New York CNN —
A California judge threw out a jury verdict ordering the NFL to pay more than $4.7 billion for anti-trust violations surrounding its “Sunday Ticket” package, which lets fans watch games outside of their home markets but required them to buy access to a bundle of games to do so.
The league, America’s most popular source of television programming, vowed to appeal the verdict in June.
In a statement, the NFL said it was “grateful” for the ruling.
“We believe that the NFL’s media distribution model provides our fans with an array of options to follow the game they love, including local broadcasts of every single game on free over-the-air television,” the statement said.
In a court filing Thursday, US District Judge Philip Gutierrez brought up issue with the expert witnesses in the trial.
“The Court agrees that Dr. Rascher’s and Dr. Zona’s testimonies based on their flawed methodologies should be excluded. And because there was no other support for the class-wide injury and damages elements of Plaintiffs’… claims, judgment as a matter of law for the Defendants is appropriate,” the filing said.
The filing also said that “The Court finds that the jury’s damages awards were not based on the ‘evidence and reasonable inferences’ but instead were more akin to ‘guesswork or speculation.’”
The case, first brought in 2015, focused on the NFL’s package of games outside of a local market that are not shown nationally on other networks. Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the class action suit argued that by restricting broadcasts of those “out-of-market” games to the “Sunday Ticket” package, the NFL is forcing customers who just want to watch one team or a small group of teams to pay more.
“Given the relatively low cost of internet streaming and satellite and cable television carriage, each team acting independently would offer their games at a competitive price to anybody in the country who wanted to watch that particular team,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued in a filing. “Instead, however, the teams have all forgone this option in favor of creating a more lucrative monopoly.”
Because of the case’s nature as an anti-trust matter, the verdict would have been tripled if upheld, putting the NFL on the hook for $14.1 billion in damages.
CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional context.
