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As the presiding judge ponders whether to dump the Sunday Ticket class action based on his belief that the plaintiffs’ lawyers are screwing the pooch (it’s an industry term), plenty of facts point to the notion that the NFL deliberately rigged the price of the out-of-market Sunday Ticket package to protect the CBS and Fox in-market packages.
Plenty don’t.
Former CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus supplied some facts for the “don’t” category on Tuesday, in two significant respects. Via Craig Clough of Law360.com, McManus flatly denied the fundamental questions of whether he knew that the NFL controlled the price charged for Sunday Ticket or whether CBS had a side deal with the NFL to ensure that the price would be kept high enough to prompt plenty of fans to instead watch games on their local CBS and Fox affiliates.
As is the case in many civil actions that require one side to pierce through the that’s-our-story-and-we’re-sticking-to-it proclamations from the defense perspective (I addressed that dynamic during Tuesday’s #PFTPM, regarding the Jim Trotter lawsuit), the witnesses shout “no, no, no” while other evidence potentially whispers “yes, yes, yes.”
For example, in 2011, McManus sent an email to NFL executives explaining that CBS “need[s] clarification” on Sunday Ticket pricing, because the “concept” of the package was for it to be “sold at a premium” and to “limit distribution.”
In a pre-Orwellian world where inconvenient facts aren’t routinely ignored, this would be a smoking gun, a “gotcha” document that undercuts the predictable denials on the most obvious yes-or-no questions of whether the pricing fix was in.
McManus also agreed that he would have preferred Sunday Ticket not exist at all, because it impacted the CBS ratings for free, over-the-air TV. (McManus testified, via Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal, that CBS used to be compensated for the use of their feeds on Sunday Ticket, but that this no longer is the case. That’s another reason to not like the…
Source link : https://www.yahoo.com/news/sean-mcmanus-denies-knowledge-sunday-131538347.html
Author : ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-06-19 13:15:38
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