Plaintiffs defend $4.7 billion Sunday Ticket verdict as ‘fair and reasonable’

The battle for the files continues, with $14.1 billion at stake.

In response to the NFL’s 25-page brief outlining the myriad reasons why the Sunday Ticket’s $4.7 billion antitrust verdict should be overturned, the plaintiffs have filed a 25-page brief in response to the NFL’s many, many (many) arguments. PFT has obtained and reviewed a copy of the document.

The biggest sticking point, as explained in our article on the brief and in a more recent effort to predict the answer, refers to the jury’s apparent effort to calculate a verdict literally on an iPhone.

The league argues that this amounts to rejecting both formulas presented by the plaintiffs, which (in the NFL’s view) precludes the jury from coming up with its own methodology. The plaintiffs argue that, fundamentally, antitrust violations naturally require a bit of guesswork to correct.

The plaintiffs presented evidence of $7 billion in losses for class members. This figure is due to the difference between the real world, in which the NFL overcharged for the Sunday Ticket to ensure that many viewers would choose to watch games offered by their local CBS and/or Fox affiliates, and an alternate universe in which the NFL sold out-of-market games to the various cable networks, allowing fans to simply change channels and watch any game at no additional cost.

“The jury heard an appropriate model, the history of college football broadcasts, as a real-world standard from which it could have concluded that Class Members would have paid no more than the price of a regular DirecTV subscription without the restrictions, resulting in $7 billion in damages over a 12-year period,” the plaintiffs argued in their brief.

Since the actual amount on the verdict form ($4.7 billion) was less than the amount submitted by the plaintiffs, the result reflects (in the plaintiffs’ view) “a fair and reasonable estimate of damages.”

With respect to the characterization of the outcome as the product of a “runaway jury,” the plaintiffs explain that “