Jury Sentences NFL for $4.7 Billion in ‘Sunday Ticket’ Legal Battle

A Los Angeles jury agreed Thursday that the NFL violated antitrust law by offering Sunday afternoon games through a premium subscription service, awarding plaintiffs a hefty $4.7 billion in damages in a years-long class action lawsuit.

The NFL said it intended to contest the decision.

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The lawsuit, first filed in 2015, names 2.4 million individual subscribers and 48,000 businesses such as bars and restaurants that paid for out-of-market games during the 2011-2022 NFL seasons on DirecTV. It claims the league broke antitrust laws by selling packages of Sunday games at an inflated price and offering the desired Sunday Ticket games only through a satellite provider.

In 2023, the NFL entered into a seven-year, $14 billion deal with YouTube TV that made Sunday Ticket available for streaming after 29 years on DirecTV, which launched the package.

The plaintiffs in that case argued that the league engaged in price-fixing because fans of one team could not buy tickets to only that team’s games. (Under the terms of media rights agreements with the networks, local stations broadcast games in the teams’ home markets on over-the-air television.) Instead, the league’s only option was to sign up for all out-of-market games through Sunday Ticket, which cost hundreds of dollars per season.

The NFL tried to get the case dismissed, but was unsuccessful. “The NFL-DirecTV agreement prevents telecasts from being shown on more than one channel, reducing the number of games available locally as free over-the-air broadcasts and leaving DirecTV as the only option for watching many games,” Judge Gutierrez explained in a summary of the plaintiffs’ position in his ruling earlier this year to keep the case moving. If the verdict stands, as Deadline wrote at the time, the result could be a free streaming service in which each of the league’s 32 teams would enter into individual agreements with the gaming platform.

This ruling is a rare case in the NFL, which is a colossus in the television industry and in American culture in general.

“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 many additional options including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL+, is by far the most user-friendly fans as a distribution model across sports and entertainment.”

The NFL added that it “will certainly challenge this decision as we believe class action lawsuits in this matter are meritless and without merit. We thank the jury for their time and service, and for Judge Gutierrez’s guidance and supervision throughout the trial.”

The next step will be to file post-trial motions, which will be heard by a judge on July 31, Deadline hears. If the verdict is not overturned, the judge will likely be asked to consider possible structural changes to the Sunday Ticket package, as well as a request from plaintiffs’ lawyers to award them legal fees.

If that happens, the league will likely appeal any adverse rulings to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and any damages or imposition of structural changes to the Sunday Ticket package will be stayed until the appeal is complete.

Dominic Patten contributed to this report

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