Appeals court seems skeptical of NFL in ‘Sunday Ticket’ arguments
Appeals court seems skeptical of NFL in ‘Sunday Ticket’ arguments
A panel of three judges is hearing arguments over whether the class-action lawsuit over price fixing of NFL Sunday Ticket should be brought back from the dead.
In 2024, it appeared that the NFL had won a major victory in the class-action lawsuit over its out-of-market game package, the NFL Sunday Ticket, when Judge Phillip Gutierrez threw out a $4.7 billion judgment against the league. But the plaintiffs in the case appealed quickly, and a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is now hearing arguments from both sides as to whether or not the verdict was appropriately discarded.
Key Details:
- Skepticism: The appeals judges seemed skeptical of the NFL’s arguments at Monday’s hearings.
- Heart of the issue: The lawsuit claims that the NFL engaged in unlawful inflation of the NFL Sunday Ticket.
- Only one step back: A former NFL attorney thinks the NFL is likely to avoid having the full verdict reinstated.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the NFL appeared before the Ninth Circuit court on Monday to discuss the revival of the class-action suit against the league for allegedly unlawfully ratcheting up the price of NFL Sunday Ticket. In 2024, a jury determined that the league had broken antitrust laws and awarded the plaintiffs a $4.7 billion judgment — which would have tripled to $14.1 billion under antitrust laws.
Arguments on Monday centered on the testimony of Daniel Rascher, an expert hired by the plaintiffs’ lawyers to build their case. In 2024, Judge Gutierrez ruled that Rascher and another expert’s testimony was so flawed that they should never have been included in the case, and thus tossed the verdict.
On Monday, the NFL argued that Judge Gutierrez was within his rights to make that decision and strike down the plaintiffs’ victory. However, two of the judges on the panel expressed doubt on that position. Even if the expert testimony from Rascher and others was flawed, they said, that is up to the jury to decide.
“My fundamental problem with your position is taking all this [away] from the jury,” Judge Joan Lefkow said.
A number of different options are on the table for the NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit, depending on the ultimate ruling of the appellate court. They could send the case back to trial, reinstate the verdict against the NFL in full, or cause the damages against the league to be recalculated.
Speaking with Sports Business Journal, former NFL staff attorney and current law professor Jodi Balsam said she didn’t think the judges’ questions pointed to a full restoration of damages against the NFL. Instead, their queries seemed to point to another trial for the case, and what structure that trial would take.
“They were not asking about how a jury would deal with the job of simply recalculating damages,” Balsam said. “The kind of questions they were asking were about whether this [would still be a class action case] or if that issue would be revisited.”
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.