Appeals court reinstates $4.7 billion NFL Sunday Ticket verdict, orders new damages trial

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the NFL is once again liable under antitrust law for its Sunday Ticket practices, reinstating a jury's verdict but upholding a new trial on damages. The jury had awarded $4.7 billion to a class of DirecTV subscribers, but a district judge later threw out that award after excluding the subscribers' expert testimony as unfounded and unreliable, which left them unable to prove their antitrust claims. The Ninth Circuit panel, which heard oral arguments in March, said the judge's decision was an error and sent the case back to district court, where a new jury will decide how much the league owes the subscribers. The suit has pursued the NFL for about a decade.

Washington Times, the right-leaning outlet in this set, leads by saying the verdict was revived more than two years after the judge reversed the jury, highlighting the timeline and the $4.7 billion figure. The New York Times, the only left-leaning outlet covering the story, leads with the appellate finding that the judge's decision was an error and headlines that the NFL faces a new trial. Awful Announcing, the alternative source, gives the most background, noting the decade-long suit, the March arguments and the excluded expert testimony. All three report the Friday ruling, the reinstated verdict and the new damages trial, so the core facts match. They differ mainly in emphasis: the right-leaning coverage stresses the revived verdict and its timing, the left-leaning coverage stresses the judge's error and the coming retrial, and the alternative coverage stresses renewed liability and the expert-testimony dispute.