Lions News: Jury rules NFL violated laws in ‘Sunday Ticket’ antitrust case

If you were unlucky enough to live outside of your favorite team’s market during the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, then chances are, this news may strike a nerve for you.

ESPN News Services wrote that a jury in U.S. District Court has ordered the NFL to pay upwards of $4.7B in residential damages, and another $96M in commercial after ruling that the league had broken antitrust laws.

Listen, I love the NFL just as much as everyone else, but man, it really wasn’t fun dealing with DirecTV and only DirectTV for so long. On top of the inflated price, the satellite reception was very susceptible to bad weather.

So not only were you paying an arm and a leg to get every single game on the NFL slate when you were really only concerned with one team, but there was a decent chance the screen could freeze on a crucial third down late in the game. Right when you really didn’t want it to happen. Run me my money, DirecTV—direct deposit will work best for me.

As expected, the NFL has issued a statement saying they intend to appeal the jury’s verdict.

“We will certainly contest this decision as we believe that the class action claims in this case are baseless and without merit,” the league said via the aforementioned statement. “We thank the jury for their time and service and for the guidance and oversight from Judge [Philip] Gutierrez throughout the trial.”

You can read the entire story from ESPN right here.

And now, onto the rest of today’s notes:

• Welcome to Detroit, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård.

• Former NFL player Mark Schlereth had a lot of nice things to say about the Lions on the latest episode of his “Stinkin Truth Podcast.”

• More excellent content from the Lions social media team.

• In case you missed it, it looks like we are going to get some inside access to wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown’s trip to Germany courtesy of, “Inside the Den.”