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In the litigious United States of America, judgements are not final. At least not right away.
The NFL was sued, and lost, a case claiming that they overcharged customers for the DirecTV Sunday Ticket package. Earlier this summer, a jury awarded the plaintiffs of the anti-trust class action suit $4.7 billion in damages. Judge Phillip Gutierrez overtuned the award on Thursday, despite agreeing that the plaintiffs proved the merit of the accusation.
Wow, the judge just threw out the jury’s $4.7 billion “NFL Sunday Ticket” verdict. Finds the plaintiff’s economics experts to be unreliable and the jury’s award to be based not on the “evidence and reasonable inferences” but instead “guesswork or speculation.”
— Eriq Gardner
(@eriqgardner) August 1, 2024
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The award would’ve actually have been tripled, to a whopping $14.1 billion, if upheld. Now, the class-action suit will have to appeal the judge’s verdict in order to bring relief back to the consumer.
The NFL put out a statement thanking the judge for the decision in their favor.
“We are grateful for today’s ruling in the Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,” the league said in a statement. “We believe that the NFL’s media distribution model provides our fans with an array of options to follow the game they love, including local broadcasts of every single game on free over-the-air television. We thank Judge Gutierrez for his time and attention to this case and look forward to an exciting 2024 NFL season.” via ProFootball Talk
Although the statement was issued, there’s certainly another round or two possible in the court system.
The case had previously been thrown out before being reinstated by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Sunday Ticket, only available on satellite provider DirecTV up until the contract was moved to Youtube TV recently, allowed customers to by the entire slate of NFL games for a specific season. There was no a la carte menu available.
From the order: “Despite finding Dr. Rascher’s and Dr. Zona’s opinions unreliable, the Court does not find that it would be unreasonable for a juror to find that there was a conspiracy that unreasonably restrained trade. . . . There was evidence in the record—even without the testimonies of Dr. Rascher and Dr. Zona—to support a reasonable jury’s finding of an unreasonable restraint of trade at each step of the rule of reason. . . . Given a reasonable jury could find that there were anticompetitive effects, that Defendants’ procompetitive justifications were pretextual or unrelated to the restraints, and/or that there were less-restrictive alternatives based on the record, judgment as a matter of law is inappropriate on these grounds.”
In other words, the judge upheld the finding that Sunday Ticket, as constructed, violates federal antitrust laws. – PFT