The Department of Justice sued DIRECTV and AT&T (which acquired DIRECTV in 2015) for committing a series of unlawful information exchanges with competitors – Cox Communications, Charter Communications, and AT&T – during negotiations to carry SportsNet LA, which holds exclusive rights to broadcast Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games. The lawsuit alleged that DIRECTV exchanged competitively-sensitive information with Cox, Charter, and AT&T during the companies’ negotiations for the right to telecast the Dodgers Channel in order to unlawfully obtain bargaining leverage and to reduce the risk of losing subscribers if they decided not to carry the channel but a competitor chose to do so. The government alleged the exchanged information was a material factor in the companies’ decisions not to carry the Dodgers Channel, which effectively blacked out Dodger games to a large segment of the Los Angeles-area viewing audience. In March 2017, AT&T and DIRECTV settled the lawsuit without admitting any wrongdoing or liability. The companies agreed to refrain from sharing competitively-sensitive information with their rivals when negotiating with video programming providers, monitor certain communications their programming executives have with their rivals, and implement antitrust training and compliance programs.