Showtime Says McGregor-Mayweather Class Actions Should be Consolidated

Facing multiple class action lawsuits over its internet streaming of the McGregor-Mayweather fight, Showtime has asked a federal panel to consolidate the litigation into a single action in a New York federal court.

The cable network has been hit with eight separate consumer class action lawsuits, each brought by pay-per-view viewers of the Aug. 26 boxing match between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather.

Named defendants in some of these actions include Zuffa Inc., the company behind Ultimate Fighting Championship, as well as other entities related to UFC. Showtime and UFC allegedly collaborated in the promotion and streaming of the fight broadcast.

Plaintiffs in these actions say technical difficulties with the live internet stream prevented them from watching the fight with the high-definition signal they paid for.

In one of these McGregor-Mayweather class action lawsuits, plaintiff Zach Bartel says his viewing experience didn’t live up to the 1080 pixel, 60 frames per second standard for which he paid nearly $100. He and other paid viewers allegedly got error messages when they tried to bring up the live stream.

When the video stream managed to appear, Bartel claims, it appeared grainy and was subject to skips and stalls.

Bartel alleges the botched live stream failed to live up to Showtime’s promises of an uninterrupted, high-definition stream. “Instead of being a ‘witness to history’ as defendant had promised, the only thing plaintiff witnessed was grainy video, error screens, buffer events, and stalls,” his complaint reads.

Showtime is now asking the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to consolidate Bartel’s claim and the other seven McGregor-Mayweather lawsuits into a single multidistrict litigation. An MDL allows a single court to handle the pretrial processing of multiple lawsuits that share common issues.

In its motion for consolidation, Showtime argues that consolidating these actions is warranted since they all deal with essentially the same body of facts. Consolidating these actions will serve the convenience of the parties and their witnesses, resolve the claims more efficiently, and avoid the problems caused by inconsistent judicial rulings that could pop up if the cases are heard separately.

Showtime is proposing the Southern District of New York as the venue for the MDL. New York is where Showtime is headquartered and where three of the eight McGregor-Mayweather class action lawsuits were originally filed.

Alternatively, Showtime says the MDL could be consolidated in Nevada. Nevada is the home state for some of the UFC defendants and where two of the actions have been filed, as well as where the fight took place.

Each McGregor-Mayweather class action lawsuit proposes to represent a specific Class of persons who purchased Showtime’s pay-per-view broadcast of the McGregor-Mayweather fight. Showtime argues that the eight Classes overlap enough to warrant consolidation into an MDL.

Plaintiffs in the McGregor-Mayweather class action lawsuits are represented by attorneys from Lipson Neilson Cole Seltzer & Garin PC, Zimmerman Reed LLP, OlsenDaines PC, Geragos & Geragos PC, Walsh PLLC, Faruqi & Faruqi LLP, Gardy & Notis LLP, Seven Hill Law APC, Haeggquist & Eck LLP, and LaGuardia Law.

The Showtime McGregor-Mayweather Pay-Per-View Class Action Lawsuit is In re: McGregor-Mayweather Boxing Match Pay-Per-View Litigation, MDL No. 2806, before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.