A federal judge in California is ordering the NFL to pay about $4.7 billion in a class-action lawsuit after ruling that the league inflated subscription prices in violation of anti-trust laws.
The NFL will appeal the decision, according to a statement released by the league.
The lawsuit covered 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses who paid for the package of out-of-market games from the 2011 through 2022 seasons on DirecTV. The lawsuit claimed the league broke antitrust laws by selling its package of Sunday games at an inflated price. The subscribers also say the league restricted competition by offering ‘Sunday Ticket’ only on a satellite provider.
The jury of five men and three women deliberated for nearly five hours before reaching its decision. As a result, plaintiffs were awarded $4.7 billion in damages to the residential class and $96 million in damages to the commercial class.
‘This case transcends football. This case matters,’ plaintiffs attorney Bill Carmody said during Wednesday’s closing arguments. ‘It’s about justice. It’s about telling the 32 team owners who collectively own all the big TV rights, the most popular content in the history of TV – that’s what they have. It’s about telling them that even you cannot ignore the antitrust laws. Even you cannot collude to overcharge consumers. Even you can’t hide the truth and think you’re going to get away with it.’
The NFL was expected to appeal to the 9th Circuit and then possibly the Supreme Court.
The league maintained it has the right to sell ‘Sunday Ticket’ under its antitrust exemption for broadcasting. The plaintiffs say that only covers over-the-air broadcasts and not pay TV.
‘We are disappointed with the jury’s verdict today in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,’ the league said in a statement. ‘We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which features all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games, supplemented by many additional choices including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL+, is by far the most fan friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment.
‘We will certainly contest this decision as we believe that the class action claims in this case are baseless and without merit.’
DirecTV had ‘Sunday Ticket’ from its inception in 1994 through 2022. The league signed a seven-year deal with Google’s YouTube TV that began with the 2023 season.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2015 by the Mucky Duck sports bar in San Francisco but was dismissed in 2017. Two years later, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over California and eight other states, reinstated the case. Gutierrez ruled last year the case could proceed as a class action.
As part of the class-action lawsuit, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell took the stand in federal court last week and made the surprising admission that he felt the league’s own network was subpar.
Goodell went so far as to admit he sold the rights for Thursday Night Football away from NFL Network because he thought the coverage was so poor.
‘I had my own opinion that our production was below standards that the networks had set,’ he said Monday, referring to CBS and Fox. ‘We had not met that standard.’
NFL Network had the exclusive rights to Thursday night football from 2006 to 2013. The games were then split between CBS and NBC until 2017, when Fox took over the rights. Thursday night football has been on Amazon Prime Video since 2022.