The NFL defended its shift to streaming during a meeting with FCC officials last week as the agency questions whether the league has made watching games too challenging and pricey, according to a filing Tuesday.

During a meeting Friday in Washington, DC, which the NFL requested, the league’s top media exec, Hans Schroeder, argued that allowing the league’s 32 teams to negotiate their own media rights deals would actually worsen confusion and costs for viewers, according to an FCC filing.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr – who has told The Post that the football league could lose its antitrust exemption if it moves too many games behind streaming service paywalls – greeted the NFL executives before turning over the meeting to his top advisers, according to the filing.

In February, the Federal Communications Commission asked the public for comment on how the shift from traditional broadcasts to streamers has impacted sports fans — claiming viewers pay as much as $1,500 a year to watch every pro football game across several streamers.

The Department of Justice has launched a separate antitrust investigation into the NFL, a government official told The Post earlier this month.

Federal officials are questioning the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which has allowed teams to pool their media rights together into massive TV packages – and whether the antitrust exemption should be revoked for bringing harm to consumers.

In his presentation Friday, Schroeder argued that pro football is the most fan-friendly sport for viewers despite the shift to streaming because most of its games are still available through free broadcast television.

His presentation said 87% of NFL games are primarily distributed on broadcast TV through CBS, NBC, Fox and ABC.

When specific games are streaming-exclusive, they are also available in the local markets of the two teams playing, according to the league.

“Facts are stubborn things,” Schroeder told the Wall Street Journal. “Even as we’ve gone on to new platforms like Netflix or Amazon…we are doing so in a very selective and appropriate way.”

Last season, football fans needed to shell out $14.99 a month for Amazon Prime to watch Thursday Night Football, but they also needed to cough up at least $8.99 for a basic Netflix plan to catch the double-header games on Christmas Day.

The NFL has argued the streamers are largely replacing broadcasters as consumers’ preferred way to watch content, and that teams need to meet viewers where they are.

But streaming subscribers have started revolting against constant price hikes, as Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and HBO Max have all raised prices over the past year.

“For so long, Americans were used to just sitting down and grabbing the remote and just very quickly and easily finding the game,” Carr previously told The Post.

“Over the last couple of years, that experience has become much more frustrating and people have to sign up for multiple streaming services and they have to pay out of pocket for more of these and it’s difficult to find the game.”

In comments submitted to the FCC, Fox Corp said “making paywalled streaming the default viewing option for live sports could have devastating consequences for consumers and broadcast stations alike.”

Fox Corp and The Post’s parent company, News Corp, share common ownership.

Pricey media rights deals have turned the NFL into a serious money-making business, with nearly all of the league’s 32 teams run by billionaires — including Walmart heir Rob Walton, who owns the Denver Broncos, and the Hunt family, which owns the Kansas City Chiefs.

The NFL’s media rights agreements with streamers owned by Disney, Paramount, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, NFL Network, Amazon, Google and Netflix are expected to rake in more than $100 billion under their current contracts, the FCC said in February.