The NFL Sunday Ticket antitrust lawsuit is on appeal before the Ninth Circuit, where a three-judge panel heard oral arguments on March 9, 2026, and is expected to rule sometime in 2026. The appeal follows a dramatic swing in the case: a jury awarded roughly $4.7 billion to DirecTV subscribers in June 2024, and the trial judge threw that verdict out about five weeks later. The panel could reinstate the verdict, order a new trial, revisit class certification, or affirm the judge’s ruling, and either side could seek Supreme Court review afterward.1Sportico. NFL Sunday Ticket Appeal Ninth Circuit
Where the Appeal Stands
The Ninth Circuit panel consists of Circuit Judges Holly Thomas and Anthony Johnstone and Senior U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow. They heard the case in San Francisco.2Sports Business Journal. Appeals Court Poses Skeptical Questions to NFL in Sunday Ticket Case
Plaintiffs’ appellate attorney Amanda Bonn argued that the trial judge overstepped by substituting his own judgment for the jury’s, and that the weight of expert testimony is a question for jurors, not a matter for a judge to override after the fact. She also disputed how the NFL had characterized the jury’s damages math, arguing the $102.74 “overcharge” figure that the judge treated as evidence of jury confusion had been introduced into the case by the NFL’s own lawyers.1Sportico. NFL Sunday Ticket Appeal Ninth Circuit
NFL appellate counsel Paul Clement urged the court to apply a deferential “abuse of discretion” standard and uphold the trial ruling. He pointed to trial testimony from CBS and Fox executives that they would not provide proprietary feeds to rival networks, and argued the Sports Broadcasting Act makes professional football fundamentally different from the college football market the plaintiffs used as their comparison point.1Sportico. NFL Sunday Ticket Appeal Ninth Circuit
The panel’s questioning was sharper for the NFL. Judge Lefkow asked why the trial judge chose to “take it away from the jury” so quickly after the verdict. Judges Thomas and Johnstone pressed Clement on why the college football comparison should be thrown out entirely rather than left to jurors to weigh.3Courthouse News Service. Ninth Circuit Skeptical of NFL’s Win in Sunday Ticket Trial Skeptical questioning does not necessarily predict an outcome.2Sports Business Journal. Appeals Court Poses Skeptical Questions to NFL in Sunday Ticket Case
Why the $4.7 Billion Verdict Was Thrown Out
On June 27, 2024, after a three-week trial, an eight-member jury found the NFL liable and awarded $4.61 billion to the residential class and about $96.9 million to the commercial class.4Legal Affairs and Trials. Jury Orders NFL Pay Billions Under the federal antitrust treble-damages provision, the combined figure could have grown to roughly $14.1 billion.5NPR. NFL Pay Billions Sunday Ticket Antitrust
On August 1, 2024, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez granted the NFL’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and wiped out the award. His decision focused on the plaintiffs’ two economic experts.6ESPN. Judge Rules NFL Overturns Sunday Ticket Verdict
Dr. Daniel Rascher had used college football as a “yardstick” to argue that in a competitive market NFL out-of-market games would land on basic cable or free broadcast channels at little extra cost to consumers. Gutierrez ruled the theory was “based on speculation and ipse dixit opinion” and did not explain how such a market would actually work. Dr. John Zona’s alternative model, built around a direct-to-consumer streaming distributor, was excluded because no such service had actually sought to distribute NFL games during the relevant period.6ESPN. Judge Rules NFL Overturns Sunday Ticket Verdict
Gutierrez also found the jury had gone outside the record, calculating its own overcharge figure using inputs that neither expert had presented, an approach he called irrational. He noted at the same time that a juror could reasonably have concluded the NFL engaged in a conspiracy that unreasonably restrained trade. The failure, in his view, was on damages: the plaintiffs had not proved how much the conspiracy actually cost subscribers.7Vanderbilt Law School. A Brief Overview of the NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation
What the Lawsuit Alleges
NFL Sunday Ticket lets viewers watch NFL games being played outside their local broadcast market. It was sold exclusively through DirecTV for years, and beginning with the 2023 season YouTube TV took over under a deal reported at roughly $2 billion a year.8Sportico. NFL Sunday Ticket Cost YouTube 2025 Filed in 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the case alleged that the NFL and its 32 teams illegally pooled their individual broadcasting rights and sold them through a single distributor at inflated prices instead of competing against one another.7Vanderbilt Law School. A Brief Overview of the NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation
