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The National Football League has lost an antitrust trial over its NFL Sunday Ticket broadcast package, and has been ordered to pay about $4.7B in damages, an amount that could be tripled under antitrust law, according to media reports.
A class of football-fan plaintiffs had accused the league of working with DirecTV in order to raise the price for fans to watch their team’s away games (particularly through forcing fans to pay for out-of-market games even when their team wasn’t playing). A Los Angeles jury has agreed with the fans.
Plaintiffs had estimated damages at closer to $7B.
It was the rare antitrust case to make it to trial and a verdict; most are settled before trial due to the prospect of treble damages.
Aside from the NFL being on the hook for more than $14B monetarily, it now seems more likely that a new model would allow fans to subscribe to single-team streaming packages rather than the entire Sunday Ticket — an approach that would look more like most other major sports leagues, particularly with the NFL package now based at streaming-centric YouTube.
DirecTV is 70% owned by AT&T (NYSE:T), but wasn’t a defendant in the trial.
Sunday Ticket was previously available through DirecTV, but before last season moved to YouTube (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) — which set the 2023 price higher than 2022, while DirecTV retained commercial distribution rights (to bars, restaurants and similar locations).
