NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, right, arrives at a federal courthouse in Los Angeles, Monday, June 17, 2024. Goodell is scheduled to testify in a class-action lawsuit filed by Sunday Ticket subscribers that alleges the NFL violated antitrust laws. (AP Photo/Damien Dvarganes)
Some of the most powerful people in American sports are in Los Angeles this week as the nation’s top sports league defends itself against a lawsuit that alleges its televised games are the subject of a price-fixing scandal.
At issue is the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package, which allows fans to watch every game every Sunday, not just those broadcast locally on CBS or FOX stations.
Those broadcast games are available for free in the team’s home city, but Sunday Ticket charges $449 per year to watch what’s free in the rest of the country. Until last season, Sunday Ticket was only available on DirecTV, but this season it’s moving to YouTube TV.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who holds outsize influence given their powerful positions, testified in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, independent journalist Megan Cunniff reported for Substack Legal Affairs & Trials. Jones is scheduled to return for further cross-examination on Tuesday.
Football luminaries are defending the league against a class-action lawsuit by Sunday Ticket subscribers that “seeks billions of dollars in damages for what plaintiffs’ attorneys say is a years-long monopoly and price-fixing scheme that intentionally locked some fans out of the Sunday package in order to preserve the high revenues of its broadcast rights deals with CBS and FOX,” Cunniff wrote.
The lawsuit alleges that the NFL artificially set the price of the Sunday Ticket high, making it unaffordable for many people to tune in to local broadcasts, thereby inflating viewership and forcing broadcasters to pay the league more for rights.
If successful, the NFL could be forced to pay billions of dollars, possibly as much as $21 billion, because damages in the antitrust case could be tripled, according to a report from the Associated Press.
Jones and Goodell maintain that there was no ploy to keep prices high — rather, as Goodell argued, Sunday Ticket is a “premium product” that “should be priced accordingly.”
But their claims were undermined by videotaped testimony from Robert Kraft, another owner of the New England Patriots.
“Kraft appears to be tying Sunday Ticket’s subscriber numbers to the NFL’s desire to maintain this as a premium product that doesn’t devalue over-the-air and TV broadcasts,” Cunniff reported.
“We’re not looking to draw large crowds,” he added.