After having a jury rule against the NFL in the Sunday Ticket lawsuit, the league came out on top when the judge presiding over the case reversed the verdict. That put the NFL back on offense. And they’re on the attack.
According to Front Office Sports’ A.J. Perez, the league has filed court documents looking for nearly $400,000 in court and attorney fees from the suit. Perez offers a breakdown of the costs.
Nearly $300,000 in documents. Teach your kids to grow up to be lawyers.
To recap, the NFL fought a Sunday Ticket lawsuit for a decade, accused of having an overpriced monopoly on the program that forced fans and establishments to pay high sums to watch all NFL games. The service didn’t allow consumers to choose a more select package of say, their favorite team, for a lower price even though ESPN once offered that proposal that the league rejected.
For now, Sunday Ticket appears to continue in its current form, switching from DirectTV to Google/YouTube last year. That created a wider consumer base though hurts customers who live in rural areas without broadband Internet.
The suit was officially brought by a bar in California. After being thrown out, appealed, and revived several times over, it finally went to trial earlier this year. A jury awarded the plantiffs over $4.7 billion in damages, a sum that would’ve triple due to anti-trust rules. But Judge Philip Gutierrez, who oversaw the case, overturned the verdict after believing the jury was misinformed about damages and costs. That verdict will undoubtedly be appealed, tangling the case in the courts for months or years.
For now, the NFL is looking to collect. As PFT’s Mike Florio opined, asking for attorney fees isn’t uncommon but for a multi-billion dollar league, these are comparatively small sums of money. If anything, the league is offering a reminder to all parties unhappy with them. You come at the King, you best not miss. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay.
