A decades-long legal battle over the part of the NFL's television package may soon be decided and the verdict could cause a broadcasting earthquake that would affect all of the league's 32 teams, Deadline has reported.
The $6.1 billion lawsuit was first filed in 2015 when Sunday Ticket was on DirecTV and was bought by "2.4 million Sunday Ticket subscribers in the residential class and nearly 50,000 bars, restaurants, and other establishments in the commercial class," Deadline reported.
The essence of the class-action suit is that fans were compelled to pay higher than market prices to the NFL to watch out-of-market games on the Sunday Ticket package in direct violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
"The NFL-DirecTV Agreement prevents telecasts from appearing on more than one channel, reducing the number of games being shown locally as free, over-the-air broadcasts and leaving DirecTV as the only option to view many games," noted U.S. District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez in his summary of the plaintiff's point of view in his ruling this week.
"Defendants place great weight on the fact that the member clubs are not part of the NFL-DirecTV Agreement," the LA-based Judge wrote in the 30-page order made public on Thursday. "But this fact is misleading," he added. "It does not follow that, because the member clubs are not parties to the NFL-DirecTV Agreement, DirecTV and the member clubs are not connected in the overall conspiracy."
The NFL has tried consistently to get the lawsuit thrown out of court, but those attempts now appear to be at an end as the case will go to trial soon after this year's Super Bowl.
While rumors of various settlements abound, if the NFL loses the case, each individual team will be making their own broadcast deals with platforms and streamers for all in-market and out of market games.
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