Trump Just Sicced the DOJ on the NFL Over Something That Has Fans Furious

The NFL locked up its broadcast rights in an $111 billion TV deal and then watched ticket prices blow past $600 for a family of four.

Now Trump is doing what no president before him dared to do.

And what the DOJ just put in its crosshairs has Roger Goodell sweating through his suit.

The Season That Priced Out a Generation of Fans

Watching every NFL game last season cost nearly $935 – a figure calculated by tracking the full stack of cable and streaming subscriptions required to catch every game.

President Trump confirmed the damage in an interview with Full Measure this past Sunday, putting the number closer to $1,000.

"They're making a lot of money, they could make a little bit less and they could let the people see," Trump said.

He wasn't abstract about who gets left behind: "You've got people that love football, they're great people, they don't make enough money to go and pay this, it's tough."

The president said he doesn't know whether the government will put a stop to it.

But he was clear about where he stands: "I don't like it."

The problem took shape across the last decade.

The NFL sliced its games across a growing number of platforms – CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube – creating a subscription maze where watching your team play on any given Sunday can mean paying five different bills.

Thursday Night Football is locked behind Amazon Prime Video.

Christmas games are locked behind Netflix.

Playoff games have gone to Peacock and ESPN+.

The league pocketed $111 billion across its current broadcast deals running through 2033.

Fans paid for it.

Goodell's 87 Percent Spin Is Wearing Thin

When the DOJ investigation broke in April, Roger Goodell went straight to his favorite statistic.

"Over 87 percent of our games go on free television," Goodell said during ESPN's NFL Draft Countdown.

He added that the NFL was "surviving and thriving on the basis of being available to the broadest audience."

That defense only works if you don't look too hard at it.

The 87 percent figure counts games broadcast in the home markets of the two teams playing – not in your living room across the country where you've followed your team for 40 years.

Out-of-market fans pay. They always have.

They paid DirecTV for Sunday Ticket for three decades.

A jury in 2024 agreed the NFL had spent those decades overpricing Sunday Ticket to protect its broadcast TV revenue – awarding $4.7 billion in damages to residential subscribers before a judge later tossed the verdict on procedural grounds.

The NFL won that round in court.

It did not win the argument.

Now the same basic scheme – league locks games behind paywalls, fans pay up or miss out – has been rebuilt on a streaming foundation the old 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act was never designed to cover.

That's the legal crack the DOJ is now walking through.

The Sports Broadcasting Act gave the NFL its antitrust exemption specifically for broadcast television.

Courts have repeatedly held it does not extend to cable, satellite, or streaming.

Every game the NFL puts behind an Amazon or Netflix paywall is a game that may not qualify for the exemption at all.

Trump Has Been Here Before – and Goodell Always Blinks

This is not the first time Donald Trump has taken on Roger Goodell directly.

In 2017, Trump demanded NFL owners fire players who knelt during the National Anthem.

Goodell pushed back publicly.

The league quietly ended nationwide kneeling within two seasons.

Trump criticized the league's halftime show choices this past season.

Goodell moved on.

The difference this time is that a federal investigation is already running.

Sen. Mike Lee sent his letter to the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission in March, warning that football fans needed "almost $1,000" in subscriptions to watch a full season – and that the league's streaming deals may no longer qualify for its 1961 antitrust exemption.

The Wall Street Journal reported the formal DOJ probe opened in April.

The FCC launched its own public inquiry into how Americans watch live sports.

Trump went on national television Sunday and said the words out loud: "There's something very sad when they take football away from many people."

That's not a tweet.

That's a president on the record, pointing his own Justice Department at a commissioner who has spent years telling working-class fans they have plenty of access – while building a $111 billion empire on their backs.

Goodell's legal shield was written in 1961, when the biggest threat to free TV was a bad antenna.

Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube weren't in that law.

They aren't protected by it.

And Roger Goodell is about to answer for every dollar he collected while pretending otherwise.

Sources:

• Paul Bois, "Trump Criticizes Cost of Watching NFL Games as DOJ Investigates," Breitbart, May 10, 2026.
• "Sources: DOJ Opens Antitrust Investigation of NFL Over TV Deals," ESPN, April 9, 2026.
• "DOJ Investigating NFL Over Media Rights and Antitrust Concerns," CNBC, April 9, 2026.
• "Roger Goodell Addresses DOJ Investigation Into TV Rights Deals," Awful Announcing, April 23, 2026.
• "DOJ Targets NFL Amid Soaring Subscription Requirements," FindLaw, April 2026.
• "Why the DOJ Investigation of NFL TV Deals May Just Be Bravado," Sportico, April 9, 2026.
• "NFL Under DOJ Investigation Over Cost to Watch Games," Insider Sport, April 13, 2026.