A federal judge dismissed the antitrust lawsuit DirecTV filed against Nexstar last year, accusing the TV station giant of price fixing in connection with retransmission consent negotiations with the PC satellite TV platform.
The DirecTV lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York in March 2023, accused Nexstar of engaging in price-fixing activities through MVPDs’ retransmission consent fees, which have become important revenue for local station owners. . In his ruling issued March 20, Judge P. Kevin Castel dismissed the request without prejudice, arguing that DirecTV did not suffer significant harm in its dispute with Nexstar and associated TV station owners to justify an antitrust declaration.
“The DirecTV accidents are too oblique and speculative to confer antitrust status,” Castel wrote.
In a statement, DirecTV said through a spokesperson: “This decision sets a harmful precedent that a sufferer of price fixing must pay the inflated price before being able to file a claim in court.” The PC TV satellite TV provider is said to be strongly considering an attraction.
The case resulted from the breakdown of negotiations over consent phrases for TV station retransmission between DirecTV and stations owned by Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting. Each of these stations is financially affiliated with Nexstar Media Group, which is the largest TV station operator in the country. DirecTV’s lawsuit accused Nexstar of conspiring with Mission and White Knight leaders to demand a massive increase in retransmission fees across the industry to renew contracts that allow DirecTV to maintain local broadcast stations. DirecTV argued that Nexstar, Mission and White Knight conspired with the intent to establish a new minimum price for retransmission fees for Nexstar stations when the time came to resume those retransmission contracts with DirecTV.
DirecTV argued that it lost customers in the Mission and White Knight markets because it could not offer its stations as part of its channel package. Mission owns several dozen stations in 26 markets across the U.S., including WPIX-TV New York.
RELATED NEWS: Nexstar and NewsNation stations go dark on DirecTV as carriage agreement expires
The 17-page decision concluded that DirecTV had credible points in its claim, but in the big picture, the judge rejected the legal argument that DirecTV had been harmed by antitrust habits on the part of Nexstar.
“Plaintiff’s principle is as follows: (1) Defendants demanded supracompetitive costs; (2) Plaintiff did not renew its retransmission contract; (3) Defendants’ stations were blocked on DirecTV; (4) subscribers left DirecTV due to blackouts that led to loss of income. This principle is speculative because it depends on two crucial assumptions: that, in the absence of Defendants’ conspiratorial calls for events, an agreement would have been reached and that, if the events had been agreed upon, subscribers would not have left DirecTV,” wrote the judge. “There is no way to determine whether, and on what terms, the parties would have agreed, and whether due to such an agreement, subscribers would have remained with DirecTV. Furthermore, Plaintiff’s damage is indirect, as DirecTV did not pay the increased costs, but claims to have suffered from losing customers due to the blackouts.
The ruling cited similar litigation that the city of Oakland brought in 2018 against the city’s former NFL team, the Raiders, accusing the team and league of manipulating the market for NFL teams with the goal of getting the city to pay more for a new stadium. That case was also dropped.
In response to the ruling, a Nexstar spokesperson said, “We will let the court’s determination speak for itself.”
The post Decides rejects DirecTV antitrust lawsuit against Nexstar appeared first on All celebrities.
