USFL antitrust trial against the NFL

The United States Football League launched in 1983 as a spring-season alternative to the National Football League. Donald Trump bought the New Jersey Generals in September 1983 and quickly became the most prominent voice arguing for a confrontational strategy against the NFL: shift the USFL to a fall schedule, sue the NFL for antitrust violations, and force a merger or large damages payout. Other USFL owners, who had built their economics around a spring season, resisted; Trump prevailed.

In October 1984 the USFL filed a $1.69 billion antitrust suit against the NFL in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging monopolization of professional football and of the major-network television contracts. The trial began in May 1986 before Judge Peter K. Leisure. On July 29, 1986, the jury found the NFL liable on one count of monopolization in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act but rejected the broader television-monopoly theory and awarded only $1 in damages. Under Section 4 of the Clayton Act, that figure was automatically trebled, producing a final judgment of $3.

The verdict ended the USFL as a going concern. The league suspended operations on August 4, 1986, six days after the judgment. Total league losses across its three seasons of play were estimated at about $163 million in 1986 dollars, equivalent to about $390 million in 2024 dollars. The Second Circuit affirmed the judgment in 1988. The case is taught in antitrust casebooks as an example of a plaintiff winning liability but failing to prove damages, and the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?" (2009) traces the strategic choices that led the USFL to bet its existence on the suit.