The ongoing NFL Sunday Ticket trial in Los Angeles may be drawing closer to a conclusion entering its fourth week, as the league continues its efforts to fend off an antitrust lawsuit that could ultimately cost $21 billion and, perhaps more important, put a major wrench in a longtime, lucrative media-rights strategy.

Closing statements could come this week, with the last scheduled witness, an economist from Stanford University, set to finish his testimony Monday. Other witnesses who have taken the stand include NFL commissioner Roger Goodell (above) and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Patriots owner Robert Kraft was among those to give a deposition.

Trial Twists and Turns

For those getting caught up on the situation, here are some of the major storylines that Front Office Sports has been following:

• The NFL wouldn’t let ESPN, which wanted to bid for Sunday Ticket, drastically reduce the price of the package.
• Goodell took a shot at the quality of NFL Network game broadcasts.
• The league entered the trial with an uphill battle.
• Testimony from key figures like Goodell and Jones showed the gravity of the situation.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez, who is overseeing the case, last week said he was upset with how the plaintiffs have handled the lawsuit, which in his mind has become too complicated. 

“This case has gone in a direction it shouldn’t have gone,” Gutierrez said. Should the case go to a jury verdict, and the NFL loses, the league will still be able to appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, if it chooses to do so.

Where Did This Begin?

The Sunday Ticket lawsuit was originally brought forward by a pub in San Francisco called Mucky Duck in 2015. The bar felt it was being taken advantage of by the league when purchasing the out-of-market package of games. But its owner, Jason Baker, has not testified in the case. Now, it is a class action suit, which can be viewed here, and includes many other restaurant owners and individual citizens as plaintiffs.

On Friday, a Coyotes spokesperson told Front Office Sports that the team was “committed to winning the land auction,” a pivotal step for securing any future of an NHL team in Arizona.

Roughly an hour later, though, the Arizona State Land Department canceled Thursday’s auction—a move that intensified doubts over Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo’s ability to relaunch the dormant franchise. The Coyotes, in a statement later Friday, said that the cancellation of the auction “seriously jeopardizes the future of NHL hockey returning to the desert.”

But even if the land auction proceeded—one that was expected to fetch around double the $68.5 million appraised value of the land—and Meruelo won the auction, he still faced plenty of obstacles before the Coyotes would be reborn. 

“Hopefully, he will finally bow out so that the NHL can begin discussions with other real potential owners,” former Coyotes executive Rich Nairn wrote on X. 

Meruelo, under pressure from the NHL, sold all but the team’s name in April to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, a $1.2 billion deal that relocated the team to Salt Lake City. But Meruelo was given the exclusive rights to NHL hockey in the Phoenix area as part of the transaction as long as he built a suitable arena to bring the Coyotes back as an expansion franchise within five years. 

There were whispers around the NHL and in Arizona that Meruelo lacked the allies to make that a reality—and the Coyotes didn’t win the hearts and minds with their statement that included the team was “exploring all of our legal options” over the canceled auction.

That didn’t seem to nudge the Arizona State Land Department when it came how soon the auction would be back on. 

“We don’t yet know if or when it will be rescheduled,” a land department spokesperson told FOS via email on Saturday. 

What Latest Blow Means

This would be the third major setback for the Meruelo over the last 13 months. In May 2023, Tempe voters rejected three ballot propositions that would have cleared the way for a new home of the Coyotes as part of an entertainment district. That meant the Coyotes would head into their second season at Arizona State’s Mullett Arena with no solidified plans to get out of the 5,000-seat venue. 

The Coyotes filed for an application for 200 acres of land—that included the acreage in the canceled auction—in June 2023. But when infrastructure costs exceeded projections, the Coyotes yanked that application and narrowed down a proposal to 110 acres, delaying the land auction for several months. 

This latest setback could, at long last, be Meruelo’s final one.

The difficult task of achieving scale in a sports betting market dominated by FanDuel and DraftKings could help prompt more large-scale dealmaking among the industry’s challengers.

Casino operator Boyd Gaming has approached Penn Entertainment, the operating partner of ESPN Bet, about a potential takeover, according to a Reuters report. The proposed deal—likely premised in part on Boyd Gaming’s interest in Penn Entertainment’s land-based casinos—still faces a variety of obstacles, including the need for approval from regulators and ESPN parent Disney. But the fact it’s even being discussed shows the pressure that exists in this consolidating business. No specific prices for an acquisition have been disclosed; the two companies have a combined market value of nearly $17 billion. 

Despite Penn Entertainment’s stated intent to reach a 20% market share with ESPN Bet by 2027 in its $2 billion deal with the sports media giant, early progress in many key states shows the big gap that still remains. In key states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Illinois, ESPN Bet is claiming about 5–6% of the market. The brand is set to debut in New York later this year, but the steep uphill climb persists for ESPN Bet and every other market upstart. Industry titans FanDuel and DraftKings, meanwhile, continue to control about 75% of the market combined. 

In part because of those factors, activist investor The Donerail Group recently wrote the Penn Entertainment board, questioning whether the directors “are really just riverboat gamblers, content with doubling down after each loss—of shareholder capital, of management confidence, of board credibility.”

Market Moves

News of Boyd Gaming’s approach drove Penn stock up by nearly 10% on Thursday. The following day, shares settled, closing down 1% to $19.05 per share. For the year to date, the stock is down by nearly 24%, and the company’s issues have even been the subject of derision on The Pat McAfee Show. By comparison, DraftKings stock is up by 25% this year, while shares in FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment are up by 8%. 

Penn National has not commented on the reported interest from Boyd. But after missing analyst projections in its most recent quarter, CEO Jay Snowden acknowledged that “we have not been as tight and accurate with our financial forecasting in the early days of ESPN Bet.”

Boyd Gaming owns a 5% stake in FanDuel, a holding that would likely need to be sold should the Penn National acquisition happen.