NFL ordered to pay out $4 billion in Sunday Ticket case
This could mark the end of the league’s salary cap era, among other changes.
The NFL has been battling a major lawsuit over the past several months, one that involves their out-of-market game package: NFL Sunday Ticket. The argument was that the NFL violated antitrust laws with the package, due to the nature of out-of-market games being exclusively shown on Sunday Ticket.
On Thursday, a jury ordered the NFL to pay $96 million in damages to the commercial class, which includes the 48,000 businesses that paid for NFL Sunday Ticket from 2011 to 2022, and $4 billion to the residential class, which covers the 2.4 million residential subscribers of the package over the same period.
Because this was a federal antitrust case, $4 billion is allowed to balloon to $12 billion. For reference, the plaintiffs were asking for $21 billion in this case, so they could receive north of half of their requested number. Per Sportico, the NFL’s revenue last season was $19 billion, which means that if the $12 billion number sticks after a presumed series of appeals, it will almost certainly impact the league’s salary cap — at the very least.
Recently, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones stated that he would actually be against a salary cap if teams were allowed to sell their individual out-of-market rights — which is almost assured to be part of the fallout of the NFL Sunday Ticket package. Get ready to hear a lot of that in the coming weeks, months and years, as owners of richer teams will likely try to make up the losses they’re taking in this lawsuit by blocking other clubs from revenue sharing.
