Judge in NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit overturns $4,700,000,000 verdict against the league: Report
A big turnaround on the lawsuit against the NFL regarding its Sunday Ticket product happened on Thursday. A federal judge has overturned the verdict given against the league.
The league was sued under the argument that it had violated antitrust law by making out-of-market games unavailable and not allowing packages of games of a single team to be bought. It was first dismissed in 2017, but reinstated in 2019, and in June, the initial result said that the NFL had to pay $4,7 million in damages.
The US District Judge Philip Gutierrez had argued that the jury responsible for determining the amount of money to be paid had not used the correct formula to find the value which the NFL was responsible for:
"For the foregoing reasons, the Court grants Defendants' judgment as a matter of law as without the testimonies of Dr. Rascher and Dr. Zona no reasonable jury could have found class wide injury or damages."
The NFL has released a statement on the matter:
"We are grateful for today’s ruling in the Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit. We believe that the NFL's media distribution model provides our fans with an array of options to follow the game they love, including local broadcasts of every single game on free over-the-air television. We thank Judge Gutierrez for his time and attention to this case and look forward to an exciting 2024 NFL season.”
Who sued the NFL in the Sunday Ticket Lawsuit trial?
The suit was made by many owners and NFL fans across the U.S. who were looking for restitution due to damages pointed out in the lawsuit. According to Front Office Sports, over 2.4 million fans and 48,000 commercial subscribers to the league were involved in the matter.
The ramifications of the first result were going to be massive. If you know one or two things about the NFL, is that the league hates to lose money. Such a hefty amount to be paid in a lawsuit even had owners stating that this could be a case of the players also dealing with the fallout and the salary cap going down.