Senate Democrats introducing SAFE act to potentially amend Sports Broadcasting Act Ross Dellenger September 30, 2025 at 12:00 AM 0 A group of Senate Democrats, led by Maria Cantwell, are introducing a bill — the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement Act — that, among other concepts, amends the Sp...
- - Senate Democrats introducing SAFE act to potentially amend Sports Broadcasting Act
Ross Dellenger September 30, 2025 at 12:00 AM
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A group of Senate Democrats, led by Maria Cantwell, are introducing a bill — the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement Act — that, among other concepts, amends the Sports Broadcasting Act to permit college conferences to pool broadcasting rights.
Sens. Cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal are co-sponsors of the new college sports legislative proposal. As of now, it does not have bipartisan support. In fact, Senate Republicans led by Ted Cruz, who have spent the last several months drafting a college sports bill, were unaware Monday of the introduction of the Democrat-backed bill, dubbed the SAFE Act. As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Cruz controls movement of college sports legislation.
Despite the SAFE Act's steep odds of passage, the long-discussed change to the Sports Broadcasting Act is a notable inclusion in any legislation. In theory, college conferences can increase the value of their media rights contracts by consolidating their deals, which are now individually negotiated. The projected increase in revenues provide schools with more funding to meet one of the requirements of the SAFE Act: for schools to maintain Olympic sport scholarship and roster spots at 2023-24 levels.
The SAFE Act is an all-encompassing piece of legislation that features a wide variety of concepts unrelated to the Sports Broadcasting Act amendment. For instance, the bill: (1) permits athletes to transfer twice without penalty of sitting a year; (2) guarantees scholarships for 10 years after a player's eligibility expires; (3) requires schools provide five years of post-eligibility medical coverage for athletes; and (4) creates an agent registry and certification process.
While the bill codifies portions of the NCAA's landmark House settlement and pre-empts state NIL laws, the legislation does not address athlete employment and does not grant the NCAA and its conferences liability protection to enforce many of its rules — two glaring differences it has with the SCORE Act, the Republican-authored bill that is currently at the center of debate in the House of Representatives.
The bill does enshrine pieces of the House settlement, including the athlete revenue-share cap and the requirement for NIL collectives to (1) only strike deals with athletes that meet a "valid business purpose" definition and (2) submit those deals to the NCAA and its new enforcement arm meant to police booster-back payments, the College Sports Commission.
The SAFE Act also grants oversight and enforcement control to the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general.
However, the most interesting concept is amending the Sports Broadcasting Act, a law passed in 1961 that grants the professional leagues the ability to jointly negotiate their media rights contracts without falling under antitrust scrutiny. A change to the SBA has been a long-running idea marketed as a solution for the growing financial stressors within college athletics.
Most notably, Texas billionaire businessman Cody Campbell, an ally of president Donald Trump, has aggressively encouraged lawmakers to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act, even spending millions on television advertisements over the issue and influencing some House Republicans to delay support of the SCORE Act unless it amends the SBA.
Not everyone is a believer in the SBA change, though. Leaders in the SEC and Big Ten have pushed back on any mass consolidation of media rights.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), an important figure in controlling college sports legislation in the House as the House Majority Leader, is not supportive of any significant change to the SCORE Act, including any amendment related to the Sports Broadcasting Act.
"The TV contracts are a result of negotiations between entities and they are already in place," Scalise told Yahoo Sports earlier this month. "Congress isn't looking to come in and break up contracts already negotiated between parties."
The SAFE Act, meanwhile, would not only amend the SBA, but would create a committee within the NCAA to help pool media rights, maximize revenues and fairly distribute those revenues to assure that schools maintain scholarship and roster levels for women's and Olympic sports.
The SAFE Act also requires broadcast networks make available their football and basketball games on a non-exclusive basis (i.e.: no local content behind a paywall). The Act also requires broadcast networks and streaming platforms to reconvey media rights to schools if the entity is not materially using the rights to also broadcast women's and Olympic sports.
The introduction of the SAFE Act comes at an especially tense time on Capitol Hill as it relates to college sports and other duties. The federal government is headed for a shutdown on Oct. 1 unless Congress reaches a bipartisan spending agreement before then.
As for college sports matters, Republicans and Democrats continue to be split on concepts of a bill and so, too, does the House and Senate. While the SCORE Act advanced further than any all-encompassing college sports legislation, it has not been brought up on the floor for a vote and, even if it passes the House, the bill faces a much higher hurdle in the Senate, where filibuster rules require a 60-vote support.
Strides have been made recently in the SCORE Act's passage, both with the Congressional Black Caucus as well as a group of 10 non-FBS conferences, as detailed last week at Yahoo Sports.
Source: "AOL Sports"
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