The traditional American pastime of gathering at a local sports bar to watch Sunday football is being strangled by a technical and financial bottleneck, a restaurateur warns.
“That’s why we’re talking, because the simple fact is it’s hard to watch all the shows streaming… Is it on YouTube TV? Is it the [NFL] Sunday post? Is it Amazon?’” said Jim Hallers, Texas restaurateur and founder of Tailgators Pub & Grill. on “Varney & Co.” Friday.
“For the last 30 years, it’s come to us through DirecTV, and it’s worked,” he continued. “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 told lawmakers that the sudden fragmentation of the sports media landscape into separate streaming apps creates a costly technological maze for hospitality venues, threatening the business model of neighborhood — often rural — pubs that rely on NFL fans to keep their doors open in the fall.
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“Everyone has to move to streaming. And so literally now we have to buy streaming boxes. And in a typical small bar where I have maybe 30 or 40 TVs with a DIRECTV box mounted behind each TV, I now have to get an EverPass streaming box. But you can’t put an EverPass streaming box behind each TV. It doesn’t work like that,” Hallers said on Capitol Hill. “Imagine at home, if you try to stream 30 Netflixes at the same time, your internet connection will just disappear. Well, it’s the same in most bars and restaurants today.”
Fans watch Super Bowl LX at the Saloon in Boston on February 8, 2026. (Getty Images)
“A commercial video switcher with enough inputs and outputs can cost more than $15,000. A complete upgrade including equipment, cabling and labor will cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per restaurant,” he also testified. “So instead of simplifying the business, the transition adds an extra layer of cost and complexity.”
Wednesday’s congressional hearing was from the Iowa Restaurant Association and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, which each represent thousands of independent restaurant and bar owners, send letters to high-level Republican lawmakers in their states, urging them to act on “a significant change in the commercial distribution of the NFL Sunday Ticket that threatens to impose immediate and substantial burdens on small businesses” in their states.
The concern comes after streaming service EverPass Media announced it would become the exclusive retail 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 was sent to Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, who chairs the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust.
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“We understand that the transition to a streaming-based solution for NFL Sunday Ticket may require planning, from connectivity and hardware to overall site preparation. 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 to every guest who walks through the door,” reads the EverPass website.
“We really need this to work,” Hallers argued Friday. “It’s not about price. We just want technology that works, and that’s what they took away from us.”
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Brian Flood of Fox News contributed to this report.