NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit's $4.7B verdict overturned
FILE-NFL Sunday Ticket at the Super Bowl LIII Experience on January 29, 2019 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
A judge overturned a $4.7 billion verdict in a class-action lawsuit filed by "Sunday Ticket" subscribers against the NFL.
U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled that the testimony of two witnesses for the subscribers had "flawed methodologies" and should have been rejected, the Associated Press reported.
A jury awarded $4.7 billion in damages to residents and commercial subscribers on June 27 after it ruled the NFL violated antitrust laws in distributing out-of-market Sunday games on a premium subscription service.
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The lawsuit covered 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses in the U.S. who paid for the sports package on DirecTV of out-of-market games from the 2011 through 2022 football seasons, per the AP.
This latest court victory for the NFL isn’t the first time they won a judgment as a matter of law in this case, which has been occurring since 2015.
According to the AP, a judge dismissed the lawsuit and ruled in favor of the NFL in 2017, declaring "Sunday Ticket" did not reduce output of NFL games and that even though DirecTV might have charged inflated prices, that did not "on its own, constitute harm to competition" because it had to negotiate with the NFL to carry the package. But in 2019, the case was reinstated by an appeals court.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.