The NFL’s long-running Sunday Ticket antitrust case is not over. A federal appeals court has ordered a new trial to determine financial damages for subscribers and commercial customers who alleged they paid too much for the out-of-market game package.
The ruling does not restore the $4.7 billion damages award returned by a Los Angeles jury in 2024. That award remains vacated. Instead, the case returns to the district court for a new proceeding focused specifically on what, if any, monetary damages are appropriate.
For millions of football viewers, the immediate practical takeaway is straightforward: nothing in this decision changes the current Sunday Ticket product or creates an automatic payment for subscribers. The litigation concerns a prior period when DirecTV distributed the package. But the case remains consequential because it challenges the economics of a major sports-media product: the right to watch games involving teams outside a viewer’s local market.
What the appeals court decided
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the lower court should not have completely erased the jury’s verdict after the 2024 trial. The appellate panel nevertheless agreed with the lower court that the jury’s $4.7 billion calculation could not stand.
In other words, the court split the issues. It allowed the underlying consumer claims to continue to a damages retrial, while rejecting the particular dollar figure that the first jury reached.
“The jury clearly awarded damages based on its improper consideration of the evidence rather than according to the district court’s instructions,” the appeals court wrote. “This warrants a new trial on damages.”
That distinction matters. A damages trial is not a re-run of every question in the lawsuit. It is a proceeding centered on financial harm: whether eligible customers were overcharged, how that overcharge should be measured, and what amount the NFL could be required to pay if the claims prevail under the applicable legal framework.
Antitrust law generally addresses conduct that unlawfully restrains competition. Here, the subscribers argued that the NFL, DirecTV and network partners structured Sunday Ticket in a way that raised the package’s price. The 2024 jury found that the NFL had violated antitrust law in connection with the package. The new trial concerns the value of the resulting damages rather than reviving the old total unchanged.
Why the original $4.7 billion figure was thrown out
After the jury’s June 2024 verdict, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez vacated the $4.7 billion award. He found that the figure was not adequately supported by evidence and described it as resting on guesswork or speculation.
A major point of dispute was testimony from economist Daniel Rascher. His analysis addressed what individual NFL teams might have earned had out-of-market rights been sold separately, comparable to models used by college conferences and teams. Gutierrez ruled that testimony inadmissible.
The appeals court reached a different conclusion on that evidentiary question, holding that jurors should have been permitted to consider Rascher’s testimony. Yet it also found that the jury did not use the evidence properly in calculating the award under the district court’s instructions. The result is an unusual but important legal middle ground: the prior damages number is gone, but the court has determined that damages deserve another trial rather than a complete end to that part of the case.
For non-lawyers, the key term is vacated. It means a court has set aside a prior ruling or award, so it no longer has legal effect. It does not necessarily mean every claim involved in the case has been rejected. Here, the appellate ruling sends the damages question back for further proceedings.
Who is covered by the class action?
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2015 and covered a substantial group of former DirecTV-era Sunday Ticket purchasers: more than 2.4 million residential subscribers and more than 48,000 commercial establishments, including restaurants and bars.
That commercial category is significant. Sports bars and similar venues can depend on broad game access to attract customers, so the economics of an out-of-market package look different for them than for an individual household. The case nevertheless combines claims from both consumer and business purchasers connected to the old DirecTV distribution arrangement.
Eligibility, payment amounts and any process for compensation remain unresolved. A new damages trial must happen first, and the NFL has said it is considering further appellate options. Anyone who once subscribed should therefore be cautious about treating the ruling as a final settlement or a confirmed refund.
Sunday Ticket’s distribution changed, but the case follows the old model
DirecTV had distributed Sunday Ticket from 1994 through the period before the 2023-24 NFL season. Google then secured a seven-year agreement to offer the consumer package through YouTube.
Today, NFL Sunday Ticket covers out-of-market Sunday regular-season games carried by Fox and CBS. That scope is worth stressing. Sunday Ticket is not a universal pass to every NFL broadcast. Local-market games, nationally distributed games and games carried under different arrangements sit within a wider patchwork of NFL media rights.
The NFL argues that this broader arrangement is highly fan-friendly, pointing to free over-the-air broadcasts in participating teams’ local markets, national distribution for many prominent games, and options including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL Plus. The league said it was disappointed by the ruling and would consider seeking additional appellate review.
The central tension is familiar to anyone who has tried to follow a distant favorite team: a league can make many games broadly available on free local television while still selling a premium product for fans who want access beyond their home market. The lawsuit tests whether the historical pricing and distribution structure for that premium product unlawfully limited competition.
Prices and the importance of the alternative model discussed at trial
Evidence presented at trial included an ESPN proposal for Sunday Ticket rights beginning with the 2023-24 season. That proposal would have offered a single-team, out-of-market option for $70 per season. The NFL did not agree to the plan.
The proposal does not establish what Sunday Ticket necessarily would have cost under another lawful distribution system. It does, however, illustrate why the case has focused so heavily on alternatives. A central damages question in antitrust cases can be the difference between the amount customers actually paid and the amount they might have paid in a more competitive scenario. Lawyers and experts often call that hypothetical comparison a but-for world: an analytical version of the market assuming the challenged conduct had not occurred.
Building that model is difficult. It requires assumptions about rights sales, team and league revenue, consumer demand, product bundles and distribution partners. The dispute over Rascher’s testimony shows how high the stakes are when experts attempt to estimate that alternate market. A damages award needs more than the belief that a product was expensive; it needs a legally acceptable method for tying claimed overcharges to evidence.
For the 2026 season, new subscribers could obtain Sunday Ticket for $240 with a YouTube TV plan, while returning YouTube TV customers faced a listed price of $378. Sunday Ticket through YouTube without YouTube TV was listed at $240 for new customers and $480 for returning subscribers. Those current prices provide context for the cost of following out-of-market games, but they do not themselves decide liability or damages in a case involving the earlier DirecTV period.
What happens next
The case now returns to district court for the new damages trial ordered by the appeals court. Before that occurs, the NFL may pursue additional appellate review, as its spokesperson indicated. The supplied ruling does not establish a date for the retrial, a replacement damages amount or a timetable for any eventual compensation.
That procedural uncertainty is not a minor detail. The suit has been active for more than 11 years, and each legal stage can affect the next. A future damages verdict could face post-trial motions and appeals of its own.
Still, the appellate decision prevents the dispute from ending with the discarded $4.7 billion verdict. It gives the subscriber class another opportunity to make its financial case, now with the disputed expert testimony available for consideration and with a renewed need to show damages through a method the court will accept.
For sports-media customers, the case is also a reminder that streaming-era availability does not automatically simplify the business of watching everything. Distribution has moved from DirecTV exclusivity to a YouTube-led offering, but the underlying questions of territory, exclusivity, bundling and price remain central. Those questions increasingly matter across subscription entertainment, whether the product is live sports or a digital platform navigating broader technology pressures such as those affecting Google’s consumer device ecosystem.
The next trial will not decide whether Sunday Ticket is a good deal for every fan. It will instead try to put a defensible dollar figure, if any, on the class’s alleged harm during the DirecTV years. That is a narrower task than the original headline-grabbing award, but it may ultimately be the more consequential one.
