The National Football League is asking a federal judge in California to toss a $4.7 billion class action verdict a jury assessed last month, saying evidence didn’t show the league inflated the price of subscriptions for its Sunday Ticket broadcast package.
Testimony from two expert witnesses “should have been excluded and the case ended prior to verdict,” the league said in a Wednesday filing.
The NFL also accused jurors of relying on a “made-up methodology” to come up with damages the league called “nonsensical.” And, since the jurors rejected damage calculations presented by the witnesses, it’s clear the plaintiffs didn’t prove wrongdoing, the league said.
Upholding the verdict threatens to “upend the entire structure by which content is created, distributed, and priced,” the league said.
The NFL is asking Judge Philip S. Gutierrez of the US District Court for the Central District of California to toss the verdict on the grounds no reasonable jury would’ve assessed it. Alternatively, the league is asking for a new trial.
Jurors on June 27 sided with football fans who said the league conspired with DirecTV to raise the price of subscriptions to watch out-of-market games. The central claim was that the league and the digital TV service had an arrangement that allowed them to force viewers to pay for out-of-market games even when their team wasn’t playing — and charge higher prices.
The $4.7 billion in damages stands to be tripled to $14 billion under federal law.
The case is In re National Football Leagues Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation, C.D. Cal., No. 2:15-ml-02668, 7/3/24.
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