The chickens have come home to roost. And the NFL is gonna need a bigger roost.
After thirty years of gouging fans for Sunday Ticket in order to persuade plenty of them to watch whatever was made available on free, over-the-air TV, the reckoning has arrived in the form of a $4.096 billion verdict in a federal class action lawsuit.
Of that amount, $96 million goes to the commercial establishments in the class. The $4 billion becomes the recovery for residential customers.
Under federal antitrust laws, the amount will be trebled — to $12.288 billion.
The verdict comes after roughly a full day of deliberations, which started on Wednesday and continued into Thursday. Roughly 35 minutes before news of a verdict emerged, Megan Cuniff reported that the jury had asked for the number of subscribers per year and the amount each one paid. This meant that the jury had found against the NFL and was in the process of coming up with a damages award.
That’s what they promptly did. And it was the biggest verdict the NFL has ever absorbed in court.
We’ll have plenty more on this, including the league’s reaction and what happens next, in the coming hours.