NFL ordered to pay $4.8 in Sunday Ticket antitrust lawsuit

LOS ANGELES— A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ordered the NFL to pay nearly $4.8 billion in damages in an antitrust case that alleged that consumers and businesses were forced to overpay for a package of off-the-shelf NFL Sunday tickets. Los Angeles games.

The damage includes about $4.7 billion for residential subscribers and nearly $100 million for bars, restaurants and other businesses that subscribed to the package. In federal antitrust cases, damages could be tripled, bringing the total to more than $14.3 billion.

The ruling came after a three-week trial and years of legal wrangling over the out-of-market gaming suite that DirecTV owned until it was acquired by YouTube last season.

NFL.com informed that the lawsuit concerned “covered 2.4 million individual subscribers and 48,000 businesses in the United States that paid for a bundle of out-of-market games from the 2011-2022 seasons on DirecTV.”

The plaintiffs in the case argued that the NFL abused its market power to artificially limit competition and raise the cost of the package, which was approximately $300.

“We are disappointed with today’s jury verdict in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,” he added. 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 markets and national distribution of our most popular games, complemented by a number of additional options including RedZone, Sunday Tickets and NFL+, is by far the most fan-friendly distribution model across all of sports and entertainment.”

“We will certainly challenge this decision as we believe the claims made in this class action lawsuit are without merit and without merit,” the statement added.