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A US jury ordered the National Football League on Thursday to pay out $4.7 billion to satellite TV subscribers for violating federal antitrust law, US media reported.
The long-running case was originally brought by the Mucky Duck sports bar in San Francisco, which complained that the NFL, the organisation behind the 32-team American football league, had illegally stifled competition for watching games on TV.
The NFL, which centralises TV rights for all its games in the United States, broadcasts local or regional games for free, but makes out-of-market games only available through the premium-priced "Sunday Ticket" or similar offers.
From 1994 until 2022, DirectTV was granted the rights to out-of-market games and charged a premium price to NFL fans and businesses wishing to watch games that were not part of their home market.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in a California federal court, covered 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses who paid for the package of games from the 2011 through 2022 seasons on DirecTV.
The lawsuit claimed the league broke antitrust laws by selling the package, known as the "Sunday Ticket", at an inflated price and by making the games only available on a satellite provider.
This case is "about telling the 32 team owners who collectively own all the big TV rights, the most popular content in the history of TV, that even you cannot ignore the antitrust laws," plaintiffs attorney Bill Carmody said during closing arguments, according to ESPN.
The NFL said the package was part of a six-decade-old antitrust exemption and that it would vigorously fight the jury's decision in an appeals process, which could go as far as the US Supreme Court.
"We are disappointed with the jury’s verdict today in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit," the league said in a statement.
"We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy...is by far the most fan-friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment," it added.
