DirecTV/NFL Could Be Facing Years of Litigation Over 'Sunday Ticket' Antitrust Complaints

The growing number of suits against DirecTV and the NFL over supposed antitrust violations springing from the NFL Sunday Ticket subscription package could take years to resolve, Caleb Marker, of law firm Zimmerman Reed, tells us. Various sports bars across the country brought the litigation in recent months after Comcast, DirecTV and the NHL in September settled a 2012 federal class-action suit alleging similar activities by the NHL in how it made hockey game video content available via the Internet and TV. That NHL litigation helped spur the numerous state and federal suits against the NFL, said Marker, counsel in a number of the suits against the NFL and DirecTV.

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation earlier this month ruled in favor of centralizing some of the Sunday Ticket cases in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. A status report filed last week in one of the cases originally brought in June said six suits have been transferred to the court, while 18 others were already pending there.

The federal suits are similar, alleging the NFL and DirecTV colluded to set subscription prices for NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market TV sports package at a rate that far exceeds what they could charge in a competitive market. "But for DirecTV's agreement to protect the NFL through its exclusive Sunday Ticket contract, prices for the live broadcast of out of market Sunday afternoon NFL games would be much lower, as would the cost of DirecTV programming packages required to be purchased in conjunction with Sunday Ticket," a group of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sports bars alleged in JS Entertainment et al. v. National Football League et al., which was filed this month in the Los Angeles court. Sunday Ticket is now the sole exclusive out-of-market broadcasting arrangement in major professional sports, and as a result DirecTV "does not charge nearly as much for access to MLB Extra Innings, NBA League Pass or NHL Center Ice, which provide access to more games per week over a longer season than the NFL," the bars said in their complaint. Related complaints also have been filed in state courts, Marker said. The federal cases, all transferred to U.S. District Judge Beverly O'Connell, likely will be consolidated, and the coordinated discovery and motions for class certification "could take several years," Marker said.

Neither DirecTV nor the NFL has filed a response to any of the suits, and neither commented. The two likely will ask the court to require a consolidated master complaint be filed, and then will either answer that complaint or move to have that dismissed, Marker said. Getting that consolidated claim together could take several months, he said.

Sunday Ticket has faced occasional complaints going back several years, but the recent burst of litigation was to be expected given market pressures on the traditional cable bundle, one communications attorney familiar with the case told us. Numerous firms were looking at Sunday Ticket antitrust issues, so the number of suits against the NFL and DirecTV isn't surprising, Marker said. But other actions against other sports leagues and multichannel video programing distributors are unlikely because there aren't other examples of consumers and bars being forced to subscribe to a single pay-TV provider, Marker said: "I think this is fairly unique."

The NHL settlement will allow purchase of single-team packages through an unbundled Game Center Live Internet package for five years. The NHL also agreed to discount early bird, renewal and full-season prices by more than 17 percent, the settlement said.