NFL Asks Supreme Court To Review Sunday Ticket Case

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – The National Football League asked the United States Supreme Court to review a long-running class-action case regarding the league’s games and DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket.

Currently, if a football fan wants to watch their team out-of-market the only option available to them is to pay DirecTV $293 for the entire season on NFL Sunday Ticket.

Lawyers for the NFL and DirecTV have approached the U.S. Supreme Court to review the legality of the exclusive viewing option.

“The process of litigating that kind of claim is time-consuming and expensive and often results in a pretrial disposition potentially through settlement,” Jodi S. Balsam, a professor at Brooklyn Law School told ESPN. “We’re a long way off from a court ruling that the NFL has to dismantle NFL Sunday Ticket.”

Miami, you brought the heat! 🔥 Loved seeing so many fans at the #NFLSundayTicket lounge. Thanks @DIRECTV for having me 🙌 #DTVathlete pic.twitter.com/9IAX5Hm03y

— Tua. T 🇦🇸 (@Tuaamann) February 7, 2020

The Sunday Ticket case doesn’t impact the NFL games broadcast over the air via networks such as NBC.

“If the NFL were to lose, I don’t think it is necessarily so dramatic in terms of the way you will watch NFL on satellite or cable,” University of Michigan sports economist Stefan Szymanski told ESPN. “But it should be good news for consumers because they should be paying less” for out-of-market games.”

It’s not Sunday until Peyton’s watching NFL SUNDAY TICKET in the park with a gentle old man. #SundayIsComing pic.twitter.com/VxQHiydhZC

— DIRECTV (@DIRECTV) September 8, 2016

The current deal between the NFL and DirecTV for Sunday Ticket expires after the 2022 regular season.

“We are looking to see how we can change the delivery,” Goodell told Bloomberg in 2019. “We want it delivered on several different platforms.”

NBC News reported that the league has shopped the package to a variety of streaming platforms.

The NFL Sunday Ticket package debuted in 1994.