Appeals Court Revives NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Verdict, Orders New Damages Trial

A federal appeals court on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, revived the jury verdict that found the NFL liable in the long-running Sunday Ticket antitrust case, reversing a Los Angeles judge who had wiped out a $4.7 billion award in 2024. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the liability verdict reinstated but agreed the league is entitled to a new trial on how much it owes.

What the 9th Circuit decided in the Sunday Ticket case

The three-judge panel, Circuit Judges Holly A. Thomas and Anthony D. Johnstone and U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow of Illinois sitting by designation, heard arguments on March 9 and issued its published opinion on Friday. Johnstone wrote for the court.

The central question was whether U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez was right to throw out the testimony of the subscribers’ two economists, Daniel Rascher and Douglas Zona. Without that testimony, Gutierrez ruled, the plaintiffs could not prove their claims, and he entered judgment for the NFL weeks after the jury’s June 2024 verdict.

The panel disagreed. “Opinions are neither unfounded nor unreliable merely because they are impeachable,” Johnstone wrote. “Such opinions are for the jury to weigh at trial. Once a jury does so, its verdict must stand unless it is clearly not supported by the evidence.” He added that whether college and pro football telecasts are similar enough, and how out-of-market NFL games would have reached fans without the league’s conduct, “are for the jury to decide.”

The court did not hand the subscribers their money, though. It upheld Gutierrez’s backup ruling ordering a new damages trial, finding the jury did not follow his instructions on how to measure the overcharge.

Why the $4.7 billion award still needs a retrial

The jury in Los Angeles awarded exactly $4,610,331,671.74 to the residential class and $96,928,272.90 to the commercial class, made up of bars and restaurants. According to the opinion, those numbers match the subscriber counts multiplied by $191.26, which is the gap between Sunday Ticket’s 2018 and 2019 residential list price of $294 and Zona’s estimate that the average subscriber actually paid $102.74.

The panel said that gap measured a discount, the money subscribers saved by paying below list price, rather than an overcharge caused by anticompetitive conduct. It also ignored what businesses paid, which the court said ran “an order of magnitude higher” than home prices. Commercial subscribers paid anywhere from thousands of dollars to more than $100,000 a season depending on their size, while residential list prices ranged from $200 to nearly $400.

By the numbers: the money at stake

The opinion gives a useful yardstick for the retrial. Zona’s main “direct-to-consumer” model, which imagined one additional competitor selling out-of-market games, estimated Sunday Ticket prices would have fallen 49.7% and put the harm at $2.81 billion for homes and $670 million for businesses. That totals $3.48 billion. By TBR’s calculation from the court’s figures, the jury’s $4.71 billion award was about 35% higher than that model, and the commercial class received just 2.1% of the award even though businesses paid far more per subscription.

Under federal antitrust law, damages are tripled. The jury’s figure would have become about $14.12 billion; Zona’s $3.48 billion model would become roughly $10.44 billion (TBR calculation). The panel also told the lower court to consider a second Zona model, which it had excluded without discussion, estimating DirecTV would have charged 24.6% less if it could set its own price rather than the NFL’s.

Context matters too. The court noted the NFL earned more than $100 billion between June 2011 and February 2023, mostly by licensing game telecasts, and that 46 of the 50 most-watched U.S. television programs in 2021 were NFL games.

A case that started in a San Francisco sports bar

The suit was first filed in 2015 by The Mucky Duck, a San Francisco bar. A district judge dismissed it in 2017; the 9th Circuit revived it in 2019; and Gutierrez certified the classes in 2023, setting up the June 2024 trial, according to the Associated Press and ESPN. The subscribers argued the league’s deals with CBS, Fox and DirecTV kept out-of-market games locked on one satellite provider at inflated prices from the 2011 through 2022 seasons. Sunday Ticket moved to YouTube in 2023 under a seven-year agreement.

All 32 clubs are named defendants, including New England Patriots, LP, so the ruling reaches every team, from Foxborough to the Rams’ home at SoFi Stadium, where Jay-Z will headline the Super Bowl LXI halftime show. Patriots fans can catch up on this week’s on-field picture in our Patriots vs. Dolphins Week 8 preview. The case also joins a busy stretch of private antitrust litigation, including the Keurig suit headed to trial.

What happens next

The case returns to the district court in Los Angeles, which must reinstate the liability verdict and schedule a new damages trial. Attorneys for both sides said they were weighing their options, according to the AP; the NFL could ask the full 9th Circuit to rehear the case or petition the U.S. Supreme Court. Reuters reported that the ruling overturned the lower-court judge but left the league a new trial on damages.

The NFL defended its model in a statement reported by ESPN: “We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy — which features 100 percent of NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games, supplemented by many additional choices including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL Plus — is by far the most fan-friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment.”

Sources

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, In re: NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” Antitrust Litigation, No. 24-5493 (Oct. 30, 2026)
• AP: Appellate court revives ‘Sunday Ticket’ antitrust verdict against the NFL
• ESPN: Appellate court revives ‘Sunday Ticket’ antitrust verdict against NFL
• Reuters (via Investing.com): US court reinstates ‘Sunday Ticket’ class action verdict against NFL
• Justia: Ninth Inning Inc. v. National Football League, Inc.