The NFL is facing a class action lawsuit from individuals and businesses who purchased Sunday tickets for the games to be streamed on DirecTV. The Sunday Ticket package deal gives users access to out-of-market NFL games that are otherwise not available to people from native areas. The witness list for the case is out and Roger Goodell, along with Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones will be on it.

It began in 2015 when a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of Mucky Duck, a bar based in San Francisco. Per the lawsuit, the service violates the antitrust laws and has inflated prices, which the people are not happy with. The deal between the NFL and DirecTV is in jeopardy here because the football giant might have to cough up reparations as high as $21 billion.

Roger Goodell’s NFL is in trouble!

People across the country seemed to have jumped in on the motion and complained that the subscribers have overpaid by billions of dollars. However, the NFL has denied those claims. US District Judge Phillip Gutierrez has been on the case that began on Feb 22. Businesses like bars, restaurants, and hotels are the plaintiffs, accusing the NFL of monopolizing the Sunday Ticket games. The lawsuit is headed to trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The witness list has the names of Roger Goodell, Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and the Colts owner Jim Irsay along with many others. The plaintiffs believe they are entitled to monetary compensation somewhere between $7 billion, which the NFL called “speculative.” Per a Reuters report, only the NFL is on trial and not services like DirecTV or YouTube TV (which will also stream games exclusively).

The NFL’s side is ready to argue that “Sunday Ticket” is enhancing the experience rather than gatekeeping it and the residential and commercial classes will include subscribers of DirecTV who bought the Sunday Ticket between June 2011 and February 2023.

The case: National Football League’s “Sunday Ticket” Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, 2:15-ml-02668.

For plaintiffs: Marc Seltzer of Susman Godfrey; Scott Martin of Hausfeld; and Howard Langer of Langer, Grogan & Diver.

For the NFL: Beth Wilkinson of Wilkinson Stekloff; and Gregg Levy of Covington & Burling.

However, it gets a bit more outrageous for the business owners by the minute.

Subscribers paying exorbitant prices

A report from SFGATE says that they are also heavily invested in the outcome of the antitrust case. The lawsuit filed had a strange clause in it where bars and restaurants that have an occupancy of 51-100 people will have to cough up about $2,300 and that was in 2015. Per the lawsuit, this collaboration between NFL and DirecTV allows them “to charge supra-competitive monopoly prices, rather than the prices that would exist if the 32 teams were competing for interest and distribution in a free market.”

As stated earlier, the plaintiffs are seeking reparations as high as $7 billion, but the amount may be thrice as much and can go up to $21 billion as section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act allows the court to triple the amount in such kind of cases. An astonishing fact about the plaintiffs is that there are at least 2.4 million members in the residential class and another 48,000 in the commercial class.

The complaint also reads, “No other major sports league in America has such a drastic, total elimination of competition in the broadcasting of its games,” and that “While Major League Baseball (‘MLB’), the National Hockey League (‘NHL’), and the National Basketball Association (‘NBA’) have each allocated markets geographically and pooled so-called out-of-market rights, none has agreed to centralize control and sale of all broadcast rights.”

If the NFL doesn’t make it out of the lawsuit, there might be a hefty price they would be looking to pay as compensation.