NFL to Face New Trial Over ‘Sunday Ticket’ $4.7 Billion Verdict

A federal appeals court has revived a verdict that the National Football League overcharged Sunday Ticket subscribers and ordered a new trial on damages.

The decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reverses a federal judge who had tossed a $4.7 billion award for consumers. A jury’s “verdict must stand unless it is clearly not supported by the evidence,” the court wrote.

The long running legal battle centers on allegations that the league and its 32 teams conspired in violation of antitrust laws to allow the NFL to reach exclusive deals with broadcast partners for the right to air out-of-market games.

After a jury sided with consumers in a 2024 trial, the court granted the NFL’s bid to throw out the verdict. U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez found that some of the testimony from experts who testified should’ve been excluded.

In Friday’s decision, the federal appeals court concluded that Gutierrez overstepped in her role as a gatekeeper of expert testimony.

“Opinions are neither unfounded nor unreliable merely because they are impeachable,” the three-judge panel wrote. “Such opinions are for the jury to weigh at trial.”

Gutierrez’s reasoning to overturn the jury’s verdict was grounded in testimony from Daniel Rascher.

Rascher used college football as a comparison for what would happen in the absence of the broadcasting restraints at issue in the case. Without the NFL’s exclusive arrangements, he testified that individual teams and conferences could sell their out-of-market game rights separately, as colleges do.

Gutierrez ultimately found that Rascher’s work was too speculative.

The appeals court, however, said that the lower court abused its discretion by excluding Rascher’s findings. “Reasonable jurors may debate whether college and professional football telecasts are sufficiently similar or how out-of-market NFL games would have become available in the absence of the NFL’s anticompetitive conduct,” the court wrote. “But those questions are for the jury to decide. Dr. Rascher’s testimony was admissible.”

The case now goes back to district court. The $4.7 billion verdict can’t stand because the jury’s finding on damages wasn’t based on a proper consideration of the evidence, the appeals court ruled.

In a statement, the NFL said it’s considering its options for further appellate review. It added, “We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy – which features 100 percent of NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games, supplemented by many additional choices including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL Plus – is by far the most fan-friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment.”