The NFL could face damages approaching $15 billion after losing a lawsuit alleging the league violated antitrust law with its Sunday Ticket out-of-market package.
The class-action lawsuit, originally filed in 2015 against the NFL, its teams and then-Sunday Ticket distributor DirecTV, argues that the bundling and collective sale of out-of-market games via Sunday Ticket has resulted in higher prices than if those games were sold individually by the participating teams. A jury ruled in favor of the plaintiffs Thursday and ordered the league to pay $4.8 billion in damages, which under antitrust law would swell to triple that amount unless the decision is thrown out.
The league argued that Sunday Ticket is protected by the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act — which exempts the collective sale of sports television rights from antitrust law — but that argument was rejected by the courts, which interpreted the SBA as applying narrowly to over-the-air broadcast television (which would presumably call into question leagues’ ability to sell games to cable and streaming providers).
The NFL said Thursday that it disagrees with and plans to challenge the verdict.
Should the decision hold, the NFL would face not only a considerable financial hit but also a complete overhaul of its lucrative Sunday Ticket package, which is now distributed via the streaming service YouTube TV.
In addition, while there is no present legal challenge to the sale of sports rights to cable or streaming platforms, the narrow interpretation of the SBA by the courts indicates that one might have some level of success. The argument that the SBA applies only to broadcast television overlooks the fact that cable and streaming did not exist when it was passed in 1961, and one imagines that the intent of the law was to cover the collective sale of rights generally, not to any specific platform.
Nonetheless, under the courts’ interpretation, the NFL’s deals with ESPN, Amazon, Peacock and Netflix are not now — and never have been — protected from antitrust scrutiny.
