NFL’s Sunday Ticket Dismissal Is Another Big Win for Small Law Firms

For the second time in three months, Wilkinson Stekloff had a key role in a major case with ramifications for the sports world.

Litigator Beth Wilkinson and a team of lawyers on Thursday convinced a federal judge to throw out a $4.7 billion jury award against the NFL in a fight over the league’s pricing of its Sunday Ticket game broadcast package.

The Washington-based litigation boutique in May steered a landmark $2.8 billion antitrust settlement for the NCAA that’s moving toward approval. Wilkinson last year also beat the Justice Department in a high-profile trial to salvage Microsoft Corp.’s $69 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard Inc.

“The ruling is a vindication of the NFL’s TV dispute and litigation strategy, and exposes the incoherence of defendants’ antitrust theory,” said Brooklyn Law School professor Jodi Balsam, a former NFL in-house lawyer.

The NFL faced a verdict that under federal antitrust law would’ve been trebled to roughly $14 billion. Balsam said the league can now continue with business as usual and not worry about financial liabilities ahead of the start of its season.

Wilkinson Stekloff was formed nearly a decade ago by a group of Big Law alums led by Beth Wilkinson and Brian Stekloff. Wilkinson was first chair for the NFL during the three-week Sunday Ticket trial in June. Rakesh Kilaru, another Wilkinson Stekloff partner who took the lead on the NCAA’s deal with current and former collegiate athletes, handled the post-trial briefing for the NFL with Stekloff arguing the motion that ultimately secured a victory for the league.

The long-winding Sunday Ticket litigation began when Wilkinson was still a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm that has enjoyed close ties to the NFL over the years. Stekloff, another former Paul Weiss lawyer, became a name partner at Wilkinson Stekloff in 2020.

Covington on the Outs

Wilkinson Stekloff’s win for the NFL comes amid frayed ties with his longtime outside counsel at Covington & Burling.

Covington has handled a variety of matters for the NFL, including negotiations with Sunday Ticket broadcast partners and being involved in the early stages of the antitrust litigation. Gregg Levy, a former partner-turned-senior counsel at Covington who for almost three decades served as the primary outside counsel to the NFL, was part of the team representing the league when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit revived the Sunday Ticket case in 2019.

Levy and Covington, however, were noticeably missing during the Sunday Ticket trial, although court records in the case still list him and Covington partners Derek Ludwin, John Playforth, and Neema Sahni as counsel to the NFL. Ludwin was part of a Covington team that advised the NFL in December 2022 on a new $14 billion Sunday Ticket package with Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube.

Levy was once a candidate to succeed former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, a fellow former Covington partner who was replaced by Roger Goodell in 2006. Goodell, who tested during the Sunday Ticket trial, works closely with the league’s general counsel L. Jeffrey Pash, another ex-Covington partner who is preparing to retire after more than 25 years with the NFL.

Three sources familiar with the matter said Covington drew the ire of the NFL this year for advising Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. on the formation of Venu Sports, a new sports streaming service also backed by The Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN and Fox Corp. The creation of Venu, which hired its first legal chief in June, is being reviewed by federal antitrust regulators over competition concerns.

Covington and Warner Bros. Discovery, which recently sued the NBA over another broadcast deal announced last month, didn’t respond to comment requests. Nor did the NBA, which has also been a longtime Covington client.

Dragging On?

Gutierrez’s ruling was a stunning defeat for judges led by veteran trial lawyer Bill Carmody of Susman Godfrey.

Plaintiffs are expected to appeal Gutierrez’s decision, although Carmody didn’t respond to a request for comment. Hausfeld and Langer, Grogan & Diver are co-counsel to the allegeds, which survived the NFL’s prior efforts to dismiss the case ahead of the US Supreme Court declining to take it on in 2020.

While the NFL is pleased with the ruling from Gutierrez, it still could face a long litigation road to resolving its Sunday Ticket troubles. A federal appellate court could reinstate the verdict or recommend the case for a recalculation of the award.

“We could see multiple appeals on multiple issues, this could drag on for several more years,” said Marc Edelman, a sports law and antitrust professor at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business. “This is still a case that will likely settle, although last night’s decision would arguably reduce the fair market value of the settlement because it calls into doubt the ability of the accused to recover.”

The case is In re National Football League’s Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation, 2:15-ml-02668, US District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).