Ex-Media Boss Denies NFL Controlled Pricing of Sunday Ticket

The former senior executive in charge of the National Football League's media division denied that the league controlled what prices DirecTV could charge subscribers for its Sunday Ticket package after the satellite TV provider acquired an exclusive license to distribute the out-of-market games in 2002.

Courthouse News reports Steve Bornstein, a former CEO of ESPN and president of ABC, testified Thursday and Friday in the antitrust trial brought by Sunday Ticket subscribers who claim they were stuck paying inflated prices to watch the Sunday afternoon games because of price-fixing arrangements between the NFL and DirecTV.

"We basically agreed to give up the right to set the price," Bornstein said in often spiky exchanges with Bill Carmody, one of the attorneys representing the subscribers at the trial in downtown Los Angeles.

When he arrived at the NFL in early 2002, Bornstein said he thought the agreement at the time, under which DirecTV distributed Sunday Ticket as an agent for the NFL with the league being responsible for the packaging, marketing and pricing of the bundle and the satellite TV company getting a cut of the revenue, didn't make sense because the NFL wasn't in the business of marketing to consumers and that wasn't what he called its "core competency."

Steve Bornstein

Instead, under his guidance, the NFL negotiated a five-year, $1.9 billion licensing agreement with DirecTV that gave them the exclusive right to market and price the Sunday Ticket package.

However, the plaintiffs argue that this was a "sham" and that the NFL remained in control over the prices for Sunday Ticket after 2002. They claim that CBS and Fox, the networks that produce the Sunday afternoon broadcasts and televise them for free through their local affiliates in the teams' home markets, pushed the NFL to limit distribution of the Sunday Ticket package because they were afraid it would cut into their ratings and advertising revenue for the games.

Bornstein readily acknowledged that the networks were "fanatical" about trying to protect their ratings for the football games and were concerned that the Sunday Ticket package should stay behind a subscription wall.

The subscribers suffered a setback Friday morning as U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez denied their attempts to introduce into evidence what Carmody called a "smoking gun" document that they claim show that the NFL was determined to maintain control of the Sunday Ticket pricing at the same time as it was finalizing the licensing agreement with DirecTV in late 2002.