I doubt it will change. Remember the important part for Red Zone being part of Sunday Ticket is Youtube’s contract with the NFL. They’re paying the NFL around $2 billion to offer Sunday Ticket and sell the package, and variations of it all of which are spelled out in the contract, to subscribers. If the NFL/ ESPN deal cut off some of those options, that would impeded Youtube’s ability to turn that $2b into profit. And I don’t think either ESPN or the NFL wanna mess with Google.
Now this popped up on Fox:
Regulators will get into this.
“In an era of deep partisan division, sports might be the most powerful cultural unifier we have. But those millions of fans are asking a simple question: ‘Why does it seem to be getting harder — and more expensive — to just watch the game?’” — Ted Cruz
The DOJ is investigating Disney’s deal for Fubo and so this NFL deal is likely to be investigated.
In 2018, the Trump DOJ blocked Disney from acquiring 21st Century Fox’s 22 regional sports networks on antitrust grounds, citing ESPN’s already dominant position in sports broadcasting. The concern then was that letting Disney own both national and local sports networks would reduce competition and drive up prices for fans. Now teams are pushing for local broadcast deals (Gray Television, for example, is pushing MLB, NBA, and NHL deals; the Stanley Cup Champion Florida doesn’t use an RSN but had all of their non-national televised games on WSFL 39. Their cross-state rival Tampa Bay will switch from an RSN to local, with games on WXPX. Two other NHL teams have deals with Scripps stations in the region — Utah (KUPX) and Vegas (KMCC). This now means four of the five Stanley Cup champions of this decade will be local broadcast, no RSN. Teams are switching back to local broadcasters.
Expect an investigation into Amazon (NASCAR including one major and NBA/WNBA with four WNBA Finals and four NBA Conference Finals) and Netflix (boxing, FIFA Women’s World Cup) coming soon from the government over this push for streaming because the major goal is acceptance of pornography. The Supreme Court struck down the FCC’s last attempt at anti-siphoning, but with the way Big Streaming is using sport to push purchase of X-rated material, there is an increased incentive to get people to buy inappropriate material.
I would not be surprised to see a rejection by the FTC on this deal AND a Senate hearing on the current forms of siphoning into premium pay to force acceptance of their X-rated programming.
https://www.outkick.com/analysis/regulators-could-flag-espn-nfl-deal-control-cost-competition
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/espn-nfl-deal-faces-regulatory-hurdles-2025-08-07/