The Sunday Ticket plaintiffs won’t be getting a mulligan on damages, at least not for now. Thursday’s order from Judge Philip Gutierrez ends the case, subject to appeals.
In the 16-page ruling, Judge Gutierrez explains that the plaintiffs’ economic experts failed to provide sufficiently reliable testimony on the world that would have existed but for the NFL’s antitrust violation. (We’ll have plenty more to say about the judge’s rejection of the expert testimony. Without any suitable evidence of economic harm to the class, there was no proven economic harm to the class.
Despite his hostility to the plaintiffs’ case on damages, Judge Gutierrez had no qualms with the jury’s finding that an antitrust violation occurred.
From the order: “Despite finding Dr. Rascher’s and Dr. Zona’s opinions unreliable, the Court does not find that it would be unreasonable for a juror to find that there was a conspiracy that unreasonably restrained trade. . . . There was evidence in the record—even without the testimonies of Dr. Rascher and Dr. Zona—to support a reasonable jury’s finding of an unreasonable restraint of trade at each step of the rule of reason. . . . Given a reasonable jury could find that there were anticompetitive effects, that Defendants’ procompetitive justifications were pretextual or unrelated to the restraints, and/or that there were less-restrictive alternatives based on the record, judgment as a matter of law is inappropriate on these grounds.”
In other words, the judge upheld the finding that Sunday Ticket, as constructed, violates federal antitrust laws. So why not issue an order disbanding it?
For now, the reality is that Judge Gutierrez has blocked more than 2.4 million residential customers from receiving a partial refund for the money they paid for an out-of-market package that was deliberately overpriced in order to encourage people to not buy it, and to watch in-market games on CBS and Fox instead.
Again, we’ll have more to say about the judge’s rejection of the damages case. Either he’s wrong or the plaintiffs’ lawyers screwed up the case.
Either way, the consumers who paid too much for Sunday Ticket have lost.
And the NFL has won.