[VIDEO] 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, delivered the following opening statement at today’s ‘Field of Streams: The New Channel Guide for Sports Fans’ hearing:

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to the witnesses here this morning for this hearing. Before we start on this subject, I want to express my strong opposition to the efforts by the Trump Administration last week to undermine critical resources for local broadcasting [for] NPR and PBS and to fire three Congressionally appointed Board Members of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Every community deserves to have trusted access to local journalism, particularly when it comes to some of our rural areas, where programming on these individual channels are very valuable, [including] quality program for children and certainly emergency alert information. So, we want every community, including our rural and tribal areas, to have access. The President's actions last week will hit these communities the hardest and deny residents the access to information that they rely on to keep them safe in emergencies.”

“With this hearing today, Mr. Chairman, obviously we need to find a sweet spot between consumer choice and consumer costs. I recognize the challenging issue that we're going to discuss this morning, but I think Mr. Bergmayer got it right in his testimony when he said “consumers see that they finally broke the cable bundle model,” he was referring to the fact that now, with streaming and different distribution, that you have more choice only to watch it reforming again right before their eyes. That is the subject of this hearing today, and this committee has had a long, long history, back to our former Chairman, Senator John McCain, where he advocated in many of those big cable broadcast wars for a la carte choice for consumers. We now see the same issues coming before us again, but in a different construct.”

“According to Nielsen, the 2024 streaming numbers had accounted for 39% of total TV usage in the United States of America, surpassing cable and broadcast television, and this surge in streaming viewers is coupled with a 20% drop in cable and satellite subscribers in the past 15 years. So, as you might imagine, this shift has created some disruption, including in the broadcast sports arena. I'm grateful again for our Public Knowledge witness to highlight how some of these changes really have affected consumers and particularly the fan experience. When I'm back home, I get to turn on the TV and watch the Seahawks on KING 5 or Gonzaga basketball with no subscription required. But streaming has put sports content increasingly behind a paywall so that only the subscribers can access that. And with the growing number of exclusivity agreements with sports leagues, the decline of cable bundle, consumers are facing an impossible choice: missing an important game or managing, as the Chairman just mentioned a confusing array of streaming media subscriptions.”

“So, we're here today to hear what it is this committee can do about this issue. It is interesting that the NFL signed a 10-year media rights contract agreement in 2023 that makes Amazon Prime, its prime partner for Thursday Night Football, a deal worth $10 billion. Major League Soccer's 10-year deal with Apple brought significant new viewership to sports, with the playoff audiences increasing by 50% in a single year. So, all of these issues make us want to ask the questions about what content we used to get to watch for free that now we are paying for, and what—in a world where streaming becomes even easier to get us content—what are we doing to make that content more accessible?”

“During the Paris 2024 Olympics, [streaming] allowed consumers access across the world for the first time, to every event live or on demand. Previously, these events had been prioritized or limited because of broadcast channels, and now consumers can watch any sport, any race, any preliminary bout, no matter how many other events are taking place at the same time. I like giving consumers choices. Netflix has the rights to the next Women's World Cup, and the WNBA’s 2024 season attracted more than 54 million viewers—there you go for not paying enough attention to women's basketball in the past—a 170% increase over the previous season. So, there is some good news, and that is that we can cover more, we can give consumers more choice, but I too would love to hear from our witnesses, [about] how we're making sure that we're protecting consumers while we do that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

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