IF THE NFL LOSES $14 BILLION, IT’S A WONDERFUL DAY FOR AMERICAN CONSUMERS
Shockingly, pro sports can't extort subscribers by charging outrageous sums for out-of-market games, leaving Roger Goodell to possibly pay back megabucks and ask every franchise to return $450 million
The NFL cannot stop death. It can’t kill the Internet or ban aviation. It can’t end the laws of motion and the theories of evolution. What it can do is produce a champion at the Super Bowl and no longer charge $300 to watch out-of-market games on its Sunday Ticket telecast service.
Hallelujah, with thanks to the judicial gods, it appears a league of 32 owners and Roger Goodell will not control planetary axis with uncommon greed. An attempt to extort subscribers was shut down by a federal jury, which forces a return of almost $5 billion in damages to residential consumers and $96 million to bars and restaurants. Here we thought no one cared about people who fuel professional sports with their money, time and hearts.
A class-action trial blew up the impenetrable defense. If an appeals court upholds the decision, the expenses will be tripled to more than $14 billion under antitrust law. Think about it. A league makes more than $10 billion a year in a broadcasting shedload, which allows Goodell to brag about a net worth of $20 billion. That quickly, despite testimony from the commissioner and revenue manufacturer Jerry Jones, each franchise might owe $450 million.
So the holiday party might not have as many entertainers. And a Sunday Ticket buyer won’t be receiving earth-changing money — at some point, maybe $3,500 for each of the 2.4 million purchasers and 48,000 businesses. The immense lesson involves a body of jurors who rejected a powerful league in a verdict. It should remind commissioners and media companies that they can’t thrash those who want to see certain games and, in some cases, bet on them. Looking for villains? Try CBS and Fox, which asked the league to charge high prices when ESPN only wanted $70 a season.
The lawsuit was filed back in 2015, by owners of the Mucky Duck sports tavern in San Francisco. The case was dismissed and later reinstated. Imagine a day when a general manager says his player payroll is down because of the Mucky Duck’s $450 million subtraction.
“Justice has been done,” said Bill Carmody, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs. “The jury spoke loud and clear to protect consumers.”
Said the league: “We are disappointed with the jury's verdict. We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which features all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games — supplemented by many additional choices — is by far the most fan friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment. We will certainly contest this decision as we believe that the class action claims in this case are baseless and without merit.”
Baseless? Tell the chap who pays $280 a month for cable and must pay $300 for extra stuff. How much money do these billionaires want? At some point, who cares if the NFL occupies 93 of the 100 most-watched spots on American programming? A premium can’t be charged just because owners run the biggest industry in sports.
Let them suffer. And all of them, like the rest of us, will die someday.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.