NFL faces 'Sunday Ticket' lawsuit: Here's what's at stake for the league

The NFL faces a major lawsuit that could cost the league more than $21 billion if things don't go their way. The case involves its Sunday Ticket plan and whether the NFL violated antitrust laws by offering that package to consumers. For more on this, we want to bring in Patrick Risch. He is the director of the sports business program at Wash U Saint Louis. He's also the founder and CEO of sports analytics and consulting firm Sports Impacts. And and Patrick Patrick, walk us through this. Yesterday, Roderick Goodell testified. But what is this all about? What happened to kick this off? Well, ultimately it comes. It comes down to the way these things have been packaged in the past. And the plaintiffs in this case, a class action lawsuit, are claiming that the NFL by packaging these games on Sunday, NFL ticket is doing so and violating antitrust rules. On the flip side, the NFL believes that they have antitrust exemptions when it comes to broadcast. The plaintiffs are arguing that that's just with respect to over the air television and not pay TVI think it's a fascinating case, Becky, as as obviously a consumer of the NFL myself. I know you and Joe enjoy it as well. You know, I understand that the plaintiffs and consumers that don't want to purchase and watch all the games, they want to be able to a la carte pick the games that they want to watch. But one of the reasons why this has become a such a popular product is look at the proliferation over the years of fantasy football and now, of course, gambling. So where this is going to end up is going to be a very fascinating outcome. What's the collective mentality that goes into this? I mean, the exemption that they have for broadcast, it does seem like, OK, if we're going to offer you something you wouldn't normally be getting, we can charge whatever we want. What's the argument against that? Yeah, Again, it goes back to and all the other sports. In baseball, basketball, hockey, you have the ability to kind of pick and choose the games that you want to watch. But then again, at the same time, the NFL comes back and says, look, we offer games for free on broadcast TV in every market. And we have all these different packages that people can consume. So if you want to be a Slinger and watch the NFL red zone, you can do that, which is the kind of the highlights of of all your games. And of course, the Sunday package, you can watch all of the games in all of the markets, but you got to pay that premium price. Becky, I think that one of the compromises we may see out of this is just like for individual sports teams that have season ticket packages and then mini plans, there may be an outcome that comes from this where maybe there's a compromise. And you do see some kind of mini package where it's a offshoot of the Sunday NFL ticket plan, meaning you could pick three to five teams or three to five games that you want to watch and not pay the full price for it. Absolutely. I I think that that's a reasonable compromise because again, there are going to be some people out there, they want to pay the premium price because they want to have access to all the games because of fantasy, because of betting or just because of the love of the sport. But there may be others, understandably, that just want to pick and choose three or five teams if that's the compromise. I mean, we're already to the point where Roger Goodell had to testify. That's the first time he's had to do that since he was made commissioner back in 2006. This seems like it's pretty serious. There's a lot of money potentially on the line. We mentioned in the head heading on this, $21 billion has been thrown out there as a potential situation. Do you see a compromise situation that backs out of that once it's a class action lawsuit and so many lawyers are involved? That's the great question. And again, you compare it to the lawsuit with the Rams and the NFL end up settling in that case, but it didn't go to trial. So the fact that both sides took it to trial in this case, they both feel they have strong arguments. Becky, one last thing, Jerry Jones, owner of the Cowboys, also testified yesterday. And I think it's fascinating that he made an argument where he was against individual teams being able to have their own broadcast deals as they do, as I said, in baseball and basketball and hockey. And for him to say that he would be one of the chief beneficiaries of that, I think that's a pretty strong argument that the jury will and the judge will take into consideration, meaning that even the strongest players want to make sure that they're keeping the NFL together on this. Absolutely.