NFL Sunday Ticket Ruling Restores Antitrust Liability; New Trial Will Decide Damages

A federal appeals court restored the NFL’s antitrust liability in the Sunday Ticket case Friday, October 30, but ordered a new trial to determine damages. The Ninth Circuit directed the district court to reinstate the jury’s liability verdict against the league.

The decision does not reinstate the approximately $4.7 billion awarded in 2024. That jury award included about $4.6 billion for residential subscribers and $96 million for commercial customers, including bars and restaurants. The amount of any financial judgment remains unresolved.

The lawsuit challenged the NFL’s arrangements for selling out-of-market Sunday afternoon games through DirecTV. The package supplied games unavailable through subscribers’ local CBS and Fox stations, beyond games already shown in their area. Subscribers argued that exclusive distribution and the requirement to buy the bundled package restricted competition and inflated prices. The litigation began in 2015.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez had excluded testimony from the subscribers’ economic experts and entered judgment for the NFL. The appeals panel concluded that he exceeded his role in assessing whether those experts’ methods and data were reliable.

The panel nevertheless upheld his decision to require another damages trial. Jurors had used the difference between a residential list price and an estimated actual subscription price, the opinion said. That calculation measured a discount rather than the overcharge they were instructed to determine and did not account for commercial customers’ prices.

Sunday Ticket moved to Google’s YouTube in 2023. The challenged distribution arrangements belong to its earlier DirecTV era, covering the 2011 through 2022 seasons. The opinion defines the class period as June 2011 through February 2023. The ruling addresses that historical case rather than changing the current service’s subscription prices.

The court’s order returns the case for further district court proceedings. It sets no new compensation amount and does not direct subscriber refunds.