NEWSLETTER
The verdict is IN class-action lawsuit from NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers, with the jury throwing down a substantial punishment at the feet of the league.
Mike Florio — who is well-versed in the NFL (as Pro Football Talk’s lead voice) and legal system (as a former lawyer — breaks it down the ruling:
The chickens have come home to roost. And the NFL is gonna need a bigger roost.
After thirty years of gouging fans for Sunday Ticket in order to persuade plenty of them to watch whatever was made available on free, over-the-air TV, the reckoning has arrived in the form of a $4.096 billion verdict in a federal class action lawsuit.
Of that amount, $96 million goes to the commercial establishments in the class. The $4 billion becomes the recovery for residential customers.
Oh. My. Goodness.
That is a substantial amount of money.
As you might expect, the league plans on appealing the case. And why wouldn’t it try and go down that route?
There are billions of dollars at stake and we know how much the league values every single dollar. So much so that it goes out of its way to squeeze every penny out of its loyal fanbase. For instance, we made note in a recent set of Bears Bullets that the class-action antitrust lawsuit unearthed news of the NFL rejecting a proposal from ESPN to sell the “Sunday Ticket” package for $70. All while offering up an indivual team option for fans. Considering how YouTubeTV is selling the “Sunday Tiket” plan for $349, you can see why this whole thing isn’t sitting well with the paying customer.
NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit could result in subscribers getting a cut of $4.7 billion
As Warren Sharp points out, there are more than 2.4 million subscribers in the class-action lawsuit. In other words, there are a bunch of checks that need to be written in order to make things right. How do you plan on spendding your part of the $4.7 billion cut? I mean, if you get it in the first place.
Again, the NFL is planning to appeal the decision. From there, things could still get messy. It is conceivable that these steps are on the horizon:
Sigh. OK, so we still have a long way to go before this situation is resolved in its entirety. Even still … there is a part of me that is encouraged that the NFL behemoth took an “L” here. It isn’t often enough that the little guy gets theirs after being stiffed. Here’s hoping the verdict stands and fans get something for their troubles.
