NFL Sunday Ticket trial overview:
- Who: A retired Fox Sports executive testified in a trial over multibillion dollar antitrust claims Sunday Ticket subscribers brought against the NFL.
- Why: The plaintiffs allege the NFL colluded with Fox, CBS and DirecTV to fix the price of the Sunday Ticket.
- Where: The NFL Sunday Ticket trial is happening in a California federal court.
A retired Fox Sports executive testified about his network’s involvement in setting the price for Sunday Ticket in a trial alleging the NFL violated antitrust law.
In January, a California federal judge ruled the NFL and its teams must face multibillion dollar antitrust allegations in multidistrict litigation over its prior deal with DirecTV over the NFL Sunday Ticket television package.
On June 10, Lawrence A. Jones, who recently retired from Fox Sports, testified in a California federal court that Fox asked the league to agree to specific Sunday Ticket pricing because it viewed the DirecTV television package as an “existential” threat, Law360 reports.
The jury was reportedly shown documents about negotiations between Fox and the NFL that took place in 2020 and 2021 for a new 10- year broadcasting contract.
Those requests included that the Sunday Ticket not be priced below $293.96 per season and that it not be allowed to grow more than 20% of subscriptions beyond its current level. Fox told the NFL a “material change to the distribution of Sunday Ticket is an existential threat to Fox’s NFL business,” the testimony and documents show.
In the end, the NFL allegedly did not agree to any specific pricing and caps. The final contract called for products like Sunday Ticket to be “marketed as a premium product for avid league fans,” according to Law360.
Jones says the NFL did not make a specific promise to him about Sunday Ticket pricing, but he did not know what may have been said to his superiors. He said he was appearing as a plaintffs’ witness due to a subpoena
Claims go back to 2015
Multiple football fans, bars and restaurants introduced the litigation in 2015, alleging the NFL DirecTV Sunday Ticket package violates federal antitrust laws.
The more than 20 lawsuits, which were consolidated in 2016, all similarly alleged the existence of an anticompetitive agreement between DirecTV and the NFL whereby the NFL provided DirecTV with the exclusive right to show live broadcasts of Sunday afternoon games out of market in the form of its NFL Sunday Ticket.
This, the plaintiffs argue, has “anticompetitive effects” because, absent of such an agreement, “each team acting independently would offer their games at a competitive price to anybody in the country who wanted to watch that particular team,” according to the litigation.
The trial is ongoing.
The plaintiffs are represented by Marc M. Seltzer, Kalpana Srinivasan, Amanda Bonn, William C. Carmody, Seth Ard, Tyler Finn and Ian M. Gore of Susman Godfrey LLP; Scott Martin, Sathya S. Gosselin, Christopher L. Lebsock, Samuel Maida and Farhad Mirzadeh of Hausfeld LLP; and Howard Langer, Edward Diver, Peter Leckman and Kevin Trainer of Langer Grogan & Diver PC.
The NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuits are In re: National Football League’s Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 2:15- ml-02668, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
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