Ninth Circuit restores NFL Sunday Ticket antitrust verdict

The liability finding now survives appeal. An appellate panel left standing the jury's conclusion that the league's bundled out-of-market package broke competition law, and its reasoning reaches past football. Other leagues, broadcasters and platforms that sell rights in bundles face the same argument. The 30 October ruling keeps liability but wipes out the damages number, so the fight returns to a courtroom. How much the NFL ultimately pays is still unknown.

What the court kept, and what it threw out

Judge Philip Gutierrez threw out the 2024 verdict in August 2024, after excluding testimony from two economists hired by the subscribers. The panel held that he abused his discretion by weighing the experts' credibility himself. That ruling did not last.

Opinions are neither unfounded nor unreliable merely because they are impeachable. Such opinions are for the jury to weigh at trial.

Circuit Judge Anthony Johnstone wrote those words for the three-judge panel. Liability stands; the damages number does not.

Jurors had multiplied subscription totals by $191.26, the gap between Sunday Ticket's $294 residential list price and an expert's estimate of what subscribers actually paid. The panel called that a measure of a discount, not an overcharge caused by the league's deals. It also noted the jury applied the same figure to commercial customers, whose prices were far higher. That mismatch sits at the center of the damages dispute.

The case dates to 2015. The Mucky Duck sports bar in San Francisco challenged the NFL's arrangement with DirecTV.

The class and the money at stake

The class covers about 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses that bought Sunday Ticket through DirecTV between 2011 and 2022. The June 2024 jury awarded about $4.61 billion to households and $96.9 million to commercial customers. Those two awards sum to the roughly $4.7 billion headline figure. Trebling, which federal antitrust law allows, could have pushed the total past $14 billion. The new trial will not revisit liability, only the size of any award. The class period ends in 2022, before Sunday Ticket moved to YouTube.

Accounts of the split differ. Sports Business Journal reported a single $4.7 billion figure, while Sportico and an NYU law analysis gave different breakdowns.

Why the bundling is the target

Subscribers argued the league combined exclusive out-of-market rights with national television deals, protecting broadcasters' local audiences and keeping Sunday Ticket prices high. Economist Daniel Rascher used college football as a yardstick, testifying that teams and conferences could sell out-of-market rights separately. The panel said jurors could debate how similar college and professional telecasts are, but that the question belonged at trial. That leaves the core theory intact for a second jury.

The NFL has defended the model throughout. Commissioner Roger Goodell testified that DirecTV, not the league, set the subscription price. DirecTV denied wrongdoing and stayed out of the trial after winning an order sending customer claims to arbitration.

Sunday Ticket moved to YouTube in 2023 under a seven-year deal with Google reportedly worth $14 billion. That deal is not part of the case. The litigation covers the DirecTV years.

What happens next

The NFL said it was disappointed and is considering further appellate review. In a separate ruling the same day, the panel revived subscribers' requests for court orders on the league's distribution practices under the Clayton Act. The lower court must reconsider whether those claims can continue. The case returns to the district court in California.

The size of any new award is unresolved.