NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit: Why Packers could be worst-hit with potential $449,600,000 bill

The Green Bay Packers could be the worst-hit team in the NFL due to the Sunday Ticket lawsuit. The jury ordered the NFL to pay $4.096 billion in damages to fans.

If the NFL pays the damages, it could cost each of the 32 teams approximately $449.6 million, according to NFL.com. However, due to the Packers being publicly owned and not having a billionaire owner, NFL reporter Peter Bukowski says this might hurt them.

"This is one place the Packers not having some rich billionaire owner is less than optimal. They have contingency funds, but a couple hundred million is still gonna hurt," Bukowski reported.

The lawsuit covers 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses in the United States who paid for NFL Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games from 2011 until 2021 on DirectTV.

The decision was reached after five hours of deliberation from the jury.

NFL plans to appeal lawsuit decision

Following the jury's decision being in favor of the public, the NFL announced they would be appealing the decision.

"We are disappointed with the jury's verdict today in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit," the league said in a statement.

"We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which features all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games, supplemented by many additional choices including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL+, is by far the most fan friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment."

The NFL thanked the judge and jury for their decision, despite them disagreeing with it.

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

Since this is an anti-trust lawsuit, the sum could be tripled. However, the NFL indicated that they would appeal the ruling, and they remain hopeful that the lawsuit will be abandoned and they will not be required to pay any damages.

The appeal would be heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court.