The NFL Network secured rights to live broadcasts of an
eight-game regular season package in 2006 after Dish Network agreed to carry
the service on its most widely distributed tier, according to a court ruling
released Thursday.
That disclosure was made by New York State Supreme Court
Judge Richard Lowe in a 21-page ruling
stemming from a lawsuit that NFL Network lodged against EchoStar, the parent
company of Dish Network, a year ago. Lowe's decision was unsealed Thursday, and
a trial on the case has been scheduled for June.
In his decision, Lowe refused to immediately order Dish
Network to put NFL Network back on America's Top 100, its most widely
distributed tier.
However, Lowe also ruled that the action that prompted Dish
to move NFL Network from its America's Top 100-the network's simulcast of a
historic New England Patriot-New York Giants game in December 2007-"did not
trigger the specific contract provisions allowing EchoStar to drop the NFL to a
lower level of service last February," NFL Network said in its own
statement.
"This is an important ruling for us." NFL Network President
Steve Bornstein said in a prepared statement.
NFL Network sued Dish Network after the satellite provider
moved the network to its America's
Top 200 tier on Feb. 20 last year, resulting in the sports service losing about4 million subscribers.
"We are pleased that the court
denied the NFL Network's motion for summary judgment to enforce the 2006
agreement between the parties," Dish Network said in a prepared statement
earlier this week. "As a result of the ruling, the NFL Network will continue to
be offered to Dish Network customers in only our AT200 and AT250 packaging
tiers. This will give our customers a choice of programming packages and will
not burden all our customers with the cost of the NFL Network."
But NFL Network accused Dish
Network of issuing "a highly misleading statement" on Lowe's ruling.
According to NFL Network, "The court decision referred to in
that statement actually granted summary judgment to NFL Network on the key
issue that led to this dispute.
The court ruled that the simulcast of the historic
Patriots-Giants game in December 2007 did not trigger the specific contract
provision allowing EchoStar to drop the NFL Network to a lower level of service
last February."
Dish Network pulled NFL Network from the "free preview" in
is America's
Top 100 package last year, moving it to its AT 200 tier, in response to the
network's decision to simulcast a Dec. 28, 2007 game that featured the then-undefeated
Patriots against the Giants on CBS and NBC. Dish claimed that simulcast
violated its contract with NFL Network.
Lowe wrote that NFL Network's "motion for summary judgment
is denied to the extent that it seeks a declaration that the simulcast of the
Patriots-Giants game was not a material breach of the parties' agreement."
According to Lowe's ruling, NFL Network and Dish Network
reached an initial carriage deal in September 2005, in which the satellite
provider agreed to carry the sports network on AT 200, its second-most widely
distributed tier.
But NFL Network informed Dish in December 2005 that it would
not likely secure rights to broadcast live regular season games unless Dish
agreed to amend its contract, the ruling said. Dish and NFL Network did change
their contract in January 2006, with Dish agreeing to carry the sports network
on its broadly distributed AT 100 tier and pay a higher license fee if the
sports service got the live games.
That amendment, according to NFL Network, enabled it "to
secure the rights to broadcast an eight-game package of games on Thursday and
Saturday evenings from 2006 through 2011, to be shown on the NFL Network and
distributed by EchoStar," the judge wrote in his ruling.
