The National Football League has been ordered to pay out more than $4.5 billion for violating federal antitrust laws with the pricing of its DirecTV “Sunday Ticket” package that has offered fans out-of-market games for more than 30 years. The judgment against the league, posted to the case docket on Tuesday, requires the NFL to compensate millions of individual customers and nearly 50,000 businesses that paid inflated prices for the service between the 2011 and 2022 seasons.
The lawsuit against the NFL, which began in early June and was settled in the plaintiffs’ favor last week, covered 2.4 million residential “Sunday Ticket” subscribers and 48,000 businesses, primarily bars and restaurants, that signed up for the service between June 17, 2011, and February 7, 2023. The suit alleges that the NFL’s exclusive deal with DirecTV restricted competition and drove up prices for the package.
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In the June 27 judgment, the jury found the NFL liable for $4,610,331,671.74 in damages to the residential plaintiffs and $96,928,272.90 for the commercial class—a total payout of $4,707,259,944.64. Since damages can be tripled under federal antitrust laws, that amount could be raised to as much as $14,121,779,833.92.
This financial burden would be divided evenly between the 32 teams in the NFL, requiring each to put up $441.3 million.
In response to the penalty, the NFL called the judgment “nonsensical” and filed a motion to have the jury verdict thrown out. “The verdict in this case is at once among the largest in American history and also among the least defensible,” the NFL said in its request for a new trial. The appeal will be reviewed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and then possibly the Supreme Court if the league pursues the matter further.
Any payouts or changes to the “Sunday Ticket” package have been stayed until the appeals process is concluded.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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