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NFL HIT WITH $4.7 BILLION VERDICT IN 'SUNDAY TICKET' ANTI TRUST TRIAL

USA TODAY Sports 

 The National Football League must pay more than $4.7 billion in class-action damages for overcharging subscribers of its “Sunday Ticket” telecasts, a California federal jury said on Thursday.

Jurors in Los Angeles agreed with the plaintiffs that the NFL conspired with member teams to artificially inflate the price of "Sunday Ticket" for millions of residential and commercial subscribers.

The jury awarded $4.6 billion to a residential class, and $96 million to commercial subscribers such as bars and restaurants, according to an attorney for the plaintiffs.

A judge could award triple damages under U.S. antitrust law, bringing the total judgment to more than $14 billion.

The NFL in a statement said it was disappointed by 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," it said.

The NFL earlier this week asked the court to rule for the league and its teams as a matter of law, which could nullify the verdict.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in a statement on Thursday said: "We are pleased with today’s result on behalf of the classes we represent."

The trial, which began on June 5, capped more than a decade of litigation over the "Sunday Ticket" telecasts.

The subscribers accused the NFL of using agreements with broadcast partners to keep a stranglehold over distribution, allowing DirecTV to charge artificially higher prices as the former sole distributor of "Sunday Ticket."

A residential subscription to "Sunday Ticket," which is the only broadcast option for fans to watch out-of-market games, now costs as much as $449 through its current distributor, Google's YouTube. DirecTV and Google were not defendants in the trial.

DirecTV is owned by AT&T (T.N) and Google is owned by Alphabet (GOOGL.O).

The plaintiffs claimed that "Sunday Ticket" prices were inflated to limit subscriptions and protect distribution rights fees that CBS (PARA.O) and Fox (FOXA.O) paid to air games in local markets.

The NFL denied any wrongdoing and argued that "Sunday Ticket" is a "premium" product that expands viewers' access to games, which are already broadcast for free on local networks.

The plaintiffs are DirecTV subscribers who bought "NFL Sunday Ticket" between June 2011 and February 2023. The case includes at least 2.4 million residential customers and 48,000 commercial subscribers like bars and restaurants, according to court records.

- Mike Scarcella

GOOGLE DEEPMIND UNVEILS AI FOOTBALLS TACTICS COACH HONED WITH LIVERPOOL

Human experts prefer TacticAI’s suggested positional improvements at corner kicks

 

Liverpool’s Kostas Tsimikas takes a corner during the team’s match against Sparta Praha on March 14 © Alex Livesey/Getty Images

Google DeepMind has developed a prototype artificial intelligence football tactician in collaboration with Premier League club Liverpool, in the latest push to use the technology to master the ebb and flow of big-money sports.

The computerised coach’s suggested improvements to players’ positions at corner kicks — a large potential source of goals — mostly won approval from human experts, according to a paper published in Nature Communications on Tuesday.

DeepMind, which has previously used its algorithms to crack difficult board games such as Go, said patterns seen on sports fields could also offer lessons on how to apply AI in other areas such as robotics and traffic co-ordination.

On the pitch, the company’s TacticAI system reflects both the possibilities and current limitations of intensive efforts to use AI to gain a sporting edge beyond that offered by existing data analysis methods.

The technology promises benefits in planning for situations with predictable starting points, such as corners. The wider task is to apply it to the richer variability of open play.

“What’s exciting about it from an AI perspective is that football is a very dynamic game with lots of unobserved factors that influence outcomes,” said Petar Veličković, a DeepMind researcher and co-author of the Nature paper. “It’s a really challenging problem.”

"The DeepMind project is the product of three years of work with Liverpool on deploying AI, including in areas such as penalty kicks and predicting movements of players.

DeepMind’s latest model uses geometric deep learning on a data set comprising 7,176 corner kicks from the English Premier League between 2020 and 2023. Corner kicks represent a significant opportunity for attacking teams: along with other so-called set pieces, such as free kicks, they account for about 30 per cent of all goals.

- Michael Peel,