The NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit is a certified class action in which roughly 2.4 million residential DirecTV subscribers and 48,000 commercial subscribers accused the NFL and its 32 teams of conspiring to inflate the price of out-of-market game broadcasts. A federal jury in Los Angeles awarded about $4.7 billion in damages in June 2024. Five weeks later, the trial judge threw the verdict out. The case is now on appeal at the Ninth Circuit, which heard oral argument on March 9, 2026, and a decision is expected within months.1In re: National Football League’s “Sunday Ticket” Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 2:15-ml-02668 (C.D. Cal.)
Where the Case Stands in 2026
No money is available to class members. The official case website states plainly that there is no money now and no guarantee there ever will be. The deadline to opt out of the damages classes was October 8, 2023, so anyone who did not exclude themselves by that date is bound by whatever the courts ultimately decide. Members of the injunctive-relief classes never had an opt-out option.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit is weighing whether to reinstate the jury’s verdict, order a new trial, or affirm the trial judge’s decision to wipe out the damages. The panel consists of Judges Holly Thomas, Anthony Johnstone, and Joan Lefkow. Further appeals are widely expected regardless of how the panel rules, and the losing side could seek rehearing or petition the Supreme Court.
What the Subscribers Claimed
NFL Sunday Ticket launched in 1994 and, for nearly three decades, was sold exclusively through DirecTV. Residential subscribers paid about $349 per season for the full bundle of out-of-market Sunday afternoon games. Commercial customers such as bars and restaurants paid fees scaled to venue capacity, ranging from roughly $2,300 to as much as $120,000 per year. In December 2022, the NFL moved residential rights to Google’s YouTube TV under a seven-year deal worth about $2 billion per season.
The plaintiffs sued under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Their theory: the 32 NFL teams are separate businesses that would ordinarily compete to sell their broadcast rights, and their agreement to pool those rights and sell them only as a single expensive bundle through a single distributor was an illegal restraint of trade. Unlike Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL, the NFL never offered fans the option to buy a single team’s out-of-market games or to shop between distributors. The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in American Needle, Inc. v. NFL established that when NFL teams act collectively to license rights, they engage in “concerted action” subject to antitrust scrutiny.
The certified class covered residential and commercial subscribers who purchased Sunday Ticket between June 2011 and February 2023. Named plaintiffs included two bars, Ninth Inning Inc. (operating The Mucky Duck in San Francisco) and 1465 Third Avenue Restaurant Corp. (the Gael Pub), along with residential subscribers Robert Gary Lippincott Jr. and Michael Holinko.
The $4.7 Billion Jury Verdict
After a four-week trial before U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez, the jury returned its verdict on June 27, 2024. It awarded $4,610,331,671.74 to the residential class and $96,928,272.90 to the commercial class. Under federal antitrust law, damages are automatically trebled, which would have pushed the final judgment above $14 billion had it survived.
Why the Judge Threw Out the Verdict
On August 1, 2024, Judge Gutierrez granted the NFL’s motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(b) and vacated the damages award. His ruling turned on the plaintiffs’ two economic experts, Dr. Daniel Rascher and Dr. John Zona, whose testimony the judge concluded should never have reached the jury.
Rascher had built what he called a “college football but-for world,” reasoning that without the NFL’s pooled arrangement, individual teams would strike their own deals and out-of-market games would end up on free over-the-air television and basic cable, much like college football. Under that model, the “but-for” price of Sunday Ticket was essentially zero, and he calculated $7.01 billion in total damages. Judge Gutierrez called the analysis an “ipse dixit opinion untethered to an economic analysis,” meaning Rascher asserted his conclusion without demonstrating it through reliable methodology. When asked at trial to explain how NFL games would actually end up on free television, Rascher said the teams, as “sophisticated entities,” would “figure it out.” The court also pointed to trial testimony from former CBS Sports president Sean McManus that CBS would never share its NFL feeds with competing networks, and noted that many high-profile college games actually air on premium cable rather than free TV.
Zona’s models fared no better. He had constructed scenarios with multiple competing distributors, but the court found the analysis rested on unsupported assumptions about whether those distributors would exist and how consumers would behave. The judge ruled the methodology failed the reliability requirements of Federal Rule of Evidence 702.
With both experts excluded, Gutierrez concluded no reasonable jury could have found class-wide injury or calculated damages without speculating. He added that even if he had not granted judgment as a matter of law, he would have ordered a new trial, because the jury’s damage calculations did not match either expert’s figures and appeared to rely on a 2021 list price in a way the trial record did not support.
The Ninth Circuit Oral Argument
At the March 9, 2026 argument, the panel pressed the NFL harder than the subscribers. Judge Lefkow told NFL attorney Paul Clement her “fundamental problem” was “taking all of this from the jury,” arguing that as long as the jury instructions were valid, the verdict should generally stand even if jurors were “imprecise” in their math. Judge Johnstone questioned whether Rascher’s college-football comparison, even if imperfect, qualified as an admissible “yardstick” for antitrust damages, asking Clement, “If that’s not a yardstick, what is?” Judge Thomas also appeared unpersuaded by the argument that comparing college and professional football broadcasting was inherently inappropriate.
Amanda Bonn, arguing for the subscribers, said Judge Gutierrez had overstepped by resolving factual disputes that belonged to the jury. She characterized network executives’ testimony about their unwillingness to share broadcasts as “self-interested” and said weighing that credibility was the jury’s job. Clement urged deference to the trial court and stressed that the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 distinguishes the NFL from other leagues, though the Ninth Circuit indicated in a 2019 ruling in this case that the statute does not cover satellite or web-streaming agreements.
Several groups filed amicus briefs. The Washington Legal Foundation and Lawyers for Civil Justice urged the court to affirm Judge Gutierrez, with Lawyers for Civil Justice pointing to the 2023 amendments to Rule 702 as tightening the standard for expert testimony. The International Center for Law & Economics defended the NFL’s bundling model as procompetitive.
Legal observers noted that although the panel seemed sympathetic to the subscribers, questions about how damages were calculated and how the class action was structured suggested the judges may not simply reinstate the $4.7 billion figure. A full new trial was raised as a possible outcome.
What This Means for Class Members
If you were a Sunday Ticket subscriber between June 2011 and February 2023 and did not opt out by October 8, 2023, you remain a class member and are bound by the outcome. There is nothing to file, no claim form, and no money to collect at this stage. Whether that changes depends on the Ninth Circuit and any appeals that follow.
Beyond damages, the lawsuit also seeks injunctive relief that could reshape how the NFL sells out-of-market games. If the subscribers ultimately win, a court could order the league to end exclusive bundling, offer single-team packages, or allow multiple distributors to compete. When the NHL faced a similar antitrust challenge in 2015, it settled by agreeing to offer single-team subscriptions and reduce pricing for its out-of-market package. The Ninth Circuit’s decision is the next milestone, and it is expected within a few months of the March 2026 argument.