The traditional American pastime of gathering at a local sports bar to watch Sunday football is being strangled by a technical and financial bottleneck, one restaurateur is warning.
“It’s why we’re speaking up, because the simple matter is that it is hard to watch all of the streaming things… Is it on YouTube TV? Is it the [NFL] Sunday Ticket? Is it Amazon?” Texas restaurateur and Tailgators Pub & Grill founder Jim Hallers said on “Varney & Co.” Friday.
“For the last 30 years, it’s come to us through DirecTV, and it’s just worked,” he continued. “And so we like a centralized approach, but we just need technology that works, and streaming is still very immature.”
Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Hallers explained to lawmakers that the sports media landscape’s sudden fragmentation into separate streaming apps is creating an expensive tech maze for hospitality venues, threatening the business model of – often-rural – neighborhood pubs that rely on NFL fans to keep their doors open in the fall.
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“Everybody has to move to streaming. And so, literally, now, we have to buy streaming boxes. And in a typical smaller bar where I have maybe 30 or 40 TVs with a DIRECTV box mounted behind every television, I now have to get an EverPass streaming box. But you can’t put an EverPass streaming box behind every TV. It doesn’t work like that,” Hallers said on Capitol Hill. “Just imagine at home, if you tried to stream, you know, 30 Netflix’s at once, your internet’s just going to die. Well, it’s the same way for most bars and restaurants today.”
“One commercial video switch with enough inputs and outputs can cost in excess of $15,000. A full upgrade including equipment, wiring and the labor, will cost $30,000 to $40,000 per restaurant,” he also testified. “So instead of simplifying the business, the transition is adding another layer of cost and complexity.”
Wednesday’s congressional hearing stemmed from the Iowa Restaurant Association and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, which each represent thousands of independent restaurant and bar owners, sending letters to high-powered GOP lawmakers in their states urging them to act on “a significant shift in the commercial distribution of NFL Sunday Ticket that threatens to impose immediate and substantial burdens on small businesses” across their states.
The concern comes after streaming service EverPass Media announced it would become the exclusive commercial option for NFL Sunday Ticket starting with the 2026 season. The Iowa letter was sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, while the Wisconsin edition went to Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust.
“We understand that transitioning to a streaming-based solution for NFL Sunday Ticket may require planning, from connectivity and hardware to overall venue readiness. That’s why our team is committed to helping customers make the transition with confidence and be fully prepared before kickoff. Our goal is simple: make sure your venue is ready well before the first Sunday of the season, so you can focus on what matters most: delivering a great experience for every guest who walks through the door,” EverPass’ website reads.
“We really need it to work,” Hallers pleaded on Friday. “It’s not a matter of price. We just want technology that works, and that’s what they’ve been taking away from us.”
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Fox News’ Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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