Sports Fans Coalition applauds the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision reinstating a jury’s finding that the National Football League violated federal antitrust law in how it exclusively distributed games through DirecTV’s “Sunday Ticket” package. SFC filed an amicus brief in January 2025 urging the appellate court to reach this outcome to protect fans from inflated prices
“When the trial judge tossed this verdict, it was like a ref throwing a flag on the game-winning touchdown when nobody else saw a foul. The ruling on the field was correctly overturned by the Ninth Circuit,” said Brian Hess, Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. “A jury sat through a month of evidence and decided the NFL broke the law. Fans who paid for Sunday Ticket got overcharged, and the NFL is now back on the hook for it–as they should be. That verdict should never have been taken away from them in the first place.”
“This case covered the DirecTV years, but nothing about the business model has changed. Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV is still a premium package built to protect the league’s Sunday afternoon broadcast deals. In 1961 Congress gave the NFL a narrow antitrust exemption so games would stay on free TV. That exemption was never meant to give the league a free pass to run up prices on satellite and streaming, and Congress should be paying attention.”
Background: In June 2024, a federal jury awarded roughly $4.7 billion to residential and commercial Sunday Ticket subscribers after finding the NFL violated antitrust law. Judge Philip Gutierrez later threw out the verdict, ruling that the plaintiffs’ economic experts’ testimony was unreliable as a matter of law.
In January 2025, Sports Fans Coalition filed an amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit supporting the plaintiff subscribers. The brief made three main points:
The NFL’s antitrust exemption is narrow. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 covers only free, over-the-air broadcasts. It does not reach a pay package like Sunday Ticket sold exclusively through satellite.
The NFL has a history of restricting fan access. SFC pointed to the league’s meritless defense of the sports blackout rule, which SFC helped persuade the FCC to repeal in 2014.
The trial judge got the facts wrong. SFC challenged the court’s conclusions that no streaming alternative was feasible in 2011 and that CBS would not share its game feeds with competitors. SFC argued that streaming of live sports was already mainstream by 2011 and that CBS had in fact shared its feeds.
SFC asked the Ninth Circuit to reinstate both the jury’s liability finding and its damages award.
On October 30, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel agreed with SFC in its partial reversal of the trial judge’s decision. It held that the district court abused its discretion by excluding the subscribers’ expert testimony as a matter of law instead of allowing the jury to assess its reliability and it ordered the liability verdict reinstated. The amount the NFL owes in damages will undoubtedly be substantial and decided after a new damages trial.