The mighty National Football League was sacked by a jury in California which ordered the league to pay $4.7 billion in damages in an antitrust lawsuit that claimed consumers were forced to overpay for the NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market television package.
The NFL said it plans to contest the decision.
The lawsuit was originally filed by a bar in San Francisco called the Mucky Duck and grew into a class-action suit. Damages can be tripled in antitrust suits.
The league was accused of keeping the price of Sunday Ticket high in order to keep the majority of fans watching games on broadcast and cable. The NFL has deals with its television partners that will pay it $110 billion over 11 years.
The ruling gives $4.6 billion to residential Sunday Ticket subscribers and $100 million to restaurants and bars.
Until this season, DirecTV had exclusive rights to distribute Sunday Ticket, paying $1.5 billion a year, and losing close to $1 billion on the package.
This year, YouTube won the bidding for Sunday Ticket, agreeing to pay $2 billion a year, and made a deal with DirecTV to continue to distribute the package to commercial users.
“We are disappointed with the jury’s verdict today in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit. We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which features all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games, supplemented by many additional choices including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL Plus, is by far the most fan-friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment,” the NFL said in a statement.
“We will certainly contest this decision as we believe that the class action claims in this case are baseless and without merit,” the league said.
