Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The NFL has been hit with a $4.7 billion verdict in a class action antitrust lawsuit filed on behalf of residential and commercial customers who paid for its Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV from 2011 through 2022.
Originally filed in 2015 by the Mucky Duck sports bar, the lawsuit claimed that the league and its teams had conspired to give DirecTV an illegal monopoly on out-of-market games until YouTube took it over, starting with the 2023 season. The plaintiffs noted that other leagues distributed live, out-of-market games through multiple providers instead of just one exclusive partner like the NFL and argued during the case that the setup not only inflated the price of Sunday Ticket but also forced viewers to pay for games during…