Getty Image / Dob Juan Moore
NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers rejoiced when a federal jury awarded them $4.7 billion in June in a federal Antitrust lawsuit over unfair pricing of the only way to watch out-of-market regular season games on Sunday afternoons.
The verdict was set to give each subscriber well over $1000, with some estimates ranging up to $2500 in what would be a huge boost to a lot of people’s pocketbooks. But, that’s all for naught, as the judge in the case has thrown out the verdict on Thursday.
Here’s Front Office Sports with more.
U.S. District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez penned a 16-page ruling on why he made the extraordinary decision to set aside the verdict rendered after a three-week trial concluded on June 27. In the order that granted the NFL’s motion to set aside the verdict, Gutierrez wrote that the “jury’s damages verdict is clearly not supported by the evidence and must be vacated.”
Gutierrez voiced skepticism on how the jury came up with the $4.7 billion figure, one that wasn’t presented to the eight-member jury during the three-week trial at a hearing on Wednesday. Still, courtroom observers expected that Gutierrez would take days or weeks to issue his decision and it was expected that he’d order a new trial if the concerns were insurmountable.
To dumb it down the best I can, that $4.7 billion number was not based in any real fact and the jury basically made the amount up. While juries are given a lot of leeway in civil trials, their awards have to have some rhyme or reason to them, and this one did not.
This is great for the NFL, obviously. Since damages in antitrust cases are tripled, this saves them approximately $14.1 billion. Even for the NFL that’s a significant amount of money.
But, if you were a subscriber to NFL Sunday Ticket, formerly available on DirecTV and now on YouTube TV, this stinks. While it was going to be a while before anyone saw any money, but that’s still money some people thought they may have in the future and now they won’t.
I’m sure the plaintiffs will appeal, but this case seems dead.