and they can’t even watch their sports in their everyday lives,” he said, “it’s getting ridiculous.”
It’s just the latest in a long line of sports-centric causes that DeMora has taken up over the years.