A federal judge has overturned a $4.7 billion jury verdict in a class-action lawsuit filed by Sunday Ticket subscribers against the NFL and awarded the judgment to the league.
U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled Thursday that testimony from two of the underwriters’ witnesses was methodologically flawed and should be excluded.
“Without the testimony of Dr. (Daniel) Rascher and Dr. (John) Zona, no reasonable judge could have found damages or prejudice in the class action,” Gutierrez wrote at the end of the 16-page decision.
The jury on June 27 awarded $4.7 billion in damages to residential and commercial subscribers after determining that the NFL violated antitrust laws by distributing out-of-market Sunday afternoon games on the premium subscription service.
The suit involved 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses across the United States who paid for a DirecTV package for out-of-market games between 2011 and 2022.
The jury of five men and three women found the NFL liable for $4,610,331,671.74 in damages in the residential claim and $96,928,272.90 in commercial damages.
Because damages can be tripled under antitrust laws, the NFL could have been held liable for up to $14,121,779,833.92.
This is not the first time the NFL has won a lawsuit in this case, which began in 2015.
In 2017, U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell dismissed the lawsuit, ruling in favor of the NFL on the grounds that Sunday Ticket did not reduce the airtime of games and that while DirecTV charged inflated prices, that did not “per se constitute competitive harm” because it negotiated the package with the NFL.
Two years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the case.
The plaintiffs are certain to appeal the case again.
