Ninth Circuit restores Sunday Ticket antitrust liability; damages return to trial

A federal appeals court reinstated a jury's finding that the NFL violated antitrust law through the former DirecTV Sunday Ticket system, reviving the central liability result in a case brought by home subscribers and businesses. The ruling is a major defeat for the league, but it does not put a final $4.7 billion judgment back on the books.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the Los Angeles district court to reinstate the liability verdict and hold a new trial on damages. That distinction matters for subscribers, sports bars and the NFL: liability survived the appeal, while the amount owed remains unresolved and can still be litigated.

What the appeals court restored

The lawsuit challenged three connected arrangements that pooled teams' television rights, licensed local Sunday games to CBS and Fox, and gave DirecTV the exclusive right to distribute out-of-market games as a paid bundle. The plaintiffs argued that limiting those telecasts to one distributor and one all-games package reduced competition and raised prices.

A jury accepted that case in 2024 and found the NFL liable on the subscribers' antitrust claims. The trial judge later excluded two plaintiffs' experts, reasoning that their models were unfounded or unreliable, and entered judgment for the league because the subscribers could no longer prove injury and damages without that testimony.

The appellate panel said that exclusion went too far. A trial judge must screen whether an expert used a reliable method and enough supporting data, the court explained, but cannot turn that gatekeeping task into a decision about which side's debatable evidence is more persuasive. The panel concluded that the two models could be tested through cross-examination and weighed by a jury.

Why the $4.7 billion award did not survive

The same opinion upheld the trial judge's alternative order for a new damages trial. The original jury awarded exactly $4,610,331,671.74 to the residential class and $96,928,272.90 to the commercial class. Those figures total about $4.71 billion, but the court found that the calculation did not follow the judge's instructions.

The opinion reconstructs the arithmetic. The jury appears to have multiplied 24,105,049 residential class-period purchases and 506,788 commercial purchases by $191.26. That $191.26 was the difference between a $294 residential list price and an expert's $102.74 estimate of the average residential price actually paid.

The problem was conceptual. The jury was instructed to estimate the overcharge, meaning the difference between what customers paid and what they would have paid without the anticompetitive conduct. Instead, the calculation measured the discount from list price to the estimated actual price. It also applied that home-subscriber figure to commercial customers even though the court said businesses often paid thousands to more than $100,000 per season, depending on establishment size.

What this means for subscribers and sports bars

The class action covered roughly 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses that bought DirecTV's Sunday Ticket package from 2011 through 2022, according to the Associated Press. The much larger purchase counts in the opinion represent transactions across the class period, not 24 million different households.

No subscriber refund, bar credit or payment date follows from Friday's ruling. A new jury must first calculate damages using a method supported by the evidence and the court's instructions. Federal antitrust damages can ultimately be tripled, but applying that rule now to the discarded $4.7 billion figure would create a false impression of a settled exposure.

The ruling also does not directly decide the price or structure of the current product. DirecTV's role in the challenged arrangement ended after the 2022 season, and Sunday Ticket moved to YouTube in 2023. The court noted that the old NFL-DirecTV agreement has expired, a fact the district court must consider separately when it reviews claims seeking changes to future conduct.

What comes next

The next concrete event is a district-court schedule for the damages retrial. The parties may also pursue further appellate review. The NFL defended its distribution model in a statement reported by AP, pointing to free local broadcasts and other viewing options, while lawyers on both sides said they were considering their next steps.

For readers sorting through Friday's headlines, the accurate bottom line is narrower than “$4.7 billion reinstated.” The Ninth Circuit must issue its mandate, after which the district court is directed to reinstate the jury's antitrust-liability verdict on remand. The amount of any judgment, the timing of any payment and the effect on individual class members all remain open questions.

Fans can follow the current season through the Chronicle's NFL schedule and NFL scores.

Sources: Ninth Circuit published opinion; Associated Press; and Reuters.