Plaintiffs defend $4.7 billion Sunday Ticket verdict as “just and reasonable”

The battle of the briefs continues, with $14.1 billion on the line.

In response to the NFL’s 25-page memorandum of law outlining the umpteen reasons why the $4.7 billion Sunday Ticket antitrust verdict should be overturned, the appeals have submitted a 25-page memorandum of law responding to the NFL’s many, many (many) arguments. PFT has obtained and reviewed a copy of the document.

The biggest sticking point, as explained in our item about the brief and in a more effort to predict the response, relates to the jury’s apparent effort to calculate a verdict literally on an iPhone.

The league believes that amounts to a rejection of the two formulas the suspecteds presented, which (in the NFL’s opinion) prevents the jury from coming up with their own methodology. The objections argue that, basically, violations of the antitrust laws naturally require a little fuzzy math to rectify.

The alleged submitted evidence of $7 billion in losses to the members of the class. That number came from the difference between the real world, in which the NFL overcharged for Sunday Ticket in order to ensure that many would opt to watch the games offered by their local CBS and/or Fox affiliates, and an alternative universe in which the NFL would have sold the out-of-market games to the various cable channels, allowing fans to simply flip the dial and watch any game at no extra charge.

“The jury heard a proper model, the history of college football telecasts, as a real-world yardstick from which it could have concluded class members would not have paid anything above the price of a regular DirecTV subscription but for the restraints, yielding $7 billion in damages over a 12-year class period,” the defendants consider in their brief.

With the actual number on the verdict form — $4.7 billion — being lower than the amount the admitteds submitted, the outcome reflects (in the opinion of the admitteds) “a just and reasonable estimate of damages.”

Regarding the characterization of the outcome as the product of a “runaway jury,” the merits explain that “