Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora has had enough.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bunch of bullsh*t, is what it is,\u201d DeMora told News5 Cleveland<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s getting ridiculous for the everyday fan nowadays to watch sports because they have to have a dozen different services, streaming services or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/a> in February, with chairman Brendan Carr arguing that the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 \u2014 which grants leagues their antitrust exemption \u2014 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.<\/p>\n Sen. Mike Lee called on the DOJ and FTC to reexamine the exemption<\/a> in March. Shortly after, the DOJ\u00a0opened a formal antitrust investigation into the NFL<\/a>, and it\u00a0has since indicated it plans to extend that scrutiny to MLB<\/a> and the other major leagues as well.<\/p>\n DeMora\u2019s approach is a little different from those in Washington, working within what jurisdiction the state might actually have. He pointed to the NFL\u2019s existing arrangement with local broadcast affiliates \u2014 under which a Thursday Night Football game on Amazon can also air on the local NBC station \u2014 as a model other leagues could follow. He is also considering Rocket Arena\u2019s status as a publicly owned facility as a potential leverage point over the Cavaliers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen regular people are hurting, and they can\u2019t even watch their sports in their everyday lives,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s getting ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s just the latest in a long line of sports-centric causes<\/a> that DeMora has taken up over the years<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora has had enough. Watching the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,89236,306,305,193,3846,6,52609,89237],"class_list":{"0":"post-715618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bill-demora","10":"tag-cavaliers","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nba-streaming","16":"tag-streaming-rights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116446678703628050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}