DirecTV Sunday Ticket Suit About Restrained Competition, Plaintiffs Say

DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket itself isn't the problem, but the league/DirecTV agreements that restrain competition with Sunday Ticket and the telecasts it bundles are problematic, plaintiffs said Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in an opposition (in Pacer) to the NFL defendants' motion to dismiss. The NFL and DirecTV jointly agreed to limit the number of broadcasts Sundays to three games, making consumers buy the Sunday Ticket bundle if they want to watch more/other games, said buyers of Sunday Ticket whose 27 separate class-action lawsuits were consolidated in May (see 1605240012). Defendants made out-of-market telecasts available only through DirecTV, preventing subscribers to other pay-TV services from having any access, the plaintiffs said, saying the result is Sunday Ticket pricing being far higher than any other major sports league subscription service. The NFL is the only major U.S. pro sports league selling its out-of-market package exclusively through a single multichannel video programming distributor, plaintiffs said. Such exclusivity also limits the competition NFL telecasts would face otherwise, letting broadcasters get higher advertising profits and distribution fees, said the plaintiffs, who are alleging DirecTV and the NFL broke antitrust laws (see 1512300027). There was similar class-action litigation against Major League Baseball and the NHL (see 1601210032). Sunday Ticket was first offered in the 1990s, and has had legal and regulatory challenges every few years, one lawyer who has done work for the NFL told us. DirecTV in a motion (in Pacer) to compel arbitration and stay proceedings last month argued the plaintiffs committed via their customer agreements to arbitrate disputes with DirecTV and should be ordered to do so. Far from being "supra-competitive" in its pricing, DirecTV has a distribution agreement that's exactly the type of competition via exclusive contracts that antitrust laws encourage, it said. Judge Beverly O'Connell in an order Friday gave the plaintiffs an Oct. 3 deadline for filing a memorandum in opposition. The NFL defendants, in a motion (in Pacer) to dismiss in August, said the plaintiffs show no facts to bolster the claim of anticompetitive effects and to identify any alternative arrangement that would be more competitive.