NFL Sunday Ticket Lawsuit: $4.7B Verdict and Ninth Circuit Appeal

The NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit is a class action brought by more than 2.4 million residential subscribers and roughly 48,000 bars, restaurants, and other commercial customers who accuse the National Football League and its 32 teams of violating federal antitrust law by pooling their out-of-market broadcast rights and selling them through a single distributor at inflated prices. A California jury awarded the class about $4.7 billion in June 2024. Five weeks later, the trial judge threw the verdict out. The case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which heard oral arguments in early 2026 and is expected to rule later in the year.

What the Subscribers Claim

The case is formally titled In re National Football League’s “Sunday Ticket” Antitrust Litigation, MDL No. 2668, filed in 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. From 1994 through 2022, DirecTV held the exclusive right to distribute NFL Sunday Ticket, the package of Sunday afternoon games involving teams outside a viewer’s local market. A fan who wanted to follow an out-of-town team had one option: buy the full bundle from one provider.

The plaintiffs argue that this arrangement violates Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.¹ By pooling rights and funneling them to one distributor, they say, the NFL eliminated competition among its own teams for broadcasting deals, shut out smaller networks, and kept the price artificially high. If teams were free to strike their own deals, the argument goes, multiple networks and streaming services would carry games, and prices would fall. The certified class covers purchases made between June 17, 2011, and February 7, 2023.²

The complaint pointed to the actual prices: about $252 a year for a residential subscriber in 2015, and anywhere from $2,314 to $120,000 a year for commercial establishments, depending on capacity.³

The NFL’s principal defense rests on the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which gives professional sports leagues a limited antitrust exemption for pooling broadcast rights. The plaintiffs counter that the SBA covers “sponsored telecasting” — free, advertiser-supported broadcasts — and does not shield paid satellite or streaming services.⁴ The Ninth Circuit adopted similar reasoning in 2019 when it revived the case after an earlier dismissal.⁵

The $4.7 Billion Verdict

The case was certified as a class action in February 2023 and went to trial before Judge Philip S. Gutierrez in the summer of 2024.²

The plaintiffs’ key expert, sports economist Dr. Daniel Rascher, told jurors that in a world without the NFL’s bundling arrangement, individual teams would sell rights to competing networks the way college football does, and out-of-market games would land on basic cable or over-the-air channels at no extra charge. Under his model, the “but-for” price of Sunday Ticket was essentially zero.⁶

On June 27, 2024, the jury sided with the class. It awarded $4,610,331,671.74 to the residential subscribers and $96,928,272.90 to the commercial subscribers, for a combined total of about $4.7 billion.⁷ Because Section 4 of the Clayton Act automatically trebles antitrust damages, the exposure could have grown to roughly $14.1 billion.⁸

Why the Judge Threw the Verdict Out

The award stood for barely five weeks. On August 1, 2024, Judge Gutierrez granted the NFL’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and erased it.⁹

His ruling focused on the expert testimony. He called Rascher’s college-football comparison “speculation and ipse dixit opinion untethered to an economic analysis,” faulting the economist for never explaining how NFL teams would actually end up on free or basic cable channels in his hypothetical market.⁶ The judge also noted that former CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus and a Fox Sports executive testified their networks would not have shared their proprietary feeds with competitors, directly contradicting Rascher’s premise.¹⁰

Applying the revised Federal Rule of Evidence 702, effective December 2023, Judge Gutierrez excluded the testimony of both Rascher and a second expert, Dr. John Zona. Without that evidence, he wrote, “no reasonable jury could have found class-wide injury or damages.”⁷

The court identified a second problem: the jury had ignored his damages instructions and built its own formula, subtracting the average price subscribers actually paid ($102.74) from the 2021 list price ($293.96) and multiplying the difference by the number of class members.⁷ Had he not entered judgment for the NFL outright, Gutierrez wrote, he would have ordered a new trial based on the “irrational damages award.”⁹

The judge did not reject the underlying antitrust theory. He acknowledged it was not unreasonable for the jury to find an “unreasonable restraint of trade.”¹¹ The problem, in his view, was that the plaintiffs never proved how much the restraint cost subscribers.

The Ninth Circuit Appeal

The class appealed. A three-judge panel — Holly Thomas, Anthony Johnstone, and Joan Lefkow — heard oral arguments in early 2026, with appellate lawyer Amanda Bonn arguing for the subscribers and former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement arguing for the NFL.¹²¹⁰

Bonn argued that Judge Gutierrez abused his discretion by taking factual questions away from the jury. The weight of Rascher’s college-football yardstick, she said, was for jurors to decide, and “reasonable economic similarity” between NFL and top-tier college football telecasts was all the law required.¹³ She dismissed the CBS and Fox executives as “self-interested” defenders of the very arrangement the plaintiffs challenged.¹²

Clement urged deference to the trial judge, who had overseen the case for years, and called Rascher’s model fundamentally unreliable. He pointed to the Sports Broadcasting Act as a “fundamental gamechanger” that distinguishes the NFL from college football and makes the plaintiffs’ comparison inapt.¹²

