Game Pass Lawsuit Investigation: Is the NFL Breaking Auto Renewal Laws?

Attorneys working with ClassAction.org are investigating whether a class action lawsuit can be filed over how difficult the NFL has reportedly made it to cancel its Game Pass subscription.

Specifically, attorneys are looking into whether the league is violating the automatic renewal laws of California and Oregon by only allowing its subscribers a small window of time to cancel their plans before they’re charged for another season.

Indeed, some consumers have complained they forgot to cancel during the few weeks they were actually allowed to and ended up being charged for subscriptions they never intended to renew.

Can You Cancel NFL Game Pass at Any Time?

According to the NFL’s own website, fans can only cancel their automatically renewing Game Pass subscriptions between July 1 and August 1 – little more than 30 days out of the calendar year.

While the league claims that its auto-renewal practices are in place to ensure fans “don’t miss out,” scores of consumers have taken to Twitter to complain about the problems they’ve had with the supposedly “hassle-free” system [sic throughout, emphasis ours]: 

They will send you an email telling you when you can unclick auto renew; if you miss it, your credit card gets charged. Years ago, when they used a different software, they never hid the auto renew checkbox. This was a conscious decision to take advantage of people.”
— @bokifly, TWITTER.COM

Friendly reminder that you can now cancel NFL Game Pass in the month of July! What a shite policy to not allow cancelation throughout the entire year #gamepass #NFL”
— @unclelex43, TWITTER.COM

Anybody else forget to cancel their NFL Game Pass subscription for the third year in a row?”
— @MikeMac24, TWITTER.COM

The NFL game pass cancel subscription button just takes you to NFL dot com. I guess I just have to keep my membership for eternity?”
— @BrendanRiley_, TWITTER.COM

Trying to cancel the auto-renew feature on the NFL game pass needs a team of NASA scientists”
— @krh944, twitter.com

I was charged annually for NFL Game Pass, yet my account says I'm not subscribed and have no way to cancel. WTF”
— @TehBreezy1, twitter.com

So I just got $100 taken out of my account because my lovely man started a free trial for an NFL game pass and forgot to cancel the subscription before it renewed, on top of that he has no recollection of ever even doing it, hows your day going??? :)”
— @duhhitsdora, twitter.com

Auto-Renewal Laws: Could the NFL Be in Violation

At least 20 states have enacted laws to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive and potentially predatory subscription models. Automatic renewal laws in California, for instance, require that when a consumer signs up for a subscription online, they must also be able to cancel that subscription “exclusively” online, without having to, say, call customer service. Oregon state law, as another example, mandate that consumers be given a “timely and easy-to-use mechanism” to cancel automatically renewing subscriptions.  

It is these laws that attorneys have reason to suspect the NFL may be violating with the one-month cancellation window for its Game Pass subscription. Lawsuits filed over auto-renewal practices are not uncommon; a bevy of companies ranging from The New York Times and Best Buy to BarkBox and Hello Fresh were hit with proposed class actions just this year alleging they broke the law with their subscription plans.

These suits are not without success: weight loss app Noom agreed to a $56 million deal in February 2022 to resolve allegations that consumers who signed up for a “risk-free” trial were quickly enrolled into “costly, auto-recurring plans” that were nearly impossible to cancel.

How Could a Class Action Lawsuit Help Me?

If filed and successful, a class action lawsuit could give NFL Game Pass subscribers the chance to get a refund for subscriptions they had to pay for because they were unable to cancel. It could also force the league to make changes to its cancellation policy.

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