Jury awards $4.7 billion in damages

The jury ordered the league to pay $4 billion in damages to the residential class and $96 million in damages to the commercial class.

The lawsuit involved 2.4 million individual subscribers and 48,000 businesses that paid for a package of out-of-market games from the 2011–2022 seasons on DirecTV. The lawsuit alleged that the league violated antitrust law by selling the package of Sunday games at an inflated price. Subscribers also alleged that the league limited competition by offering the “Sunday Ticket” exclusively through a satellite provider.

The jury of five men and three women deliberated for almost five hours before reaching their decision.

“This case goes beyond football. This case matters,” plaintiffs’ attorney Bill Carmody said during closing arguments Wednesday. “It’s about justice. It’s about telling the 32 team owners who collectively own all the major television rights that the most popular content in the history of television — that’s what they own. It’s about telling them that even you can’t ignore the antitrust laws. Even you can’t collude to overcharge consumers. Even you can’t hide the truth and think you can get away with it.”

The NFL was expected to appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then possibly to the Supreme Court.

The league maintained that it had the right to sell “Sunday Ticket” under an antitrust exemption for broadcasts. The plaintiffs argue that this only applies to terrestrial broadcasts, not pay TV.

“We are disappointed with today’s jury verdict in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,” the league said in a statement. “We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which includes all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in participating team markets and nationwide distribution of our most popular games, complemented by a variety of additional options including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL+, is by far the most fan-friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment.

“We will certainly challenge this decision as we believe that the class claims in this case are baseless and without merit.”

DirecTV had “Sunday Ticket” from its inception in 1994–2022. The league signed a seven-year contract with Google YouTube TV, which began with the 2023 season.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2015 by San Francisco sports bar Mucky Duck, but was dismissed in 2017. Two years later, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over California and eight other states, revived the case. Last year, Gutierrez ruled that the case could be litigated as a class action.