Retired Fox Sports executive testifies in NFL Sunday Ticket trial

NFL Sunday Ticket Trial Overview:

• Who: A retired Fox Sports executive testified in a trial involving Sunday Ticket subscribers’ multibillion-dollar antitrust claims brought against the NFL.
• Why: The plaintiffs allege that the NFL worked with Fox, CBS and DirecTV to set the Sunday ticket price.
• Where: The NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit is pending in federal court in California.

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A retired Fox Sports executive testified that his network was involved in fixing the price of Sunday Ticket in a lawsuit alleging the NFL team violated antitrust laws.

In January, a federal judge in California ruled The NFL and its teams face multibillion-dollar antitrust charges in a multidistrict lawsuit over an earlier deal with DirecTV for its NFL Sunday Ticket television package.

On June 10, Lawrence A. Jones, who recently retired from Fox Sports, testified in a California federal court that Fox asked the league to agree to certain Sunday ticket prices because it viewed its DirecTV television package as an “existential” threat, Law360 reports. .

The jury was reportedly shown documents relating to negotiations between Fox and the NFL that took place in 2020 and 2021 for a new 10-year broadcast contract.

These demands included that the Sunday ticket price be no less than $293.96 per season and that subscriptions could not be increased by more than 20% above current levels. Fox told the NFL that “a significant change in Sunday Ticket distribution poses an existential threat to Fox’s NFL business,” according to testimony and documents.

Ultimately, the NFL allegedly did not agree to any specific prices or limits. According to Law360, the final agreement stipulated that products such as Sunday Ticket would be “marketed as a premium product for the league’s die-hard fans.”

Jones says the NFL made no specific promises to him about Sunday ticket prices, but he didn’t know what his superiors had been told. He announced that he was acting as a witness in a lawsuit in connection with a court summons

The claims date back to 2015

Many football fans, bars and restaurants initiated legal action in 2015, alleging that DirecTV’s NFL Sunday ticket package violated federal antitrust laws.

The over 20 cases that were consolidated in 2016all similarly alleged an anticompetitive agreement between DirecTV and the NFL under which the NFL granted DirecTV the exclusive right to live broadcast Sunday afternoon games out of market as NFL Sunday Ticket.

This, according to the plaintiffs, has “anti-competitive effects” because in the absence of such an agreement, “each team operating independently would offer its matches at a competitive price to anyone in the country who would like to watch that particular team,” according to the case files. .

The trial is ongoing.

Plaintiffs are represented by Marc M. Seltzer, Kalpana Srinivasan, Amanda Bonn, William C. Carmody, Seth Ard, Tyler Finn and Ian M. Gore of Susman Godfrey LLP; Scott Martin, Sathya S. Gosselin, Christopher L. Lebsock, Samuel Maida and Farhad Mirzadeh of Hausfeld LLP; and Howard Langer, Edward Diver, Peter Leckman and Kevin Trainer of Langer Grogan & Diver PC.

The NFL Sunday Ticket Class Action Lawsuits If In re: Sunday ticket antitrust proceedings conducted by the National Football LeagueCase No. 2:15-ml-02668, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

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