The NFL does have won the case last month when a federal judge overturned a multimillion dollar class action jury verdict against NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers who had claimed they had been unfairly overcharged, but the Ninth Circuit, which had previously ruled against the NFL in this case, could overturn that decision.
As expected, counsel for the members have appealed U. S District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez’s decision to grant the NFL a view as a matter of law in the In Re: NFL’s” Sunday Ticket” Antitrust Litigation. Gutierrez found that a Los Angeles judge, which over a three-week trial heard from 27 testimony and saw 82 admitted displays, did what” no fair jury” could have done in this case: get class-wide injuries and damage against the NFL.

The NFL and its 32 groups, who are supposed to thrive under antitrust regulation as competing companies, were found to be in violation of the law by pooling radio rights for out-of-town fans, according to the jury. Local supporters of NFL teams can see their team ‘ games for free and over-the-air, but local fans of NBA, NHL, or MLB team must pay to watch games on local sports networks via cable or satellite. The Ticket gives viewers access to all activities for all groups and for the 2024 season costs$ 479 via YouTube TV ( the price is significantly lower for college kids —$ 199—and can be lower through several different discounts/packages, though bars and restaurants pay more to offer it to buyers ).
If NFL team individually sold their out-of-town television rights, their games may be enjoyable for less than the Sunday Ticket, according to the claimants. Imagine, for instance, a New York Giants enthusiast living in Los Angeles. The Giants could arrange for the game to be broadcast on a LA tv station, and the fan would not have to pay anything extra to see the games they care about, or at least pay less than the Sunday Ticket.
The NFL firmly refutes this theory, noting that fans in some places wo n’t be able to watch their favorite team without the pooling of games ( think a Vermont resident who supports the New Orleans Saints ), or that the game might be expensive. Without the Sunday Ticket, the group has even warned that the economy of free local fan television may be reconsidered.
The plaintiffs ‘ attorneys, who represent more than 2.4 million home users and more than 48, 000 cafes, restaurants, and other industrial establishments that purchased Sunday Ticket anywhere between 2011 and 2023, were more persuasive than the judge. The jury awarded$ 4.6 billion and$ 97 million to the residential subscribers and commercial establishments, respectively, and with antitrust law damages eligible for trebling, the NFL and owners faced the prospect of paying a judgment as high as$ 14.1 billion.

However, Gutierrez and the NFL both agreed that the jury members had been misled and confused throughout the test. In that they appeared to punish the NFL for the price difference between the list price and the ( lower ) price that subscribers actually paid after discounts, jurors allegedly confused the term “overcharge” with a “discount.” Gutierrez also ruled that claimants ‘ expert testimony, which included speculative scenarios to determine market prices, bamboozled judges. Jurors were instructed to imagine if broadcasts of NFL games were distributed similarly to those of college football games, with the underlying assumption that more of those games would be made available to out-of-town fans who do n’t subscribe to the Sunday Ticket. Gutierrez argued that this assertion was deceptive because it does n’t sufficiently demonstrate that NFL teams would broadcast games to cable and satellite customers. According to a report from Sportico, it costs$ 788 to see every NFL sport on TV without wires.
The dispute began in 2015, and in 2019 a divided three-judge section on the Ninth Circuit reversed a trial court’s termination of the case. A league-wide agreement to prevent individual teams from selling out-of-town broadcast rights appears to overstep the bounds of the teams ‘ autonomy and limit the viewers ‘ options, according to a judge’s opinion, Segal Ikuta. She emphasized that the U.S. Supreme Court found an identical restriction by the NCAA on specific colleges selling broadcast rights to be in violation of antitrust law in NCAA v. Board of Regents. College groups, including those that fans wanted to watch, were prevented from negotiating their own TV bargains by the NCAA’s caution.
The Ninth Circuit may once more support the plaintiffs ‘ case by upholding Gutierrez, according to the counsel of Sunday Ticket users. But they’ll had to wait a while. Ninth Circuit appeals typically go a little slow, with events frequently putting off a choice for a while for the processing of an appeal. It’s always possible the parties could negotiate a settlement at some point, though after nearly a century in judge, it’s telling there’s been no settlement.
There’s a chance the Ninth Circuit wo n’t have the final word on the litigation, either. In 2020, the NFL denied the team’s plea for appellate for evaluation of the Ninth Circuit’s decision. Justice Brett Kavanaugh added a statement that suggested that he and other magistrates were interested in the fundamental competitive issues, though.
Teams in professional leagues should be given some discretion in coordinating their activities and pooling their resources, such as broadcasting rights, to improve the league’s overall interests, according to Kavanaugh. The group might gain traction if Kavanaugh writes that “antitrust law probably does not require that the NFL and its part teams compete against one another with respect to tv rights.”