The League ordered to pay $4.7 billion

The National Football League was ordered to pay about $4.7 billion after a jury found its broadcast model violated antitrust laws.

A Los Angeles jury on Thursday ruled in favor of fans who said they paid too much for the NFL Sunday Ticket. The decision, which came after less than a full day of deliberations, could force the league to change the broadcast model that has made it the nation's most popular sports league.

The 8-year-old legal battle centers on allegations that the league and its 32 teams conspired in violation of antitrust laws to allow the NFL to enter into exclusive deals with broadcast partners for the right to broadcast games off-market.

In a statement, an NFL spokesperson said the verdict would be appealed. “We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which includes broadcasting all NFL games on live free-to-air television in participating team markets and national distribution of our most popular games, complemented by numerous additional choices, including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL+, is by far the most fan-friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment,” the statement continued.

Damages can be tripled following an antitrust judgment, meaning the NFL could be on the hook for nearly $15 billion. The league is expected to overturn the verdict. If the judge upholds the decision, the court will consider structural changes to the Sunday Ticket. Appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit will follow.

NFL fans filed a class-action lawsuit in 2015. They pointed out a major difference in how the NFL approaches broadcasts compared to the other four professional sports leagues: Viewers who want to watch games that aren’t broadcast locally must purchase the premium Sunday Ticket plan. That means Kansas City Chiefs fans living in Los Angeles must pay hundreds of dollars a year at allegedly inflated prices to watch their favorite team play. There’s no plan that allows them to do that. just watch Chiefs games.

The NFL defense has been multidimensional. During her opening statements, NFL attorney Beth Wilkinson highlighted the league's immense popularity, saying viewers are more than satisfied with its offerings, which she said include NFL RedZone and NFL+.

“The NFL tries to bring as much football as possible to as many fans as possible. For what ? asked Wilkinson. “Because it helps create a large fan base. This is why America's favorite sport is football. They want to offer it to as many people as possible at the lowest cost. »

The league also pointed to other so-called pro-competitive effects that justify pooling its teams' broadcast rights, including allowing CBS and Fox to broadcast local games for free. Other leagues, the NFL argued, don't do that, to the detriment of their fans.

Under the league's deal with CBS and Fox, there is a single telecast for each Sunday afternoon NFL game, with the networks in turn granted the exclusive right to broadcast a limited number of matches via free live television in local markets. No more than two matches may be broadcast at the same time in any given local market. This effectively gives networks exclusive rights to certain games.

Consumers argued that the NFL engaged in a price-fixing scheme with DirecTV. In a 2012 email, Robert Stecklow, former director of sports strategy for DirecTV, wrote to an NFL executive: “Let's make a decision in the room” and that the league “100% [has] agreed on prices every year in a meeting like yesterday. Amanda Bonn, a consumer attorney, said the correspondence indicates the NFL obtained advance notice of prices from DirecTV for Sunday Ticket each year. “This is price fixing,” she said during her opening remarks. “It's illegal.”

In another message from Alex Kaplan, DirecTV's chief revenue and product management officer, to an AT&T executive as the two companies considered a merger that threatened the league's ability to control pricing, the executive wrote, “I wanted to lower the price” of the Sunday Ticket, but the NFL rejected the request because the league “deems[ed] their product as a premium offering” and that “lowering the price would send the message that their product needs help.”

DirectTV was not a defendant in the lawsuit, with a judge in 2021 sending claims against the company to arbitration.

Consumer lawyers sought nearly $7 billion in damages. The NFL has denied any wrongdoing.