The plaintiffs framed the arrangement as an illegal horizontal agreement among competitors under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, and contrasted it with the NBA, NHL, and MLB, which distribute out-of-market packages through multiple providers.5NPR. NFL Pay Billions Sunday Ticket Antitrust The NFL invoked the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which grants professional leagues a limited antitrust exemption for collectively negotiated broadcast deals. Plaintiffs replied that the exemption reaches only free, over-the-air broadcasts, not paid subscription packages.9Princeton Legal Journal. NFL Tackled by Antitrust Litigation
In February 2023 the court certified four classes covering DirecTV subscribers who bought NFL Sunday Ticket between June 17, 2011, and February 7, 2023. By trial the residential class covered about 2.4 million subscribers and the commercial class about 48,000 businesses.5NPR. NFL Pay Billions Sunday Ticket Antitrust If you were not a DirecTV Sunday Ticket subscriber during that window, you are not part of the class. The YouTube TV era of Sunday Ticket is not covered by this case.
Other Antitrust Pressure on the NFL Right Now
The Sunday Ticket appeal is no longer the only antitrust matter the league is dealing with. In April 2026 the U.S. Department of Justice opened a separate investigation into whether the NFL’s broadcasting arrangements violate antitrust law, focusing on the league’s shift toward paid subscription services and whether pooling media rights across 32 teams drives up consumer prices.10Washington Post. NFL Football Games Antitrust Investigation11Sportico. Justice Department NFL TV Investigation As of mid-2026 the investigation is ongoing, with no formal findings or enforcement actions announced.
The DOJ probe was prompted in part by a March 2026 letter from Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, who asked the DOJ and FTC to review whether the Sports Broadcasting Act’s antitrust exemption still fits a media landscape that no longer resembles the free over-the-air world of 1961. Lee cited fans now spending close to $1,000 a year on cable and streaming subscriptions to follow their teams.12The Athletic. NFL Antitrust Exemption DOJ Probe13SportsPro. NFL DOJ Investigation TV Deals
The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform and Antitrust, led by Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, released an interim staff report on June 8, 2026, titled “The Sports Broadcasting Act: A Special-Interest Antitrust Exemption Gone Awry,” which argues the NFL has stretched the 1961 exemption beyond its original purpose. A hearing followed on June 10, 2026. No legislation to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act has been introduced.14House Judiciary Committee. New Report Sports Broadcasting Act15New York Post. Congress Takes Aim at NFL’s Antitrust Exemption Over Soaring TV Costs for Fans
In February 2026 the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau opened its own proceeding, MB Docket No. 26-45, seeking comment on the fragmentation of live sports programming across streaming platforms. The FCC noted the NFL aired games across at least ten different services in 2025 and asked whether the current structure adequately protects viewer access to free, over-the-air sports.16Federal Communications Commission. Media Bureau Seeks Comment on Sports Broadcasting Practices A letter to the FCC from a group of U.S. senators estimated the average viewer spends at least $630 per season just to watch in-market and national NFL games.17Office of Senator Elizabeth Warren. Comment to FCC Re Sports Streaming
The NFL has defended its model across every forum, saying more than 87 percent of its games are available on free broadcast television, that all games are free within the markets of the two competing teams, and calling its approach “the most fan and broadcaster-friendly in the entire sports and entertainment industry.”13SportsPro. NFL DOJ Investigation TV Deals
What Happens Next
The next real inflection point is the Ninth Circuit’s decision, expected in 2026. If the panel reinstates the verdict, the treble-damages provision comes back into play and the NFL faces exposure that could reach roughly $14.1 billion. A retrial order sends the case back to Judge Gutierrez’s courtroom. A ruling for the NFL ends the class case unless the Supreme Court takes it up. Whatever the panel decides, the DOJ investigation, the congressional review of the Sports Broadcasting Act, and the FCC docket are all moving on their own tracks, and none of them depends on the outcome of the appeal.