NFL Sunday Ticket Drama Continues: Plaintiffs Fight Back After Court Dismissal
NFL Sunday Ticket Drama Continues: Plaintiffs Fight Back After Court Dismissal
The lawsuit is now virtually guaranteed to stretch into its 10th year after the filing of the appeal.
The lawsuit surrounding NFL Sunday Ticket will officially continue. The suit was first brought by lawyers representing more than 2 million residential customers as well as nearly 50,000 bars and restaurants against Sunday Ticket and DIRECTV in 2015, arguing that the product violated United States antitrust laws because it limited the options for watching out-of-market NFL games to just one product, then charged an onerous price for that product. A judge threw out the eventual jury ruling against Sunday Ticket, but the plaintiffs in the case have now officially appealed that decision to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court.
Key Details:
- The NFL was facing as much as $14 billion in damages thanks to the jury’s ruling.
- Judge Phillip Gutierrez set aside the jury verdict on grounds that the panel did not award damages correctly in the case.
- The appeal will ensure the case continues on for months.
After years of laborious twists and turns, the case finally went to trial this summer. During the three-week proceedings, many of the league’s top officials were called to testify, including commissioner Roger Goodell. The jury eventually ruled that Sunday Ticket did indeed constitute an antitrust violation, and awarded the plaintiffs $4.7 billion in damages. That number could have been tripled to $14.1 billion under U.S. antitrust law, a hefty sum even for the incredibly deep-pocked NFL ownership group to come up with.
However, Judge Phillip Gutierrez had the ability to throw out that ruling as a matter of law, and the league quickly filed a motion requesting that he do just that. During a hearing to entertain the NFL’s motion, Judge Gutierrez said that the jury improperly calculated the damage figure, giving the league hope that it would see the decision nullified.
On Aug. 1, Judge Gutierrez officially threw out the jury verdict. However, the plaintiffs filed their appeal to the 9th Circuit on Friday, Aug. 30 officially challenging the judge’s final decision, as well as “all other orders, opinions, rulings, and decisions,” relating to his tossing of the verdict against the NFL.
Will NFL Sunday Ticket Change At All This Season?
The appeals process is likely to drag on for months, and could well stretch into 2025 at this rate. While the case continues to work its way through the courts, there will be no substantive changes in price or content offerings for NFL Sunday Ticket.
That may be disappointing to fans who were hoping to finally be able to buy single-team packages of Sunday Ticket this season. It was revealed during the trial that ESPN approached the league with an idea to offer single-team plans of the service for around $70 per month, but the proposal was not met with approval by NFL higher-ups.
The NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit is so old that rights to the out-of-market games service are no longer held by DIRECTV. YouTube TV first took over the operation of NFL Sunday Ticket before the start of the 2023 season; this year, subscribers will have to pay $479 to sign up for the service, or $379 if they also subscribe to YouTube TV during the NFL 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.