Getty Image / Jakub Porzycki
The NFL is by far the biggest league in America, and tens of millions of our fellow sports fans tune in every Sunday during the season. Many of those fans have used NFL Sunday Ticket to watch out-of-market games, which was on DirecTV from its inception in 1994 until 2022, spending last season on YouTube TV.
An antitrust lawsuit against the NFL and DirecTV for conspiring to fix the price of out-of-market games by driving up the price of NFL Sunday Ticket went to trial this month. On Thursday, the jury in the case returned an absolutely massive verdict that is going to make a lot of checking accounts swell just a little bit in the near future.
“A federal judge has ordered the NFL to pay $4.7 billion in residential class damages and $96 million in commercial class damages to fans and bars, respectively, in the Sunday Ticket case. In the statement below, the league says it will appeal the decision,” Albert Breer said on Twitter.
The NFL released a statement, which said:
“We are disappointed with the jury’s verdict today in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit. 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. We will certainly contest this decision as we believe that the class action claims in this case are baseless and without merit. We thank the jury for their time and service and for the guidance and oversight from Judge Gutierrez throughout the trial.”
With 2.4 million subscribers, according to the lawsuit, that works out to a little under $2000 per subscriber in terms of the settlement. And, Federal Antitrust damages are trebled, meaning that number could end up around $6000.
Now, will the NFL ever actually pay out anything close to this amount? Who knows. It seems unlikely, in my uninformed opinion. It’s a serious chunk of change, as league-wide revenue was just under $19 billion last season. As the NFL, said, they will appeal, and that process could take years.
On the other hand, the NFL had the chance to settle the lawsuit out of court, or go to arbitration like DirecTV, and chose to leave it up to a jury. They did this to themselves.
The crux of the lawsuit revolved around the fact that the NFL bundles out-of-market rights for all its teams, instead of allowing each team to negotiate this rights separately, which could lower prices for consumers. Proposals were given to the NFL by other potential Sunday Ticket partners that would’ve lowered prices, but the league declined.
The legalese beyond that is very complicated. But, as it stands, the NFL owes a lot of people a lot of money, and one of those people could be you.