S/V Sundance: This is bad news for every football fan

Sunday, February 8, 2026

This is bad news for every football fan

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, Faith.

First and foremost, I want to say: Go Pats!

While millions are gearing up to watch the big game, I want to talk about something that happened this past week that should make every football fan — every consumer — worried.

The Trump administration just approved a billion-dollar acquisition deal that gives the NFL a 10% equity stake in ESPN in exchange for control over key streaming assets, including NFL Network, NFL RedZone, and NFL Fantasy operations.

Translation: A massive consolidation that will mean higher costs, and fewer choices to watch games.

ESPN and the NFL are selling this as a win for fans: More games, more coverage, more access. Sound familiar? It's the same playbook corporations always use: More! Better! Bigger!

But that's not exactly what's going on here. It's a massive consolidation of sports media power that was rushed through with almost no public scrutiny. And that raises some very real concerns:

What happens when the people running the game also own part of the channel showing it?
Who's looking out for consumers when the league and the network are both trying to make money off the same deal?
How will prices be impacted when one media company oversees all streaming options?

These aren't hypotheticals. We've been sounding the alarm about these concerns long before this deal touched down.

Look, football fans deserve good, healthy competition — both on and off the field. When one company can determine whatever price they want to watch a game, fans will have no choice but to pay up or just not watch. We have antitrust laws in place to put a stop to this kind of corporate concentration — and I'm fighting to enforce them.

Faith, if you're sick and tired of media companies charging you more and more and more just to watch your favorite teams play, and if you're able to, please pitch in anything you can today to help fight back against corporate greed.