In the “NFL Sunday Ticket” trial, millions of subscribers are awarded damages for violations of antitrust law. However, the NFL has announced that it intends to appeal the verdict

It could be really expensive for the NFL.

As part of the “NFL Sunday Ticket” trial, a jury on Thursday ordered the football league to pay a total of 4.7 billion dollars in damages to fans and a further 96 million dollars to bars and pubs that broadcast the games.

In a lawsuit filed back in 2015, “NFL Sunday Ticket” subscribers had accused the NFL, NFL teams and TV partners of colluding and violating antitrust laws to sell the sports package off-market at an inflated price in order to interfere with competition.

The league has offered its “NFL Sunday Ticket” package since 1994 to allow fans outside the actual market to watch games that are otherwise only broadcast on local television. A Denver Broncos fan living in New York, for example, could use the “NFL Sunday Ticket” to watch their team’s games.

Subscribers to the ticket also include sports bars and restaurants that want to boost their business by broadcasting games of non-domestic teams. Until last season, DirecTV was the exclusive distributor of the “NFL Sunday Ticket” in the USA; in 2023 it was taken over by Google’s YouTube TV.

Class action with millions of plaintiffs

The original lawsuit was filed by the “Mucky Duck Bar” in San Francisco. The plaintiffs accuse the NFL and its partners that without the allegedly anti-competitive agreements, the games would have been available more cheaply by other means.

Last year, a district judge had already decided to allow a class action with 2.4 million private customers and 48,000 bars who had purchased the package between 2011 and 2023 as plaintiffs. The high number of plaintiffs also explains the high amount of compensation.

However, the NFL has already announced that it intends to appeal the ruling. The last word in the case has therefore certainly not yet been spoken