By Sabria McElroy and Savannah Mora
Sports organizations in the United States have long operated under a patchwork of legal precedents and statutory exemptions that have largely shielded them from antitrust liability in the past. But as professional and collegiate sports become increasingly intertwined with technology, media, streaming platforms, and other commercial sectors, there has been a shift. Recent high-profile cases signal that litigants, enforcers, and courts are increasingly scrutinizing whether specific arrangements are truly necessary for the sporting product or merely a tool to maximize profits.
The U.S. sports industry would not exist without some level of cooperation among competitors. Professional sports teams, for instance, are independent business entities that compete for victories, merchandise sales, and fan loyalty. But they must work together—to establish playing rules and competitive formats, coordinate scheduling, and negotiate broadcasting agreements—to establish the framework within which that competition occurs. Similarly, in collegiate athletics, the NCAA and its member institutions must coordinate on eligibility requirements, recruitment rules, academic standards, and competitive formats to create a competitively balanced system of intercollegiate competition. The Supreme Court recognized this reality in NCAA v. Board of Regents, noting that horizontal restraints on competition are “essential if the product is to be available at all” in the context of collegiate sports. 468 U.S. 85, 101 (1984).
This inherent need for cooperation distinguishes sports from most other commercial industries and has historically been used to justify more lenient antitrust treatment for restrictions and agreements that promote competitive balance. Major League Baseball (MLB), for example, has benefited from a broad, though antiquated, antitrust exemption since the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision Federal Baseball Club v. National League. Other major professional leagues—the NFL, NBA, and NHL—are subject to antitrust laws but they have generally succeeded in defending their practices in antitrust challenges. The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in American Needle v. NFL clarified that these leagues are not single entities immune from antitrust scrutiny for all purposes and emphasized that their agreements should be evaluated under the “flexible rule of reason” that considers both anticompetitive effects and procompetitive justifications. This analysis has often served as a protective shield for sports leagues, allowing them to defend coordinated conduct by demonstrating its necessity for maintaining competitive balance or protecting the integrity of the sport.
Congress also shaped the landscape with the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA) of 1961, which grants a limited antitrust exemption for the collective sale of over-the-air broadcast rights by the “Big Four” professional sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL). The Act, which enabled leagues to negotiate lucrative national television contracts and share the revenues among all teams, was intended to promote competitive balance and support the growth of professional sports.
However, the expansion of sports into streaming, data monetization, and merchandising has increased antitrust risks. As leagues and their partners enter new commercial areas, their conduct affects markets beyond traditional competition, and courts are less likely to defer to sporting justifications when arrangements appear to primarily maximize profit.
Recent developments illustrate this trend:
Streaming and Media Rights: The migration of sports content from traditional broadcast and cable to digital streaming platforms has triggered new antitrust challenges. Leagues and media companies are negotiating exclusive streaming deals and bundling rights, raising concerns about market concentration and consumer access. Courts have generally held that the SBA’s protections do not extend to agreements involving paid television services or streaming platforms—a significant limitation as the industry shifts away from traditional over-the-air broadcasting toward subscription-based streaming models that fall outside the Act’s coverage.
Recent litigation has focused on whether joint ventures and exclusive streaming arrangements stifle competition and inflate prices for consumers. For instance, the NFL’s exclusive Sunday Ticket arrangement with DirectTV (now with YouTube TV) led to a $4.7 billion jury verdict in 2024, later overturned by the trial court judge, over allegations of anticompetitive bundling. The case, now on appeal, centers on whether bundling out-of-market games into a single expensive package violates antitrust law. The DOJ is also investigating Disney’s proposed acquisition of a controlling stake in FuboTV, examining whether the merger would unduly concentrate the sports streaming market and eliminate competition between direct rivals.
