American Television Alliance Committed to Working with Congress on Affordable Access to Sports Programming   

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Television Alliance (ATVA) issued a statement in response the Energy & Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing entitled “TV Timeout: Understanding Sports Media Rights.”

“We commend Congress for holding this important hearing to address sports programming and how it affects consumers.” said ATVA spokesperson Cora Mandy. “Large programmers continue to raise prices and broadcasters who claim to offer some of the most important sports programming ‘for free,’ increased retransmission consent fees by an overwhelming 1,529%, since 2010.  These large programmers insist on everysubscriber paying these high prices, whether they care about sports or not.” 

Making things worse, some of these same large providers are offering sports on their own direct-to-consumer platforms. This requires people to either pay twice for sports they can already get on our Member Company platforms or cobble together “packages” of many different streaming services to get programming no longer available on pay-TV.

Reasonably priced sports programming should be available to all those who want it.  And those who don’t want it shouldn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for it. 

To learn more about outdated broadcast regulations and their impact on the American consumer, visit https://americantelevisionalliance.org/about-the-issue/. 

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