Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST NEWS: Flag on the play: NFL, DirecTV may have monopolized football broadcasts, (Oct 23, 2015)

By Greg Hammond, J.D.

Village Pub, LLC has kicked off a lawsuit against the National Football League, Inc. (NFL) and DirecTV, LLC, claiming that the defendants conspired to restrain trade in, and monopolized, the live NFL football game distribution market (Village Pub, LLC v. National Football League, Inc., October 21, 2015).

In its class action complaint filed in the federal district court in Los Angeles, Village Pub claims that the NFL and DirecTV entered into an exclusive agreement for the distribution of all Sunday out-of-market NFL football games produced by networks Fox and CBS. Under its “NFL Sunday Ticket” package, DirecTV subscribers can choose to watch any out of market Sunday afternoon NFL games, instead of being restricted to the games aired by Fox and CBS. Village Pub argues, however, that the exclusive agreement allows NFL and DirecTV to restrict the output of, and raise prices for, the live broadcast of NFL Sunday afternoon out of market games. Absent the agreement, NFL teams would compete against each other in the NFL football programming market, which would likely induce more competitive pricing, the complaint asserts. As it stands, the exclusive agreement eliminates competition by preventing other multichannel video programming distributors from distributing Sunday afternoon out-of-market NFL games.

The three count complaint alleges that DirecTV and NFL: (1) violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by entering into a continuing agreement or conspiracy in restraint of trade with the purpose, intent, and effect of restraining horizontal competition in the live NFL game distribution market; and (2) violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act because DirecTV and the NFL possess monopoly power over the creation, licensing, and distribution of live NFL football broadcasts and have used that power for the purposes of unreasonably excluding and/or limiting competition by limiting the distribution of the Sunday Ticket service to only DirecTV.

Village Pub seeks to represent a class of all bars and restaurants that subscribed to DirecTV and purchased the NFL Sunday Ticket package during the class period. In addition, Village Pub requests trebled damages, costs, attorney fees, pre- and post-judgment interest, and injunctive relief.

The case number is 2:15-cv-08241-RSWL-MRW.

Attorneys: Christopher L. Lebsock (Hausfeld LLP) and Mark Reinhardt (Reinhardt, Wendorf & Blanchfield) for Village Pub, LLC.

Companies: Village Pub, LLC; National Football League, Inc.; NFL Enterprises LLC; DirecTV, LLC; DirecTV Holdings LLC

News: Antitrust