Now I’ve never had Sunday Ticket because I’ve never spent an extended time outside of the Philly area for more than that 1.5 years in college I did down in Maryland. So I’ve never been personally affected by the Ticket. But I know people who couldn’t stand it. Between the price, lackluster quality, and the fact that DirectTV basically gave up at the end it looked like people were being robbed. Turns out they were. A jury out in LA sided with the people in a class action lawsuit against the NFL via Margaret Fleming at FrontOfficeSports.com:

A jury in Los Angeles sided against the NFL on Thursday in the Sunday Ticket trial that could cost the league billions. The verdict was delivered in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

The league has been ordered to pay $96 million to bars that said they were overcharged for Sunday Ticket, and $4.7 billion to fans who paid for the streaming package. Under federal antitrust law, those damages are tripled, bringing the total to more than $14 billion.

The league said in a statement that it will “certainly” appeal the verdict, calling the suit “baseless and without merit.” The case could eventually end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Customers will be getting roughly $2k from the settlement they can put towards their Sunday Ticket subscription for next season. It’ll cost nearly $150 million for every NFL owner. Maybe that’s why Jeffrey Lurie is looking for a minority partner.

Did you know Jon Taffer had a major hand in creating the Ticket? The dude who made the butt funnel famous also had a hand in creating one of the best sports inventions of all time. Which it is even though it could be aggravating at times:

It’s not Taffer’s fault the NFL was robbing their own fans blind with Sunday Ticket:

One of the key claims of the suit is that the league inflates the price of NFL Sunday Ticket. Today on YouTube TV, the package costs $349 per year. It was revealed during the trial that the league declined an ESPN proposal to take over the offering last season and price it at $70, and include single-team packages. It also came to light that the league had drafted a proposal in 2017 to ax Sunday Ticket entirely and move games to a number of cable channels. NFL lawyers and officials, including Roger Goodell, have argued in response that Sunday Ticket is a “premium product” that wasn’t intended to end up in every living room.

The jury ruled Thursday that those decisions by the NFL violated federal antitrust law.

Nobody blatantly hates their fans more than the NFL. Despite the on-field product refusing to get any better in years, the ability to flex games to primetime with little heads up to people who already booked travel and accommodations, and the constant price gouging the NFL is going to have their day. It might not be today, it might not be for an entire decade, but something is coming. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but there’s no chance they can continue to stay this powerful for this long without fans just one day saying, “fuck it.” I mean it’s right in front of our faces how much the NFL doesn’t care about us. They could’ve given fans out-of-market Eagles games for $70 last year. Instead they’re charging 5x that on YouTube TV for it to just constantly buffer and have a picture quality of a Nokia:


To make matters worse we’re getting boat-raced by Japan in football now:

If we’re going to start losing to Japan in AMERICAN football than the future of football in this country is already screwed.