Appellants Assail Lower Court Ruling in DirecTV/NFL Antitrust Appeal

A lower court made a "remarkable conclusion" that the NFL, TV networks and DirecTV are immune from antitrust scrutiny even if an agreement among the three limits competition substantially increases prices and decreases access to pro football telecasts -- "the very definition of anticompetitive conduct," said a group of appellant sports bars and DirecTV subscribers in a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals docket 17-56119 opening brief Thursday (in Pacer). Appellants said the court's approach -- analyzing separately agreements between the league and DirecTV and agreements between the teams and the NFL on TV rights -- led it to conclude the plaintiffs challenge only the DirecTV agreement and not the teams' horizontal agreement and to misunderstand how these interconnected agreements operate. A U.S. district judge in Los Angeles last year threw out consolidated complaints suing the MVPD and NFL over DirecTV's "Sunday Ticket" programming (see 1707030002). DirecTV parent AT&T didn't comment Monday.