Huge Names. 2M Plaintiffs. Billions at Stake. NFL Sunday Ticket Trial Is Set

NFL Sunday Ticket has moved on to its new home of YouTube, and, by nearly all respects, is flourishing in that new spot. But the dust still hasn’t settled for NFL Sunday Ticket at the product’s prior exclusive home, DirecTV, and a lawsuit surrounding the out-of-market game package is now set to involve some of the biggest names in pro football. 

A class-action lawsuit dating to 2015—alleging that the collective and exclusive packaging of teams’ out-of-market rights in NFL Sunday Ticket violates U.S. antitrust law and creates artificially high prices—has slowly made its way through California and federal courts, reaching its current status early last year. A trial is now set to begin Feb. 22, and witness lists filed Friday include NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and outgoing CBS Sports chair Sean McManus. 

Barring a settlement or other adjustment in the proceedings, those prominent names and many others will testify on the current state of the NFL’s broadcasting business and the league’s out-of-market strategy.

If the certified classes of plaintiffs—amounting to more than 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 commercial ones—are successful, NFL teams could be freed to strike their own individual and market-specific out-of-market rights deals, and consumers would likely get the freedom to purchase individual games or team-specific packages. The NBA and MLB each offer single-team packages for out-of-market games, with those offerings spurred in part by legal action. The NHL’s out-of-market games are now streamed as part of ESPN+ in the U.S.

Damages in the NFL case are also projected at about $6.1 billion, if the plaintiffs win, setting up the possibility of a blockbuster financial outcome from the case. 

The dispute also sets up another test of the NFL’s tolerance for potentially messy public disclosures. In a trial setting, powerful figures such as commissioners and team owners are no longer in control, and it’s a dynamic the NFL and other major leagues have often sought to avoid. To that end, the NFL’s $820 million settlement with St. Louis officials over the Rams’ relocation to Los Angeles was struck about six weeks before a scheduled trial there.