The long-running NFL Sunday Ticket antitrust lawsuit, first filed in 2015, saw more than $4.7 billion ($4,6 billion to residential plaintiffs, $97 million to commercial plaintiffs) awarded to plaintiffs in the last week of June. But we’re quite a ways from them actually getting that money, with the NFL already filing a motion asking the judge to reduce or overturn that jury award. And in a live CNBC interview at the Sun Valley Conference with Squawk Box co-host Becky Quick Thursday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell laid out that his league is prepared for a long fight there:
Roger Goodell discussed the NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit in a CNBC interview from the Sun Valley Conference. “We obviously disagree with the jury verdict. We are committed to following the legal process. It’s a long process.” pic.twitter.com/Fwwo4OMPHS
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 11, 2024
“We obviously disagree with the the jury verdict. We are committed to following the legal process. It’s a long process. We are aware of that. We feel strongly about our position, our policies, particularly on media, and bringing our sport to the largest possible audience. Sunday Ticket is just a complementary product, so we’re committed to following the litigation all the way and making sure that we get this right.”
These aren’t fully surprising comments from Goodell, considering that the league already did file that motion (and called the damage award “nonsensical” in that). And some of the developments during the trial may be giving them hope.
In particular, U.S. District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez (who oversaw this trial, and who this motion is to) repeatedly questioned the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ strategy during the trial. He said “This case has turned into 25 hours of depositions and gobbledygook” and it has “gone in a direction it shouldn’t have gone.” He also said he was “struggling with the plaintiffs’ case” and would consider a ruling that the jury didn’t have enough evidence to rule either way. So the NFL might have some hope there. However, Gutierrez did send this to the jury in the end, so it’s not clear he’ll weigh in to overturn this.
Even if this NFL motion is unsuccessful, though, the league may launch a further appeal to a higher court. And that could keep this litigation going for quite some time. And while there are some perceived problems for leagues in fighting their fans, and maybe especially in doing so by refusing to offer a way to watch just their team (it’s notable that MLB settled a similar out-of-market lawsuit in 2016, partly by offering single-team packages, while the NBA and the NHL preemptively changed out-of-market packages to offer single-team packages in 2015, around the initial filing of the NFL lawsuit), the NFL has been fighting this one for a decade. So there isn’t necessarily much of a further PR hit for them here.
Still, the jury finding here does offer some further possibilities for fan and media criticism of the league. And NFL criticism on the Sunday Ticket front has been building for a long time. And now those critics can point to this award as evidence a jury agreed.
The NFL may well be determined to keep fighting here, and that could work out for them. But it does come with some challenges. And Goodell’s interview here has taken plenty of criticism (and it’s not lost on many critics that he did this from the “summer camp for billionaires” Sun Valley Conference). We’ll see where things go with this motion and with any potential further appeals.
[Awful Announcing on X/Twitter]
