Judge Discards Jury Verdict In NFL Sunday Ticket Case, Rules in Favor of the League
Judge Phillip Gutierrez has been skeptical of the antitrust lawsuit against Sunday Ticket from the beginning.
Looks like the NFL won’t be cutting any multi-billion dollar checks to the plaintiffs in the NFL Sunday Ticket class-action antitrust lawsuit, at least not for a while. On Thursday, Judge Phillip Gutierrez tossed out the verdict in the case, concluding that it was in error and that the jury did not properly apply the law. It’s a big victory for the NFL, and though it will probably lead to an appeal on the part of the plaintiffs, it seems they have a decidedly uphill battle in front of them to get a different ruling.
Key Details:
- The judge threw out the $4.7 million in damages awarded to the plaintiffs, as well.
- His dismissal was based on the finding that it would be “impossible” to determine a whole class was injured based on the evidence provided.
- The best option left to the plaintiffs is to hope the NFL is willing to settle.
The final ruling from Judge Gutierrez is the best-case scenario for the NFL. It went to court on Wednesday with a motion to toss out the jury’s ruling but could have seen the judge simply reduce the damages, or even order a new trial altogether. At that hearing, Judge Gutierrez gave a hint of what he was thinking by saying the jury did not use a proper formula to determine damages in the case.
On Thursday, the judge ruled that it was “impossible for a jury to determine on a class-wide basis that Sunday Ticket subscribers would have indeed paid less in the absence of Defendants’ anticompetitive conduct.”
He also said the plaintiffs “failed to provide evidence from which a reasonable jury could make a finding of injury and an award of actual damages that would not be erroneous as a matter of law, be totally unfounded and/or be purely speculative.”
The jury did not escape a scolding in the ruling either, as Judge Gutierrez said the damages given to plaintiffs “were not based on the ‘evidence and reasonable inferences’ but instead were more akin to ‘guesswork or speculation.’”
With the verdict, so to go the $4.7 billion in damages the NFL was found to be liable for by the jury. That number would have tripled to $14.1 billion thanks to federal antitrust laws, but now NFL owners can breathe a little easier.
What Can the Plaintiffs Do Now?
The plaintiffs have two options at this point. They can appeal the case in the name of winning, which would likely mean gathering a new group of expert witnesses and lawyers since Judge Gutierrez tossed the case for evidentiary reasons. But that will be expensive and will cause a final ruling to be delayed for months, potentially years.
They could also approach the NFL about a settlement, which may be their best option. The league is clearly in a strong position now and was planning to appeal the ruling anyway if it ended up on the losing side of Judge Gutierrez’s ruling on Thursday. But the league may want the publicity of the trial to go away more than it wants an outright win in the case, and if that is true it may come to the negotiating table for a settlement.
What does the ruling mean for fans? In short, essentially nothing will change. The upcoming season will continue to see NFL Sunday Ticket be the exclusive home of out-of-market football games, and YouTube TV will continue charging $449 for viewers to purchase the service a la carte for the entire season.
NFL Sunday Ticket
NFL Sunday Ticket is a subscription video streaming service that allows football fans to watch every live out-of-market NFL game on Sunday afternoons on YouTube or YouTube TV.