Lawsuits Take Aim At DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket

A major class-action lawsuit has been filed against the National Football League and DirecTV by the prominent antitrust attorney Michael Hausfeld and colleagues at Hausfeld LLP.

Hausfeld seeks to represent a class of "commercial subscribers" to DirecTV's Sunday Ticket, a package of all out-of-market football games. The plaintiffs would be bars and restaurants throughout the nation seeking to end what they see as a conspiracy, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

If bars and restaurants want to show these games, they must go through DirecTV, which has an exclusive $12 billion deal with the NFL. But it can be expensive. According to the lawsuit, a bar with occupancy up to 100 patrons will pay $2,314 for Sunday Ticket in 2015 while larger establishments like Las Vegas hotels are charged more than $120,000 per year.

"But for the NFL teams’ agreement in which DirecTV has joined, teams would compete against each other in the market for NFL football programming, which would likely induce more competitive pricing," states the complaint.

Michael Hausfeld

Last month, lawyers representing football fans filed their own class-action lawsuit over Sunday Ticket, seeking an end to a system of blackouts and all-or-nothing out-of-market TV game packages. The NFL and DirecTV were hit with this lawsuit after fans experienced some pretrial success in similar litigation against other sports leagues.

The latest lawsuit arguably goes even further, painting a broader picture why the NFL's deal with DirecTV should be deemed a violation of two sections of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

"Of the 4 major professional sports in this country—baseball, basketball, hockey, and football—the only one with an exclusive out of market broadcasting arrangement is the NFL/DirecTV Sunday Ticket," states the complaint. "Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League all distribute live out of market games through multiple MVPDs [multichannel video programming distributors], including, for example, DirecTV, Dish Network, Comcast, Cox Cable and Time Warner.