Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Streaming platforms have started scrambling to get a piece of the incredibly lucrative football pie in recent years, which has been a frustrating development for many fans who don’t want to sign up for a subscription to watch a single game. That includes one lawmaker in Ohio who is throwing his weight around after getting fed up with the Peacock deal that has impacted his beloved Buckeyes.
In 2020, Amazon broadcasted the first NFL game to ever stream exclusively online a year before it made waves by obtaining the rights to Thursday Night Football.
It didn’t take long for its competitors to get in on the action; NBC eventually landed a deal in the hopes of driving subscribers to Peacock that included the exclusive rights to a playoff game, and Netflix burst onto the scene last year when it aired its first-ever NFL games on Christmas.
NBC and Peacock have also had a deal with the Big Ten since 2022, and while the bulk of the football games that fall under the contract are available on television and online, there were nine contests last season that could only be viewed on the latter.
That included the showdown between Ohio State and Michigan State in September—a development that did not go over well with Bill DeMora, a Democratic state senator representing the city of Columbus who has reintroduced a bill in the hopes of making Buckeyes games more accessible in the future.
According to NBC4I, DeMora is lobbying for the passage of Senate Bill 94, which would ban universities in the state from entering or renewing “a contract under which the media rights to broadcast a university athletic event are granted exclusively to a streaming service.”
DeMora says he was initially inspired to whip up the legislation after the game between Ohio State and Purdue in 2023 was only available on Peacock, saying, “I refuse to pay all these streaming networks to watch Ohio State and other sports…Streaming television is not good for sports.”
The bill would also require schools to provide all enrolled students with free access to any game on a streaming platform, but it’s worth noting it would not apply to the current deal between the Big Ten and Peacock.
This is far from the first time DeMora has used his position to champion a populist cause, as he’s also behind bills that would require allocated whiskeys to be opened upon purchase to prevent sales on the secondary market and one inspired by a controversial Supreme Court ruling involving the definition of boneless wings.