Roger Goodell Testifies on $21 Billion ‘Sunday Ticket’…

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell testified Monday in federal court in Los Angeles that the buyers… “NFL Sunday Ticket” package of games not available on the market. they knew full well his high value and didn’t pay more than $300 a season for him because the league worked with its broadcast partners and forced their hand.

“We have been clear throughout that this is a premium product. Not only in terms of price, but also in terms of quality,” Goodell said during the hearing. “Fans make that choice whether they want to or not. “I’m sure there were fans who said it was too expensive.”

(Monday’s court proceedings were covered by the Associated Press and other news outlets.)

Goodell was testifying in a class-action lawsuit involving more than 2.4 million individual Sunday Ticket subscribers and approximately 48,000 subscription companies, each of which paid for the package from 2011 to 2022.

By selling Sunday Ticket exclusively through DirecTV’s limited pay-TV ecosystem at an inflated price at the time, plaintiffs allege that the NFL was able to continue to charge broadcasters including Fox, CBS and NBC high prices for television rights.

The plaintiffs argue that Sunday Ticket should have been more widely available than just DirecTV’s subscriber base and that the package should have been sold for significantly less than $100.

“The NFL’s deal with DirecTV ensured that more viewers would watch CBS and Fox, which in turn allowed the networks to pay the NFL a premium for broadcast rights,” plaintiffs’ expert Daniel Rascher, a sports economist at the university, testified last week in San Francisco.

If the NFL is found liable, a jury could award as much as $7 billion in damages – a figure that could triple under antitrust damages rules.

The NFL maintains that it has the right to sell Sunday tickets within the framework exemption from antitrust laws for broadcasters. However, the plaintiffs respond that this exemption covers only the actual broadcasting and not the distribution of pay television.