The NFL is facing a huge crisis after the bombshell verdict in the Sunday Ticket-DirecTV lawsuit that has been a decade in the making. After years of stops and starts, a US District Court jury found that the NFL has been in violation of antitrust law by artificially inflating the price of the Sunday Ticket subscription package.
While the verdict is concerning enough, the fact that the league could be on the hook for billions of dollars to consumers and establishments that purchased Sunday Ticket over the years could be a watershed moment for the league and its teams .
The NFL has already pledged to appeal, and it will likely be several years before we reach any kind of full resolution in the case.
As Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio explained on Friday’s edition of The Pat McAfee Show using his football and legal expertise, the NFL is in for a long road ahead as it tries to navigate the verdict and legal minefield that awaits.
“They’ll take this all the way to the Supreme Court if they have to because it’s $14 million dollars. And if the plaintiffs lose at any step, they’ll take it all the way to the US Supreme Court because we now have a number attached to this thing and it is $14.088 billion,” Florio said.
As Florio also explained, the lawsuit could mean a payout not just to bars and establishments that subscribed to show games at their businesses, but also every day customers. And even after lawyers and fees, if the judgment stands, individual Sunday Ticket subscribers could be in for quite the compensation.
“My rough math at this point would suggest that you’re looking at 3, 4, $5,000 per person if you had it half or most of the time,” Florio said.
McAfee compared that number to the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit, which netted college athletes only a few hundred dollars.
It may be unlikely that the full judgment against the league stands on appeal, but if it does, the NFL would be liable for putting a whole lot of money back in the pockets of consumers who have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on the Sunday Ticket package over the years.
And while that process plays out over various levels of the justice system and appeals process, it will be fascinating to see what the NFL does next with Sunday Ticket and their one-year-old deal with YouTubeTV that is still charging $449 per year as a standalone package and $349 per year for YouTubeTV customers.
[ The Pat McAfee Show ]
The post Mike Florio: Sunday Ticket customers could receive huge compensation after antitrust verdict appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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