Sunday Ticket Trial, Day 8: Roger Goodell’s Testimony

In more than 17 years as National Football League commissioner, Roger Goodell has never testified in court during a trial. That changed last month when the league subpoenaed him to testify in the Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit.

His comments covered 113 pages of the 2,506-page transcript. And they were largely uneventful, largely because: (1) he did not have as much personal knowledge of Sunday Tickets as other witnesses who were directly involved in the DirecTV contract negotiations; and (2) everything he said was consistent with most of the testimony he was presented with.

In short, the league insisted it was not setting a price for Sunday Ticket. The league also acknowledged that it was a premium product intended to complement games available at no additional cost on CBS and Fox in all markets across the country.

“Sunday Ticket, that’s a supplemental package,” Goodell said. “It’s a supplemental package. It’s not for everybody — the fan. They get the fan — the fans get the general audience, and the games are selected by CBS and FOX on Sunday afternoon. Obviously, Sunday Ticket includes all the games that are not assigned to our network partners on Sunday afternoon in those two windows. We want to make sure that it doesn’t infringe or limit our availability to reach that broader audience on Sunday afternoon on CBS or FOX. . . . (I)t could have a negative impact on our broadcast networks, so the broadcast networks are very concerned about the impact that this will have on them in terms of reaching that broader audience.”

Goodell also said (according to limited reporting on the trial as it unfolded) that NFL Network had pulled the plug on the production. Thursday Night Football games on his own because he wasn’t good at it.

“(W)e were presenting a high-quality production and — and we were delivering it to our fans,” Goodell said. “I felt it wasn’t — it wasn’t up to the standard that the networks set, which I think is a very high standard, but it was our job to meet that standard and I didn’t think we were meeting that standard.”

And that was pretty much it.

The jury’s verdict indicates that it found the NFL’s explanation rooted in semantics. No, they don’t set the price. Yes, they want the price to be high to protect CBS and Fox.

This point has been proven time and time again. The antitrust violations stem from the fact that 32 independent companies used the league office to organize the distribution of Sunday Ticket as an expensive premium product. This allowed the 32 independent companies to maximize the fee from DirecTV for Sunday Ticket and to maximize the fees from CBS and Fox for games available via antennas or basic cable packages.

That’s right. And while anyone would blame Goodell for the outcome, the truth is that the system was set up 12 years before he became commissioner. The owners knew, or should have known, that they were entering a potential antitrust minefield.

This should have been obvious from the start. And honestly, it’s amazing it took them almost 30 years to detonate a $14.1 billion bomb.