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Inside This Issue 1 Our Firm’s Dedication to Uplifting the Community 2 Forbidden Baby Names
Avoid Halloween Hazards and Have a Ghoulishly Good Time
3 Tips to Dodge Halloween’s DUI Dangers
Ultimate Baked Ziti
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4 The NFL’s Massive Antitrust Fine
NFL’s Recent Antitrust Ruling What Led to the Historic Fine Over Sunday Ticket
THE TRIAL The Mucky Duck sports bar in San Francisco initially filed the suit in 2015; an appeals court dismissed then reinstated the case in 2017 before it became a class- action lawsuit. The lawsuit now covers about 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 business subscribers. The plaintiffs alleged that the NFL’s agreement with DirecTV, and now YouTube TV, violated antitrust laws. Not only did the NFL allegedly overcharge both residential and commercial subscribers, but it also removed competition. It forced fans to purchase access to all games rather than offering the ability to purchase only the games they were interested in. For instance, if you are a Philadelphia Eagles fan but live in Florida, your local on-air broadcasts are unlikely to show Eagles games. In that case, if you wanted to watch all the Eagles’ games, you’d have to shell out a good chunk of change to access those games. As of 2024, a subscription to NFL Sunday Ticket costs $449 per year. After five hours of deliberation, the jury agreed with the plaintiffs and awarded $4.7 billion in damages to the residential subscribers and $96 million to the business subscribers. Due to federal antitrust laws, those damages can be tripled. That means the NFL may be liable for up to $14.39 billion in damages. The NFL has appealed the decision, but if upheld, each NFL team could be forced to pay nearly $450 million in damages.
NFL Sunday Ticket, also known as Sunday Ticket, is a sports package allowing purchasers to view regular season NFL games not carried by local broadcasts in their area. Sunday Ticket has been around since 1994, with DirecTV offering it exclusively until 2022 when the NFL signed a seven-year, $14 billion deal with Google’s YouTube TV. However, the NFL’s exclusive deals for Sunday Ticket have come at a cost. After a trial in June that lasted just three weeks, a jury in Los Angeles awarded over $4.7 billion in damages to the plaintiffs in an antitrust class-action lawsuit against the NFL.
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