The NFL suffered a legal blow Thursday in the case regarding the Sunday Ticket package.
A jury in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California ruled that the league violated antitrust laws in overcharging for Sunday Ticket. They must pay $96 million to bars and $4.7 billion to fans who purchased the popular streaming package. The total damage is actually much worse, as under federal antitrust law the damages will be tripled, meaning the league must pay more than $14 billion, according to Front Office Sports.
The lawsuit was brought in 2015 by the Mighty Duck sports bar in San Francisco, which asserted that the NFL inflated Sunday Ticket prices. There’s been a ton of twists and turns in the case over the years; it was dismissed in 2017 only for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate it two years later. It eventually turned into a class action lawsuit, resulting in Thursday’s verdict.
The legal drama is far from over, though, as the league released a statement that it plans to appeal.
"We are disappointed with the jury's verdict today in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit," the league said in the statement. "We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which features all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games, supplemented by many additional choices including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL+, is by far the most fan friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment.”
