NFL Faces Sunday Ticket Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit

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The National Football League along with DirecTV and television networks have been hit with a putative class action lawsuit that alleges they conspired together in order to charge Sunday Ticket customers twice as much as any other major league sport packages.

Lead plaintiff Trilogy Holding LLC who owns a sporting club in New York claims that it’s much worse for bars, restaurants and hotels as those establishments are charged anywhere between $1,400 a year to more than $120,000 a year for the NFL Sunday Ticket, which is 10 times more than they pay for other sport packages.

The NFL class action lawsuit alleges that by pooling broadcasting rights and offering the Sunday Ticket exclusively through DirecTV, the football organization can charge customers anticompetitive prices.

According to the NFL class action lawsuit, this monopoly scheme effects Sunday Ticket customers in two ways. First, by eliminating competition the NFL and DirecTV are able to demand supracompetitive prices rather than a price that would naturally exist if all 32 football teams competed for interest and distribution in a free market. Second, Sunday Ticket customers are forced to pay for access to all 32 teams even if they are only interesting in viewing one or two teams’ games.

The NFL antitrust class action lawsuit further alleges that DirecTV encouraged the conspiracy by contracting with the football league in order to make the Sunday Ticket exclusive so that no other cable or satellite TV provider would be able to sell it. The plaintiffs allege that this action forced the NFL to preserve their agreement not to compete with one another. The NFL allegedly licenses these pooled rights for an estimated $6 billion annually.

The plaintiff claims that no other major sporting leagues in the United States have such a drastic elimination of competition in the broadcasting market. According to the NFL class action lawsuit, neither Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), or the National Basketball Association (NBA) have agreed to centralize control and sale of all broadcast rights.

The NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit states that due to the conspiracy, Class Members are currently charged $359 per season for an individual household but prices increase almost every year.

In absence of this conspiracy and based on the low cost of satellite or cable television, each team acting alone would offer their games at a competitive price to anybody in the country who wanted to watch that particular team, according to the NFL lawsuit.

If approved, the NFL class action lawsuit would be open to all U.S. Class Members who purchased the Sunday Ticket between June 17, 2011 to the present. Analysts predict this includes more than 2 million individuals.

The plaintiffs are represented by Jeffrey B. Dubner, Richard A. Koffman and Daniel B. Rehns  of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Howard Langer, Edward Diver and Peter Leckman of Langer Grogan & Diver PC.

The NFL Sunday Ticket Class Action Lawsuit is Trilogy Holding, et al. v. National Football League, et al., Case No. 1:15-cv-08188, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.