By Alex Baime
National Football League (“NFL”) Sundays are like a ritual to some. People sit down on their couch, chow down on some food, and watch that week’s slate of games all day long. To do this, fans are required to purchase NFL Sunday Ticket (“Sunday Ticket”), a subscription service that allows fans to watch non-nationally televised games outside of their local television market.[1] Sunday Ticket has been the means through which football fans have watched such games for over thirty years.[2] This is subject to change, though, as NFL’s practice of granting companies (Direct TV and now YouTube TV) exclusive licensing rights has been called into question by recent antitrust litigation.[3] The outcome of this litigation is important as it could not only affect how fans watch football on Sundays but also have cascading effects across the antitrust landscape.[4]
A Summary of the Current Litigation
In 2015, NFL Sunday Ticket Subscribers filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL, its teams, and Direct TV (who was the exclusive distributor of NFL Sunday Ticket at the time).[5] The complaint alleged that NFL Sunday Ticket was an example of anti-competitive conduct, since it “pooled” each teams’ games into an exclusive distribution scheme, thus allowing the NFL and Direct TV to jack up prices.[6] Instead, the plaintiffs posit antitrust laws would require teams to allow each team to compete for deals, which would also allow smaller networks to participate in the streaming game in a way that this all-or-nothing approach does not allow.[7]
In 2024, a California jury awarded plaintiffs $4.7 billion dollars in damages.[8] This case is far from over, though. District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez found that the plaintiff expert’s testimony was untimely, “irrational,” and based on “an invalid model.”[9] Because this testimony served as the only basis for the award of such lofty damages, the NFL was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.[10] The jury’s damages award was also vacated because it was not clearly based on the evidence presented and did not follow the court’s jury instructions.[11] Notwithstanding the issues with the damages award, the court found that it was not unreasonable for the jury to have found an unreasonable restraint of trade.[12] The evidentiary issues, though, were such that it would be impossible for the jury to conclude that “subscribers would have indeed paid less” in the absence of such anticompetitive conduct.[13]
The court’s ruling is currently under appeal in the Ninth Circuit.[14] Importantly, in 2019, the Ninth Circuit reversed the lower court’s dismissal of the case for failure to state a claim.[15] How the appellate court rules this time will have far-reaching implications.[16]
Legal Issues Implicated
A verdict for the plaintiffs would shake up how sports broadcasting works in the United States. Indeed, it would call into question several broadcasting agreements leagues have entered. Exclusive or limited distribution agreements have dominated the sports world with the growing trend away from cable and toward streaming services.[17] If the Circuit Court were to reverse the district court’s ruling and uphold the multi-billion-dollar jury verdict, the entire landscape of sports-streaming would be at risk.[18] While some, like the plaintiffs, would argue that this is good for consumers as it would engender more competitive pricing schemes, others argue that a disparate network of games that require multiple services to watch all games would only lead to increased prices.[19]
There are copyright implications to this litigation as well.[20] The 1976 Copyright Act vests exclusive distribution rights in an ownership entity. Such entity can be a larger company (or league) who “produces and owns” multiple works and owns the distribution rights to such works.[21] While there is a question of who “owns” the distribution rights to game broadcasts (the teams or the owners), the act contemplates copyright vesting in “joint work” in which multiple owners or authors intend “that their contributions be merged . . . into a unitary whole.”[22] While some leagues have designated that, under such a framework, teams own their own broadcasting rights, the NFL has not.[23] Under existing copyright law, then, the NFL should ostensibly have the right to distribute their product as they see fit. Upholding the jury verdict in this litigation would open a can of worms not only in the antitrust world, but in the copyright world as well.[24]
It is currently unclear how the Ninth Circuit will rule and there are rumbles this case could even be taken up by the Supreme Court.[25] What is clear, though, is that its result will have widespread implications for sports fans and legal scholars alike.
Alex Baime is a 2L at Vanderbilt Law School. He plans to pursue a litigation practice and is spending this coming Summer at Sidley Austin in Chicago.
[1] Mike Snider, NFL Sunday Ticket 2025: Price Breakdown, Discounts, How to Get It, USA TODAY (Sept. 6, 2025), https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2025/09/06/nfl-sunday-ticket-youtube-tv-cost-discounts/85943879007/
[2] Google Announce Agreement to Distribute NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV, Primetime Channels, NFL (Dec. 22, 2022), https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-google-nfl-sunday-ticket-youtube-tv-youtube-primetime-channels.
[3] Kaleigh McCormick, Sunday Ticket Subscribers Punt Their NFL Lawsuit Back to the Ninth Circuit, COLUM. J. OF L. AND THE ARTS (Nov. 8, 2024), https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/announcement/view/734#_ftn7.
[4] See id.
[5] Id.; NFL, supra note 2.
[6] McCormick, supra note 3.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Order Granting Defs.’ Mot. for J. as a Matter of Law at 10, In re Nat’l Football League ‘Sunday Ticket’ Antitrust Litig. (C.D. Cal. Aug. 1, 2024) (No. 15-ml-02668).
[10] Id. at 12.
[11] Id. at 16.
[12] Id. at 12.
[13] Id.
[14] McCormick, supra note 3.
[15] Id.
[16] See generally id.
[17] Jodi S. Balsam, Fumbling Antitrust: Fallacies in the NFL Sunday Ticket Litigation, 16 HARV. J. OF SPORTS & ENT. L. 235, 238 (Aug. 2025).
[18] See id.
[19] See id. at 260.
[20] See id. at 237.
[21] See id. at 239 (quoting Copyright Act of 1909, 17 U.S.C. § 102(a)).
[22] See Balsam, supra note 17, at 245 (quoting 17 U.S.C. §101).
[23] See Balsam, supra note 17, at 249. The NFL and MLB are examples of leagues who have. Id.
[24] See generally id. at 237, 239.
[25] McCormick, supra note 3.