NFL Sunday Ticket Subscribers Defend Jury’s $4.7 Billion Award

National Football League subscribers who won a $4.7 billion verdict defended the federal jury’s math in court filings, saying it is within the range supported by evidence.

The verdict was significantly less than the $7 billion the subscribers asked for, their attorneys said in a Wednesday motion, adding that modern antitrust cases can involve damages at that scale “given the amount of commerce at stake.” They asked Judge Philip S. Gutierrez of the US District Court for the Central District of California to leave the verdict intact and deny the league’s alternative motion for a new trial.

The National Football League on July 5 told Gutierrez the jurors calculated damages using a “made-up methology.” The league also said that the plaintiffs didn’t prove wrongdoing because the jurors rejected damages calculations presented by witnesses.

But the jury is free to use its own calculations, and the NFL isn’t allowed to guess at the jurors’ thought processes, the subscribers wrote back.

“Defendants flip on their head nearly 100 years of the Supreme Court’s Sherman Act jurisprudence, decades of Ninth Circuit law on damages, and the jury’s findings,” the plaintiffs wrote.

Precedent from the Ninth Circuit “is crystal clear,” the court filing said. “If the jury’s award is ‘within the range’ supported by the evidence, courts do not touch it.”

Jurors found in June that the league conspired with DirecTV to raise the price of subscriptions to watch out-of-market games. The arrangement forced viewers to pay for those games even when their team wasn’t playing, at high prices, subscribers claimed.

The $4.7 billion in damages can be tripled to $14 billion under federal antitrust law.

The case is In re National Football Leagues Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation, C.D. Cal., No. 2:15-ml-02668, 7/17/24.