Good morning, everyone.
My name is Ashling with Senator Bolton's office.
A few notes of housekeeping before we get started.
The senator will start us off with remarks and then we'll hear from Don,
owner of two establishments in Green Bay,
and a member of the Tavern League of Wisconsin's Executive Board.
Afterward, we'll have time for a few on topic questions.
Please submit any questions you have to the Zoom chat Q&A function,
and I will relay them to the senator.
For any questions we do not get to or off topic questions,
please follow up with me or our press team and we will work to get your responses.
Please note that because we are doing this webinar style,
you will not be able to record the meeting within the Zoom app.
However, you are welcome to use the third party platform to record.
Otherwise, our office will send a recording via email afterwards to all participants.
Now, I will hand it over to Senator Bolton to make some remarks. Senator.
Thank you, Ashling, and good morning, everyone.
And thank you to Don for joining me here today.
Today is one of those days that Wisconsinites circle on their calendar.
There's a Christmas Christmas. I can't say that word, but I'm going to try that again.
There's a crispness back in the air.
And this evening, the Packers play their home opener at Lambo Field.
The sound of football should fill living rooms and sports bars across the state.
But tonight, millions of Packer fans won't be able to simply turn on the TV
and cheer on the green and gold.
And that's because the game is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
So, if you don't live in the Green Bay or Milwaukee TV markets,
you have one option to watch the game.
Shell out money for an Amazon Prime subscription.
If this sounds familiar, it's because we've been here before.
In January, the Packers Bears playoff game was also on Amazon Prime.
It was exactly the kind of game Wisconsinites expect to crowd around the TV to watch together.
But folks across Wisconsin discovered they couldn't get it through their normal TV package.
And when Wisconsinites are either forced to fork over money to these tech billionaires,
or they can't watch the Packers play, they have pissed off.
And I'm with them.
A woman from Fitchburg, Wisconsin called me saying that her father couldn't afford streaming services
and that it was unfair to a generation of fans who have spent their lives cheering on the Packers.
This is a constituent from Boscabell, Wisconsin, called frustrated that he couldn't even find where to watch the Packers.
And this isn't going away.
This season alone, four Packers games are scheduled on streaming platforms.
Tonight, it's prime.
And the night before Thanksgiving, we'll be dealing with this all over again when the game is on Netflix.
Some, another subscription might not sound like the biggest deal.
But with costs the way they are right now, for most Wisconsin families I hear from,
they are stretched thin and looking for absolutely everywhere they can to save money.
So I'm going to pass it to Don in just a minute, but this doesn't just affect families at home.
This also hurts sports bars and restaurants where so many Wisconsinites gather to watch the games together.
For establishments with multiple TV monitors, these streaming costs add up very, very quickly.
Look, our sports teams unify us in Wisconsin, whether it's a high five with a stranger at the bar when the Packers score,
or a simple smile and nod to a guy at the grocery store who has on a brew crew t-shirt, our sports really do bring us together.
And what would these teams be without the fans?
But right now, we're forced to pay the big billionaire-owned streaming giants to watch our teams,
or simply we can't root for our teams at all because the cost is just too much.
If you're a Wisconsinite who wants to watch every Packers, Brewers, and Bucks game, it's going to cost you over $1400 a year.
My bill, the For the Fans Act, would finally put a stop to this chaos.
My bill is pretty simple. Wherever you live, your local sports team will have to air all the games in one place, live and free.
Instead of allowing leagues to sell away exclusive viewing rights to streamers,
my bill would require that the leagues provide local fans with a single free option to watch their team's games.
This could be over broadcast on TV, a streaming platform, YouTube, or wherever they want.
So if my bill were the law of the land here in Wisconsin, tonight's game would be in one place for all Packers fans to watch, for free.
And next week, the Packers would be aired in the same place, no more confusion, no more high costs.
Secondly, if you are a super fan and buy the expensive subscriptions to platforms like NBA League Pass or MLB TV, you can't face blackouts.
That's another thing my bill does. You will not be able to face blackouts.
