Rupert Murdoch used the NFL to help build his media empire. Now he wants Donald Trump’s help to keep the NFL in line.
That’s the takeaway from a new Wall Street Journal story about Murdoch’s fight with America’s most powerful sports league. The paper reports that Murdoch personally lobbied Trump at a White House dinner in February, warning that if the NFL continued to sell more games to streamers like Amazon and Netflix, it could damage broadcast networks like Fox.
Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission opened an inquiry into sports rights moving from broadcast TV to streaming. Sen. Mike Lee then urged the Justice Department to examine the NFL, and now the Department of Justice is investigating the league’s media deals.
That doesn’t conclusively prove Murdoch caused the scrutiny. But it does bring to light something media executives widely believed but weren’t saying in public: It sure looked like Fox and Murdoch were helping fuel the government’s sudden interest in the NFL’s streaming strategy.
Murdoch’s interest in this one is very straightforward: His Fox network depends on NFL games to bring in viewers. And he’s worried that the NFL’s moves to sell games to streamers will give the league even more leverage when Fox negotiates its next NFL deal.
Fox declined to comment.
Reminder: On TV, there is football, and then there is everything else. In 2025, 83 of the top 100 programs were NFL games; that’s up from 72 in 2024. It’s a point the NFL made again last month, when it told the FCC that ratings for NFL games dwarfed anything else on broadcast TV. Here’s the chart the league made to make its case:
The fact that Murdoch has asked Trump for help doesn’t guarantee that he’ll get what he wants. Murdoch and his media outlets are very powerful, but so is the NFL. Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, is a longtime Trump pal; the WSJ reports that the two have been in touch recently, presumably about this standoff.
Meanwhile, the NFL is reportedly close to a new deal with Netflix, which already shows games on Christmas and would like to show more. And selling more games to streamers has been something the NFL has been interested in for some time.
The other striking part of the Journal story is what it says about Murdoch and Trump, and their transactional relationship.
At the same time Murdoch was lobbying Trump over the NFL, Trump was suing Murdoch, News Corp., and the WSJ over its Jeffrey Epstein birthday-message story. (A federal judge dismissed that suit last month; Trump vowed to refile the suit but hasn’t done so yet.)
In a normal world, getting sued by the President of the United States might make it difficult for you to get an invite to the White House — let alone a chance to lobby the President of the United States. But this is 2026, and Donald Trump is President, and everything is up for negotiation.
And while we are pointing out incongruities, let’s list another one: This story about Rupert Murdoch and his attempt to influence Donald Trump — a story that might make it harder for Murdoch to influence Trump — was published in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.
Sometimes Murdoch uses his media properties to advance his own interests, but this doesn’t seem like one of them.
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