For much of the last decade-plus, the NFL has offered an NFL Sunday ticket package for fans to watch out-of market games. The overall draw of Sunday ticket was that out of market fans could watch their team on any give game week.
When it comes to football fans like myself who lived in Montana, Philadelphia, and currently upstate New York, purchasing NFL Sunday Ticket has become essential to watching Los Angeles Rams games legally. Without NFL Sunday Ticket, most of my weeks would have been filled with Broncos, Seahawks, and Vikings games, Eagles and Steelers games, and now Bills, Giants, and Jets games. In the mid-2000s, it was extremely rare that the Rams played an in-market team in my area or were that Sunday’s “Game of the Week”.
The issue with NFL Sunday Ticket is that it has become increasingly more expensive, pricing out the casual fan. The package is currently $349 annually on YouTube TV and that doesn’t even get fans every game. With games set to premier on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Peacock, subscription fee totals to watch every game would come out to $145.21 per month. If you multiply that number for five months, that’s a total of $726 for the year.
It’s easy to say one could just go to the local sports bar with Sunday ticket, by the time food and drinks are purchased, a typical person is likely still spending at least $50 per trip to the bar, if not more.
On Thursday, a jury ordered the NFL to pay residential and commercial classes $4.7 billion for violating antitrust laws in distributing out-of-market Sunday afternoon games on a premium subscription service. According to NPR,
“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 NFL is obviously set to appeal the decision.
This could end up being a monumental decision when it comes to the NFL Sunday Ticket package. Nothing will change immediately, but it’s also worth noting that during the trial, it was revealed that the NFL declined an ESPN offer to make Sunday Ticket $70 per year with options for single-team subscriptions. This is something that the NBA offers with its NBA Team Pass.
As Margaret Fleming of Front Office Sports said, “If the judge upholds the verdict, he could consider structural changes to Sunday Ticket, but those wouldn’t go into effect until after the appeals process.” David Rumsey and Eric Fisher added,
“Should the trial’s result hold up in further appeals, fans could end up seeing teams sell their local rights and out-of-market games end up on various streaming services or cable channels.”
There won’t be any changes coming this season with what will likely be a very lengthy appeals process. It could be 2-3 years before actual structural changes are made. The NFL won’t be looking to give up that amount of money to fans and commercial establishments that easily.
At the same time, it could at the very least put the league in check with the cost and limitations to some of their services when it comes to things like NFL Sunday Ticket. It will be interesting if streaming services like Hulu or Max get involved as they have with other sports. ESPN could be an interesting option as well, especially as they launch a streaming service with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.
This seems like only the tip of the iceberg in these types of discussions. The way people are consuming entertainment has changed significantly as we’ve gone from cable, to satellite TV, to streaming, and now a streaming version of cable.
The key date here will be July 31st. Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio’s analysis can typically be taken with a grain of salt, but as a former lawyer, he knows what he’s talking about here in a sense. Said Florio,
“The litigation is far from over. There will be multiple appeals. The magnitude of the verdict makes it a certainty that the case will be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court…The next key date is 32 days aways. Wednesday, July 31. That’s when Judge Philip Gutierrez will conduct a hearing on the NFL’s motion for judgment as a matter of law…I’s possible that he’ll take the entire verdict, crumple it into a ball, and throw it in the trash…Consumers should be rooting for those changes to be made. Regardless of whether the verdict sticks, we’ve learned that the NFL has deliberately overcharged for Sunday Ticket and limited it to an all-or-nothing option so that we’ll just shrug our shoulders and watch the games available on Fox or CBS in our local markets.”
Again, changes don’t seem to be imminent with an appeals process set to take place. With that said, changes with how games are dispersed within the current model could be something to keep an eye on as the case continues.