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Near the end of the day, eight jurors and two alternates were seated for the trial, with opening statements scheduled for Thursday morning.

The class action features two sets of plaintiffs: one of at least 2.4 million residential subscribers who purchased the Sunday Ticket package after June 17, 2011, and another of at least 48,000 bars, restaurants and other establishments that subscribed during the same period.

DirecTV and the NFL have been fighting those antitrust allegations for the better part of a decade. In late 2015, more than 20 lawsuits from bars, restaurants and fans were centralized into multidistrict litigation. The classes are seeking more than $6 billion in damages, which could also be trebled under antitrust law.

In their suit, the subscribers claim that DirecTV can charge higher prices because it doesn't have competition for airing football broadcasts. They have also argued that, without the deal with the NFL to sell rights collectively, each football team would be motivated to distribute its games nationally via cable, satellite, or internet channels at competitive prices.

An initial bid to throw out the case came to a head in 2020, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a Ninth Circuit decision that revived the suit. In 2021, Judge Gutierrez moved the claims against DirecTV into arbitration, but the case against the NFL remained in court. The subscribers won class certification in early 2023.

In the class certification ruling, Judge Gutierrez cast some doubt on the NFL's assertions that it is not flouting antitrust laws, and did so again in January when he denied the NFL's request for summary judgment on the subscribers' Sherman Act claims, ruling both Section 1 and Section 2 allegations would proceed toward trial.

Following that ruling, the NFL and plaintiffs jockeyed for position over what evidence could be presented at the trial, with Judge Gutierrez ruling the NFL could not describe its Sunday Ticket broadcast package as a "luxury," and that the NFL defendants can't say anything to imply that the litigation is "attorney-driven" or bring evidence related to how the subscribers met their attorneys and became part of the litigation.

Other pretrial action focused on how much of the NFL's history of being faulted for antitrust violations could be presented to a jury.

The plaintiffs are represented by Marc M. Seltzer, Kalpana Srinivasan, Amanda Bonn, William C. Carmody, Seth Ard, Tyler Finn, and Ian M. Gore of Susman Godfrey LLP, Scott Martin, Sathya S. Gosselin, Christopher L. Lebsock, Samuel Maida, and Farhad Mirzadeh of Hausfeld LLP, and Howard Langer, Edward Diver, Peter Leckman, and Kevin Trainer of Langer Grogan & Diver PC.