Billions of dollars in damages were to be paid out to NFL customers, but now the ruling has been overturned.

At the end of June, a court awarded NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers a total of 4.7 billion dollars in damages. The background to the lawsuit was possible illegal agreements between the league, the teams and the TV partners. The latter are alleged to have violated antitrust law in order to offer the package at overpriced prices.

2.4 million private users and 48,000 companies were included in the lawsuit; they had paid for the Sunday Ticket package from 2011 to 2022. But now the ruling has been overturned.

A US district judge ruled on Thursday that the testimony of two witnesses was flawed and should therefore be excluded from the trial – but that it was essential to the lawsuit.

“Without the testimony of Dr. Rascher and Dr. Zona, no reasonable jury could have found class-wide injury or damage,” Judge Gutierrez wrote at the end of his 16-page decision.

NFL pleased with verdict

As expected, the NFL reacted positively to the overturned ruling. “We are grateful for today’s ruling in the Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,” the league said in a statement.

“We believe the NFL’s media distribution model provides our fans with a range of options to watch the game they love, including local broadcasts of every game on free-to-air television. We thank Judge Gutierrez for his time and attention to this case and look forward to an exciting 2024 NFL season. “