You'll be getting what you pay for, full access with no tricks or last minute gimmicks.
While our Packers season has been off to a bit of a bumpy start, it does not change our commitment to watch them.
And it's time to pass my for the fans act because every Wisconsinite should be able to watch the green and gold tonight without more subscriptions and more costs.
Go pack, go. And now I'll pass it on to Don.
Excellent. Thank you very, very much, Tammy. Hey, everyone. And thank you for having me.
My name is done on the service, the Eastern District Vice President of the Tavern League of Wisconsin. And I also own two license establishments in the city of Green Bay.
My industry is a wonderful one. And I smile each day I go to work.
Owners of bars restaurants and supper clubs are some of the most hardest working kind, charitable, community driven business owners you can meet.
And I love being able to associate and assist them with any issue that affects our livelihoods.
It's no secret that small business owners are seeing rising costs happening more rapidly every day.
What makes this situation unique is its geographical impact on our state, as well as other states in the nation.
Being in a local market, which is Green Bay and Milwaukee, we can air the Green Bay Packers locally, but anywhere else in the state from Madison to Warsaw to Superior, Wisconsin.
Any game on a streaming service requires a commercial subscription.
The difference between a commercial and the residential subscription is, as you can imagine, the cost.
We'll get into that in a minute.
This year for the Packers, there are four games that are streaming with one of them tonight, and two of them being arguably the biggest games of the year on the eve of Thanksgiving and on Christmas Day.
To get these streaming services commercially, you have to contact a separate company that provides the ability to air the streaming services in your establishment.
You want to watch Monday, Thursday night football based on capacity. It's $1,100 to $95,000 a year.
Another service that plays football games exclusively charges a monthly fee instead.
But that still adds up to $2,400 to $3,600 per year.
And one of those holiday games we were talking about, well, they don't disclose those prices publicly, but you guessed it, it's thousands of dollars per year.
If you want to chance it and break the rules, it's a fine anywhere from $750 to $30,000 and could escalate up to $150,000 if proven willful.
And that's per violation, which is per streaming service, per instance.
And that'll make the price of a pint of a plate go up real fast.
Each streaming service requires a different annual subscription per service per year, which adds up to thousands of dollars and simply not affordable as an incredible new expense on a small business.
And so, there's a lot of other things that we need to do.
We need to make sure that we're able to make sure that our establishments in the outside markets today are getting letters and pressure from cable and Internet providers.
And the privatization of these providers are restricting hardworking business owners from having any business during peak opportunities.
And with thousands of small businesses being affected in Wisconsin, something has to be done.
And speaking on behalf of a lot of these businesses, I truly hope the for the fans act continues with bipartisan support to regulate costs and streaming blackouts and provide free local access for everyone.
I want to thank you guys for your time. Appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Don. And now we will take a question or two. I do know the senator has to run in vote. So we will do this as quickly as possible.
Senator, the first question we have for you is what have you done to build support for this bill? And is there a realistic legislative path to get it through Congress?
Oh, and I think you are muted. So we'll just unmute.
Thank you. So first this issue really isn't about politics at all. It's the complicated sports streaming landscape is a great unifier for everyone trying to watch these sports these days.
So there's a lot of public support for the for the fans act. And whether I'm traveling around Wisconsin or in Washington DC, folks are really excited about this bill. They're coming up to me talking about it.
The momentum is there. And now I'm trying to build up support in the United States Senate to get it across the finish line. So this week, we are working in the Senate on a college sports bill.
It's being debated right now as we speak. In fact, that's what I'm going to go to the Senate floor to vote on an aspect of that shortly.
And I'm using that bill to add to offer this amendment and to educate raise awareness with my colleagues. And I'm going to continue to pound the pavement and make my case for the for the fans act as we move forward.
Great. Thank you, Senator and folks on the call. I'm sorry that we'll have to call it a bit short today, but the senator has to go vote. So we'll let her go do that. I'll be sending around a recording of this meeting to all participants in the next 30 minutes or so.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any unanswered questions you had. Thank you so much, everyone. Bye bye.