Dish Accused of Withholding License Fees to Carry Pac-12 Football

Dish Network’s “baseless” demand to “claw back” license fees it paid the Pac-12 Network to carry a full slate of games for the 2018 and 2019 college football seasons to compensate for the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season runs “contrary to the plain language” of the parties’ license agreement, alleged the network in a breach of contract complaint Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-02620) in U.S. District Court in Denver.

To make matters worse, Dish “now has begun to engage in impermissible self-help by withholding currently due license payments on the basis of its unjustified position, and is therefore in breach of the parties’ agreement,” said the complaint. Pac-12 offered Dish rebates for the shortened 2020 football season “to honor its commitments in the license agreement," it said. “Yet now, in 2022, Dish contends that it is entitled” to additional license fee reimbursements for 2018 and 2019, it said.

“There is no dispute” that Pac-12 provided -- and Dish carried -- “the guaranteed number of games for both of those seasons,” said the complaint. The public document redacted how much Pac-12 offered Dish in rebates for 2020 and how much Dish is demanding in reimbursements for 2018 and 2019. Pac-12 seeks damages and injunctive relief for Dish’s alleged breach of contract, to recoup the license fees Dish “has already improperly withheld and to prevent any continued withholding of fees due under the parties’ agreement,” said the complaint. Dish didn’t comment.

The license agreement provides “per-subscriber rates” for calculating the monthly fees that Dish owes, said the complaint. “The rates vary based on the geographic location of the subscriber, and increase each year” during the life of the agreement, it said. Also redacted are the details of the fee provision and the contract's expiration date. The fee provision's “plain text” provides that Dish “may be compensated once for losses resulting from a shortfall in live football games in a season,” it said. “The 2020 football season ultimately included 32 football games, rather than the 91 that typically would have been played.”

Dish’s demands and “self-help actions” have “severe and immediate consequences” for Pac-12 “and punish the academic institutions they represent for a pandemic over which they had no control,” said the complaint. Dish seeks “multiple recoveries for the same missed games, an unduly punitive position that has no basis in the parties’ contract,” it said.