The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated a previously overturned district court jury verdict finding that the NFL violated antitrust law with the pricing of its “Sunday Ticket” service.
The league had been found liable for $4.7 billion in damages in June 2024 after a jury determined that the league overcharged residential and commercial DirecTV subscribers for the out-of-market service. With the Ninth Circuit order, the case has been remanded back to the lower court and will go forward with a trial on damages, recalculating the amount for which the league will be held liable. As a reminder, damages can be tripled under federal antitrust law, meaning the league could have been on the hook for over $14 billion in damages had the original damages stood.
In an antitrust summary published Friday, the court wrote that a panel consisting of three judges found “the district court abused its discretion by excluding the subscribers’ expert testimony regarding antitrust injury and damages.” During the trial itself, U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez determined that there was “flawed” testimony from two witnesses on behalf of the plaintiffs. Gutierrez subsequently granted the NFL a motion for judgment as a matter of law, which effectively overturned the jury verdict.
The court determined that the damages awarded by the jury “were not based on the ‘evidence and reasonable inferences’ but instead were more akin to ‘guesswork or speculation.'” The panel from the Ninth Circuit concluded that this “district court acted within its discretion when it inferred how the jury arrived at its award.” Yet it found that the court “abused its discretion by excluding the Subscribers’ expert testimony,” going beyond the bounds of “its gatekeeping role,” therefore reversing the decision.
“We affirm the district court’s order granting a new trial on damages,” the order reads. “We remand this case for the district court to reinstate the jury’s liability verdict and hold a new damages trial.”
Daniel Kaplan of Awful Announcing obtained an order last year from the new judge overseeing the NFL Sunday Ticket case, stating that the previous judge who was in charge made in error in dismissing plaintiff claims for injunctive relief without considering their ability to demonstrate “threatened loss or damages.” The NFL had been accused of colluding with DirecTV and broadcast partners CBS and Fox to raise the subscription prices in order to watch these games. The new judge agreed with plaintiffs that this case is a “landmark issue of national importance,” citing the amicus briefs that were filed in the pending appeal.
In a statement provided to Sports Media Watch, the NFL said it is “disappointed” by the decision and described its distribution model as “the most fan-friendly… in all of sports and entertainment.” The league said that it plans to seek further appellate review of the case, which it noted has lasted for more than a deacde.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 provides the NFL and other professional sports leagues with an antitrust exemption that allows it to collectively pool media rights for individual franchises. There have been calls to amend the act as it relates to the development of streaming platforms, as it currently applies to “sponsored telecasting of the games,” creating questions about its impact going beyond broadcast television. Fox Corporation and Sinclair were among the media conglomerates to issue public comments to the FCC supporting the agency examining the scope of the legislation. The U.S. government reportedly opened an investigation into the NFL and its streaming deals earlier in the summer.
The NFL is in the midst of a seven-year agreement with Alphabet, Inc. that grants YouTube TV distribution rights to the out-of-market broadcast package for a reported total of $14 billion. This package initially launched through DirecTV in 1994 and remained on the service until the conclusion of the 2022 season, after which NFL Sunday Ticket moved to its current home.
