The Sunday Ticket ruling will not affect the salary cap, and changes to the Sunday Ticket may affect the salary cap.

The Sunday Ticket ruling will not affect the salary cap, and changes to the Sunday Ticket may affect the salary cap.

When it comes to the $4.696 billion verdict (which by law becomes $14.088 billion) in the Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit, the NFL is on its own.

None of the money comes from revenue split between the league and the NFL Players Association. It all comes from money sitting in the coffers of the 32 franchises.

That’s great news for players, who benefited from antitrust violations that kept the price of Sunday Ticket at a level that protected the investment made by CBS and Fox, by discouraging people from buying Sunday Ticket and encouraging them to watch games on local TV stations.

The potentially bad news is that any changes forced by the outcome of the case could, in theory, affect future revenues. Given that the league and union share money from TV deals, a decline in TV revenue will hurt players.

It’s too early to know at this point whether changes will be needed. The NFL is set to appeal Thursday’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. If/when the NFL wins, the money won’t be paid out — and the model likely won’t have to change.

But even without a win in court, the information that came to light during the trial could generate enough negative reaction from fans and the media to force the league to finally dump the expensive package off the market and make it either cheaper and more flexible (as ESPN had wanted do so) or split it among the different channels available on existing cable/satellite/broadcast packages (as the league was considering doing in 2017).

If changes like these were made, would the NFL make more or less money than it currently makes? And since professional football remains the only field capable of attracting a huge audience at any one time, the powers that be will likely find a way to exploit their envied status for the single word that got them into this mess in the first place.

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