Written By | Sports Desk
The Ninth Circuit revives the jury's antitrust finding against the league and orders a fresh trial on damages, reopening a case worth billions.
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SAN FRANCISCO
On a Friday afternoon, when most of the sports world was looking ahead to weekend kickoffs, a federal appeals court delivered news that the NFL would rather have buried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated a jury's finding that the league violated federal antitrust law through its Sunday Ticket distribution deals, and sent the case back for a new trial on damages.
The ruling, handed down on October 30, 2026, reverses a 2024 decision by a federal district judge who had wiped out the jury's verdict. It does not, however, bring back the headline number that made the case famous. Understanding the difference between the two is the key to understanding what happens next.
What the court actually decided
The panel ruled that Judge Philip Gutierrez of the Central District of California "exceeded his authority by excluding the expert testimony after the jury had already considered it," according to a summary of the decision reported by The Desk. In other words, the trial judge threw out the verdict by retroactively discarding evidence the jurors had already weighed.
But the appeals court did not simply hand the plaintiffs their money back. The panel found that the jury "clearly awarded damages based on its improper consideration of the evidence," and wrote: "This warrants a new trial on damages." The case was remanded "for the district court to reinstate the jury's liability verdict and hold a new damages trial," as quoted by NBC Sports' Pro Football Talk. Sportico summarized the outcome in its headline: the NFL lost the appeal but won a new trial on damages.
There was early confusion about this. Reuters reported that the $4.7 billion verdict had been reinstated, and several outlets repeated it. Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio argued that Reuters had "apparently misread the decision," and other coverage describes the $4.7 billion award as not reinstated. The safest reading is the narrower one: liability is back, the dollar figure is not.
How we got here
The lawsuit was filed in 2015 against the NFL and DIRECTV. The plaintiffs, residential subscribers and commercial customers such as bars and restaurants, argued that the league's arrangement forced fans to buy a single out-of-market package to watch Sunday afternoon games not shown on their local CBS or Fox stations. That structure, they said, blocked rival distributors from selling individual games or competing packages.
A jury agreed in July 2024. It awarded roughly $4.6 billion to residential subscribers and $96 million to commercial customers, for a total of about $4.7 billion. Under antitrust law, damages are tripled, which could have pushed the figure above $14 billion. Florio noted that the original verdict would have required each team to pay $440 million in cash, before statutory interest.
Then came the reversal. Judge Gutierrez ruled that the plaintiffs' economic experts relied on "unreliable assumptions and flawed calculations" and scrapped the award. Importantly, he did not overturn the underlying finding that the NFL had broken antitrust law in how it priced and packaged Sunday Ticket. That liability finding is what the Ninth Circuit has now restored.
The league's predicament
The NFL had not publicly commented at the time of reporting. Its options are limited and none is comfortable. Florio expects the league to seek Supreme Court review, but noted the case may not be ripe for that step until a new damages trial takes place. A new trial, in turn, could produce a lower number, a similar one, or a higher one. That uncertainty is itself a cost.
Florio called the timing a "Friday afternoon bad news dump" and described the situation as "horrible news for the NFL," adding that it "instantly becomes the most consequential piece of litigation in the 100-plus-year history of the league." That is commentary, not a legal finding, but it captures how seriously the sports-business world is treating the decision.
DIRECTV remains a defendant in a case where liability has been reinstated, and its share of any eventual damages is undetermined. The games themselves moved to YouTube in 2023, after DIRECTV carried them for nearly three decades. YouTube's era falls outside the period at the center of this lawsuit, and the coverage reviewed does not describe YouTube as a defendant.
What this means for you
If you pay for NFL Sunday Ticket, or you run a bar that does, nothing changes today. No payouts have been ordered, and none will arrive soon: a new damages trial and likely appeals stand between this ruling and any check. Anyone who was a subscriber during the period covered by the class action should watch for notices from the court, rather than from third parties promising to speed things up.
For the broader viewer, the case matters because it tests the league's long-standing model of selling its most valuable games through exclusive packages. The NFL is also deep in the era of record viewership; Sports Media Watch has been reporting week after week of audience growth. A league that thrives on scarcity and exclusivity now has a federal appeals court telling it that part of that approach crossed a legal line.
The road ahead
Expect months, and probably years, of procedure. The district court must reinstate the liability verdict and schedule a new damages trial. Both sides will fight over what evidence can be presented, a dispute that sank the first award. The NFL will weigh whether to appeal now or wait. Plaintiffs' lawyers, meanwhile, will argue that a clean, properly supported damages case can still reach a very large number.
What is already clear is that the ruling reshapes the league's negotiating position on everything from streaming deals to local-market rules. A decade-old lawsuit that many assumed was finished is alive again, and for the NFL, which rarely loses in court, the fine print of a new trial may matter as much as any game on Sunday.
