NFL ordered to pay billions to fans, bars from Sunday Ticket trial
A Los Angeles jury ruled against the NFL on Thursday in the Sunday Ticket trial, and the league has been ordered to pay approximately $12 billion in total to fans and sports bars who said they were overcharged on games that were out of market. According to Front Office Sports, the NFL is likely to appeal the ruling, and the league could take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2015 by a San Francisco sports bar called the Mighty Duck. At the time, the sports bar claimed the NFL violated antitrust law by bundling all the out-of-market games and making it impossible to buy a one-team package. The case was dismissed in 2017 but reinstated in 2019 and has now become a class action suit made up of millions of bars, restaurants and subscribers from June 7, 2011 through Feb. 7, 2023.
The NFL said that it will “certainly” appeal the verdict, calling the suit “baseless and without merit.” U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez oversaw the case and threatened to dismiss it as he said the plaintiffs have overcomplicated the case, per Front Office Sports. “The way you have tried this case is far from simple,” Gutierrez said to the plaintiff’s attorneys. “This case has turned into 25 hours of depositions and gobbledygook. … This case has gone in a direction it shouldn’t have gone.”
Sunday Ticket made the move to YouTube last year and costs $349 per season. The NFL is accused of inflating the price of the package, and it was revealed during the trial that the league declined an ESPN proposal to take over the offering last season and set the price at $70, which included single-team packages.
NFL reacts to the ruling of Sunday Ticket lawsuit
“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.”
NFL Sunday Ticket initially launched during the start of the 1994 NFL season. The package was an exclusive product for DirecTV users until 2023 when the NFL reached an agreement with YouTube.
According to Spotrac, a lasting outcome of the trial will hopefully be fans’ ability “to purchase single-team streaming packages, while also (hopefully) being alleviated of blackout restrictions.”