NFL Fans Fight Back against DirecTV’s “Package Deal”

Costa Mesa, CANFL fan Thomas Abrahamian has had enough of what is being described as the NFL/DirecTV’s “anti-competitive” and “collusive” agreements that force football aficionados to purchase overpriced NFL Sunday Ticket TV packages and buy access to games they don’t want to see.


“It means if you support a team that is not in your local area, you can’t watch it for free so you have to buy it from NFL/DirecTV,” explains Kazerounian.

“So let’s say you are a New England Patriots fan and you live in Orange County, California,” says Kazerounian. “You can’t watch all the Patriots games on Sunday or other days unless the team happens to be playing in Orange County. So, in order to watch all the Patriots games, you have to buy the entire package, meaning you have to buy every single NFL game even if you don’t want to watch those games.

“I use this analogy,” says Kazerounian.

“You want to buy some cheddar cheese at the supermarket - but they won’t let you buy just the cheddar cheese. What they do is put in a package with some Havarti, some mozzarella, some feta, and some goat cheese. They make you buy $200 worth of cheese when you really only wanted to buy $25 worth of cheese because you only like cheddar,” he says.

“It’s really the same situation with DirecTV and the NFL,” he argues.

Kazerounian, from the Kazerouni Law Group, APC, has filed a class action against the NFL and DirecTV on behalf of Abrahamian and similarly situated individuals.

It alleges that the two are engaging in an unfair and anti-competitive practice that, as the documents describe, “cause fans to pay for more games than they want and that sports leagues are using their monopoly power to effectuate a huge wealth transfer.”

That “huge wealth transfer” is coming from the pockets of fans.

An NFL Sunday Ticket sells, exclusively through DirecTV, for $251.94 for the season.

The suit argues that because the league is the only source of such programming, it is able to engage in “monopoly pricing” and “limit the choices to consumers,” with the inevitable consequence of higher costs to consumers, a lower quality product and less choice.

The class-action lawsuit seeks damages for eligible class members and also wants the NFL and DirecTV to be prohibited from engaging in their current practice.

Charges have not been proven in court.