The panel sounded skeptical of the NFL. Judge Johnstone questioned whether a trial judge should second-guess expert methodology a jury had already weighed, asking of the college-football yardstick, “If that’s not a yardstick, what is?”¹³ Judge Lefkow called it “remarkable” that the trial court took the case away from the jury after letting the testimony in.¹² Even so, legal observers noted that the tone of questioning suggested the judges are unlikely to simply reinstate the $4.7 billion verdict. A new trial, or a fresh look at class certification, appears to be on the table.¹⁰

A ruling is expected later in 2026. Possible outcomes include reinstating some or all of the verdict, ordering a new trial on damages alone, sending the whole case back for retrial, or upholding judgment for the NFL. Either side could then seek review by the full Ninth Circuit or petition the Supreme Court.

What This Means for Sunday Ticket Now

While the litigation has moved through the courts, the product itself has changed hands. Google struck a seven-year, $14 billion deal to carry Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV starting with the 2023 season, ending DirecTV’s nearly three-decade run. In 2024, the package cost $379 for YouTube TV subscribers and $479 as a standalone purchase.¹⁴

The delivery changed; the structure the lawsuit challenges did not. The NFL still pools all teams’ out-of-market rights and sells them through one distributor in an all-or-nothing package. Google is not a defendant, but if the plaintiffs ultimately prevail, the current YouTube TV arrangement could be affected.¹⁴ The plaintiffs contrast that model with the NBA’s League Pass and MLB.TV, which let fans buy single-team packages through multiple providers.¹⁵ There is no settlement in this case.

Federal Scrutiny Beyond the Courtroom

The lawsuit is not the only pressure on the NFL’s broadcasting model. In March 2026, Senator Mike Lee, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, wrote to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission urging a review of whether the SBA’s antitrust exemption still fits the modern streaming era. Lee argued that fans now spend nearly $1,000 a season across cable and streaming services to watch all NFL games, far from the free, advertiser-supported broadcasts Congress meant to protect in 1961.¹⁶

Weeks later, according to reporting first published by The Wall Street Journal in April 2026, the DOJ opened an investigation into whether the NFL has engaged in anticompetitive practices through its media rights deals. The probe can require league and team officials to produce documents and sit for interviews, though opening an investigation does not guarantee any legal action.¹⁷

The FCC’s Media Bureau opened a public inquiry in February 2026 into the fragmentation of live sports broadcasting, asking whether the migration of games from free television to paid streaming conflicts with broadcasters’ public interest obligations. The bureau noted that during the 2025 NFL season, games were spread across 10 different services, and a consumer could spend more than $1,500 to access all of them.¹⁸

In June 2026, the House Judiciary Committee released a 26-page interim report alleging that the NFL has “stretched” the SBA’s exemption beyond its intended purpose and “misled Congress regarding its television agreements.” The report cited data showing that more than 70 percent of former Sunday Ticket subscribers signed up primarily to watch a single out-of-market team, and that the average NFL game reaches only 39 percent of U.S. households, despite the league’s claim that 87 percent of games air on broadcast television. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell declined the committee’s invitation to testify, citing the ongoing litigation.¹⁹⁴

The question these fronts share is the one the class posed in 2015: whether selling every team’s out-of-market games as a single, exclusive package is a legitimate use of a 1961 antitrust exemption or conduct the Sherman Act forbids. The Ninth Circuit will answer part of it soon.

1
NYU Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law. From Touchdown to Fumble
2
NBC Los Angeles. NFL Sunday Ticket Lawsuit Details, Timeline and Background
3
Supreme Court of the United States. Petition for Writ of Certiorari
4
U.S. House Judiciary Committee. New Report: Sports Broadcasting Act Special Interest Antitrust Exemption Gone Awry
5
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In re NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation, Opinion
6
Kutak Rock LLP. Look for Flags on Expert Claims After Sunday Ticket
7
ESPN. Judge Rules NFL, Overturns $4.7B Sunday Ticket Verdict
8
Cornell Law Institute. 15 U.S. Code § 15 – Suits by Persons Injured
9
NPR. NFL Sunday Ticket Ruling Overturned
10
Sports Business Journal. Appeals Court Poses Skeptical Questions to NFL in Sunday Ticket Case
11
Vanderbilt Law School. Order in the Field: A Brief Overview of the NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation
12
Sportico. NFL Sunday Ticket Appeal at the Ninth Circuit
13
Courthouse News. Ninth Circuit Skeptical of NFL’s Win in Sunday Ticket Trial
14
Front Office Sports. NFL Sunday Ticket YouTube Google Multiview
15
Kutak Rock LLP. NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Verdict
16
Office of Senator Mike Lee. Senator Lee Urges Probe of NFL’s Soaring Streaming Service Prices
17
Sportico. Justice Department NFL TV Investigation
18
Deadline. FCC Sports Broadcasting Streaming
19
NBC Sports. House Judiciary Committee Report Suggests NFL Misled Congress About Sunday Ticket