Last Sunday, the NFL flipped the script, literally, on its RedZone product by inserting commercials into the seven hours of commercial-free football.
Plenty of fans are mad about it. They paid for a commercial-free product, and they didn’t get it.
Could they do something about it? Possibly. Plenty of legal theories are available in plenty of jurisdictions based on commercial establishments saying one thing and doing another. And plenty of legal terms can apply, from something as tame as “negligent misrepresentation” to something as strong as “fraud.”
Here’s the problem. The NFL, on one of 18 Sundays, inserted four commercials during one day-long show. While a partial refund or other relief might be a no-brainer, who is ever going to file a lawsuit for such a small amount of potential damages? No lawyer is taking that case, unless the plaintiff is willing to pay by the hour — and thus to basically throw money away in the pursuit of proving a point.
Enter the class action. That’s how companies are held accountable for widespread indignities that individually aren’t worth the time, trouble, and money to pursue.
It’s why big companies hate class actions. Without them, the rights of thousands if not millions of people can be violated a little, with no practical way for the company to ever be held responsible.
The NFL found that out the hard way, through the verdict in the Sunday Ticket class action trial. Although the NFL received a Hail Mary from the outgoing federal judge who threw out the entire multi-billion-dollar award, the league apparently realized that, next time around, it might not be so lucky.
Coincidentally, or not, the NFL distributed in August 2024 a new set of Terms and Conditions that beef up efforts to force claims to arbitration and to waive the ability of consumers to band together and file a class action.
Armed with the apparent ability to beat back a class action, there’s no legal disincentive to disregarding the vow that RedZone entails commercial-free football. Which allows the NFL to do all sorts of things that impact the individual consumer in a way that would never justify the expense of chasing the NFL around for justice.
Which also allows the NFL to authorize the decision of RedZone host Scott Hanson to issue a public apology for the bait-and-switch. If the NFL feared class-action liability over the RedZone ruse, they never, ever would have allowed Hanson to say, “I’m sorry.”
