Judge Overturns $4.7 Billion ‘Sunday Ticket’ Jury Verdict, Rules for NFL

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal judge has overturned a jury verdict in a class action lawsuit filed by “Sunday Ticket” subscribers against the NFL, awarding $4.7 billion in damages and ruling in the NFL’s favor.

District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled Thursday that the testimony of two witnesses representing the subscribers was based on flawed methodology and should be thrown out.

“Without the testimony of Dr. (Daniel) Rascher and Dr. (John) Zona, no reasonable jury could have found injuries or damages to the entire group,” Gutierrez wrote at the end of his 16-page ruling.

On June 27, a jury awarded $4.7 billion in damages to individual and commercial subscribers after ruling that the NFL violated antitrust law by broadcasting out-of-market Sunday afternoon games on its premium subscription service.

The lawsuit affected 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses in the United States who paid for a DirecTV package that included out-of-market matches from the 2011-2022 seasons.

“We are grateful for today’s ruling in the Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,” the NFL said in a statement. “We believe the NFL’s media distribution model provides our fans with a variety of options to follow the game they love, including local broadcasts of every game on free over-the-air television. We thank Judge Gutierrez for his time and consideration of this matter and look forward to an exciting 2024 NFL season.”

Telephone calls and emails sent to lawyers representing Sunday Ticket subscribers went unanswered.

A jury of five men and three women ruled that the NFL is liable for paying damages of $4,610,331,671.74 to individual customers (home users) and $96,928,272.90 to business customers (enterprise users).

Because damages can be tripled under federal antitrust law, the NFL could be liable for $14,121,779,833.92.

Gutierrez stated in his decision that had he not ruled in favor of the NFL, he would have vacated the jury’s verdict on damages and conditionally granted a new trial “based on the jury’s unreasonable award of damages.”

Rascher’s models were variations on the college football model. Rascher, the University of San Francisco economist, said during testimony that “they figured it out in college sports, (so) they could certainly figure it out in the NFL.”

Gutierrez said Rascher’s testimony “was not the result of sound economic methodology” and that he needed to explain how out-of-market broadcasts could be available on cable and satellite television without an additional subscription.

Gutierrez also found flaws in Zona’s “multiple distributor” model, as he predicted that consumers would pay more if another service besides DirecTV offered “Sunday Ticket,” and the assumption that another distributor — cable, satellite or streaming — would be available was unfounded.

“Without knowing what ‘direct-to-consumer’ means, it is impossible to determine whether it would be economically rational for consumers to purchase ‘Sunday Ticket’ from an alternative distributor at a higher price,” Gutierrez said. “And that definition was necessary to determine whether there was a viable alternative distributor at all during the period under investigation. Without that information, the Court cannot determine whether the nonexclusive worlds were reliably modeled.”

The amount proposed by the jury was also not consistent with the model of Daniel Rascher ($7.01 billion) or with the model of Zona ($3.48 billion), who served as an expert in this case.

Instead, the jury used the 2021 list price of $293.96 and subtracted $102.74, the average price Sunday Ticket subscribers actually paid. The jury then used the $191.26 it deemed an “overpayment” and multiplied it by the number of subscribers to arrive at the damages amount.

Gutierrez said the jury failed to follow his instructions and “instead relied on information unrelated to the record to create its own ‘undue burden.'”

This is not the first time the NFL has obtained a ruling ending the proceedings in the case, which has been ongoing since 2015.

In 2017, U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell dismissed the lawsuit and ruled in favor of the NFL, as she found that “Sunday Ticket” did not reduce the number of NFL game broadcasts and that even if DirecTV charged excessive prices, this “in itself did not constitute competitive harm” because it had to negotiate with the NFL to offer the package.

Two years later, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reopened the case.

It is likely that the plaintiff will appeal again to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

For more on the Cowboys, check out The Dallas Morning News here.