Rupert Murdoch personally warned President Donald Trump during a White House dinner in February that allowing streaming services to acquire more live sports rights would destroy traditional broadcast networks, according to a person familiar with the private conversation.
The media mogul’s intervention represented an unusually direct and aggressive lobbying effort. Murdoch, whose Fox Corporation pays billions of dollars annually for sports broadcasting rights, was actively urging the president to help protect the very industry partners from which Fox buys content — creating a striking conflict in which a major payer sought to undermine its suppliers’ leverage.
The warning underscores the intense fear within legacy television that digital streamers, such as Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube TV, and Apple TV+, are poised to fragment and ultimately dominate the lucrative live-sports market.
Sports programming remains one of the few content categories still reliably drawing massive audiences to linear television. If streamers secure a significantly larger share of marquee games, advertising and affiliate revenue for networks like Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC could collapse.
The Wall Street Journal reports Murdoch’s move was described as a “bold play call” even by the standards of a businessman renowned for decisive, high-risk maneuvers. It highlights the existential pressure facing traditional broadcasters as media rights negotiations for major leagues, especially the NFL, grow increasingly competitive and expensive.
The situation is particularly noteworthy because Fox has long been a key partner to the NFL and other leagues, committing enormous sums, often in the billions, for broadcast rights. By pressing the White House on this issue, Murdoch was effectively asking the administration to intervene in a way that could limit the negotiating power of the leagues Fox itself pays so handsomely. This rare alignment of interests between a major media buyer and the government against its content suppliers illustrates the depth of concern over the future of the broadcast model.
Murdoch’s lobbying occurs amid a separate but related Justice Department investigation. The DOJ is examining whether major sports leagues, including the NFL, should retain antitrust exemptions that allow them to collectively negotiate national television and streaming deals on behalf of their member teams. Any changes to these protections could reshape how rights are sold, potentially opening the door for more fragmented, streamer-friendly deals.
The outcome of both the policy discussions and the DOJ review carries enormous financial implications. Broadcast and cable networks have relied on sports as a cornerstone of their business, while tech giants with deep pockets are eager to use live games as a wedge to grow their subscriber bases. Murdoch’s intervention highlights that the battle is not merely corporate but reaches the highest levels of government, with the future structure of America’s sports-media ecosystem hanging in the balance.
For Fox and peer companies, the stakes extend far beyond any single rights deal, they involve the long-term viability of the traditional television business model itself.