Sports Data and Betting Technology. Leagues have long treated the collection and commercialization of live sports data as an ancillary revenue opportunity, but the explosive growth of in-game betting has turned this data into a valuable input for this market. Major sports leagues and their exclusive data partners have moved aggressively to secure and monetize control over “official” league data through long-term, exclusive licensing agreements with select data companies. These practices are already being challenged through litigation. Earlier this year, PANDA Interactive, which offers a digital streaming and betting platform, alleged that dominant data providers, Genius Sports and Sport radar, have engaged in anticompetitive tying and market allocation schemes. According to the amended complaints, defendants—who have secured long-term exclusive data distribution rights with major sports leagues and the NCAA—condition the use of this essential data on the use of their proprietary betting technology, effectively excluding rival technology platforms from the market. PANDA Interactive also asserts that defendants have divided exclusive rights across major sports leagues, creating a duopoly that hurts consumers and impedes the entry of innovative competitors. These claims echo broader concerns raised by legal scholars about the risks of monopolization in sports data markets, particularly as leagues seek to leverage their control over game information into dominance over downstream technology and betting services.
Exclusive Merchandising Deals. Exclusive merchandising agreements between sports leagues and apparel or equipment companies have also come under antitrust scrutiny as the commercial stakes in sports merchandising rise. These deals, in which sports leagues often grant a single company the right to produce and sell official league merchandise, can generate substantial revenues for both leagues and their partners. However, critics argue that such exclusivity may stifle competition and ultimately lead to reduced output and inflated prices. As leagues enter into increasingly complex, multi-platform agreements, companies in the sports industry should anticipate heightened antitrust risk in this area.
Athlete NIL and Compensation. As leagues, players associations, and teams, enter into lucrative partnerships with merchandise companies, media platforms, and sportsbooks, the value of athlete-driven marketing has soared. This shift has triggered a wave of antitrust challenges to restrictions that limit athletes’ compensation and ability to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL), particularly at the college level, where longstanding NCAA rules prohibiting student-athletes from receiving compensation have faced repeated legal challenges. The recent settlement in House v. NCAA represents a pivotal development: the NCAA agreed to pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages and to implement a revenue-sharing model that will allow college athletes to receive direct compensation for the use of their NIL.
These NIL challenges are not confined to college sports. A class action brought by professional tennis players this year against the world’s leading men’s and women’s pro tours alleges that the sport’s governing bodies operate as a cartel and engage in anticompetitive practices that harm players, including requiring players to assign their NIL rights to the tours and tournament organizers for use in media, advertising, and promotion without compensation and preventing players from entering into independent sponsorship agreements with brands outside of a narrow set of approved categories.
The professional tennis players’ federal antitrust lawsuit also demonstrates how the growing commercialization of the sports industry—and the accompanying revenue generated by sports leagues, teams, and governing bodies—fuels scrutiny of the disparity between organizational profits and athlete compensation. In their complaint, the players highlight the “eye-popping sums of money” generated by the defendants’ media rights and sponsorship deals. The players argue that, through wage and ranking manipulations, the pro tours keep the fruits of the multibillion-dollar global industry to themselves. Similarly, this February a federal judge approved a $375 million settlement for over 1,100 former UFC fighters after a decade-long wage suppression battle in which the fighters’ declarations revealed that many lacked access to healthcare and other necessities. The fighters alleged that the UFC—which by 2023 earned over $1 billion in revenue, an increase largely due to media rights and content fees—paid its fighters less than 20% of total UFC revenues, compared to the over 50% of league revenue shared with athletes by the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL.
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Given the rapid growth of sports betting, streaming platforms, and athlete NIL opportunities, additional litigation is particularly likely in areas involving exclusive data and merchandising agreements, digital media bundling arrangements, and restrictions on athlete compensation and sponsorship rights. As the sports industry continues to expand into new commercial frontiers, organizations and their partners must navigate an increasingly complex antitrust landscape where traditional justifications for cooperation are subject to heightened scrutiny. Ongoing legal challenges and regulatory investigations underscore the need for careful compliance and proactive risk management as the boundaries between sports, technology, and media continue to blur.
This article was first published at Sports Litigation Alert on August 21, 2025.