The NFL has faced several legal challenges over the years, but few have put its broadcasting practices under as much scrutiny as the lawsuit surrounding its Sunday Ticket package. The case, which dates back to 2015, centers on allegations that the league’s exclusive distribution arrangement with DirecTV restricted competition and forced fans and commercial establishments to pay higher prices to watch out-of-market games.

After years of legal proceedings, the lawsuit reached a major turning point in 2024 when a jury found the NFL liable and awarded plaintiffs approximately $4.7 billion in damages. However, the league challenged that verdict, and what followed appeared to offer it a way out of the costly legal battle. Now, a new court ruling has changed the course of the case once again.

Per reports, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated the jury’s finding that the NFL was liable for antitrust violations in the Sunday Ticket case. At the same time, Eriq Gardner of Puck News added another layer to it, reporting that the court has reinstated a $4.7 billion verdict against the league.

The appeals court has now ordered a new trial to determine damages. That means the NFL is back facing liability in the case. The ruling was issued on Friday, October 30, by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The panel issued a ruling, citing:

“The panel reversed the district court’s judgment as a matter of law for the National Football League and affirmed the district court’s order granting a new trial on damages in an antitrust class action brought under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by a class of DirecTV subscribers.

“Using expert testimony, the subscribers won a multibillion-dollar verdict on their claims that the NFL’s anticompetitive agreements caused them to pay inflated prices for “Sunday Ticket,” a bundled package of NFL game telecasts…”

The development gained momentum over a couple of years after the jury delivered a massive $4.7 billion verdict against the NFL. After years of legal proceedings, the case finally went to trial in June 2024 in the US District Court for the Central District of California. The trial lasted approximately three weeks.

It found the NFL liable on every element of the plaintiffs’ antitrust claims and awarded approximately $4.7 billion in damages, including $4.61 billion to the residential subscribers and around $97 million to commercial subscribers. However, the league challenged the jury’s decision.

A couple of months later, the NFL secured a major legal victory. In August 2024, US District Judge Philip Gutierrez overturned the jury’s decision and entered judgment in favor of the NFL. The judge concluded that the economic experts presented by the plaintiffs had relied on flawed methodologies and that their testimony should have been excluded.

In the plaintiffs’ case, two economists, Dr. Daniel Rascher and Dr. Douglas Zona, were involved. While Rascher’s models were variations of a college football model, Zona developed economic models to estimate how much subscribers had allegedly overpaid because of the NFL’s exclusive distribution arrangements with DirecTV.

Judge Gutierrez, however, found significant problems with both experts’ methodologies. He concluded that Rascher’s model relied too heavily on assumptions about how the NFL would have distributed its games in a competitive market. Meanwhile, he also questioned Zona’s assumptions about alternative distributors and whether consumers would actually have purchased Sunday Ticket from competing services.

“Without knowing what “direct-to-consumer” meant, it is impossible to determine if it would have been economically rational for consumers to purchase “Sunday Ticket” from an alternative distributor at a higher price,” Gutierrez said at that time.

“And, that definition was necessary for determining whether a viable alternative distributor even existed during the class period. Without that information, the Court cannot determine whether the but-for worlds without exclusivity were modeled reliably.”

Subsequently, the subscribers appealed, taking the case to the Ninth Circuit, arguing that Judge Gutierrez had gone too far in excluding their economic experts. And now, the appeals court has brought the NFL back into the case.

The lawsuit was initially filed in 2015 by Ninth Inning Inc., which operates a San Francisco sports bar called The Mucky Duck, along with other plaintiffs. The case eventually became a class-action lawsuit involving two categories of subscribers.

The classes cover eligible DirecTV residential and commercial subscribers who purchased Sunday Ticket between June 17, 2011, and February 7, 2023. The original trial coverage described the group as approximately 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses.

The plaintiffs’ argument revolved around three interconnected agreements. The first involved the 32 NFL teams pooling their television broadcasting rights under the league’s control. The second involved the NFL’s agreements with CBS and Fox, which broadcast Sunday afternoon games to local markets. The third was the NFL’s exclusive agreement with DirecTV to distribute out-of-market games through Sunday Ticket.

Plaintiffs argued that these arrangements worked together to restrict competition. Now, it remains to be seen how the lawsuit will take shape from here, as the league has been brought back into the case.