Fans of Washington, Oregon, Southern California, and UCLA hoped that moving from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten would resolve their viewing issues. However, that’s not the case.
Fans of the Huskies and Ducks who use Comcast might miss their team’s opening games on Saturday because of a dispute with the Big Ten Network.
Comcast is blocking live events involving the four new Big Ten schools in their home areas. The issue is that Comcast wants BTN to remain on a more expensive tier rather than basic cable, and they also disagree on paying the in-market rates for the West Coast schools now in the conference.
Oregon’s game against Idaho is set for 7:30 p.m. EDT, and Washington’s game against Weber State starts at 11 p.m. EDT. USC and UCLA’s games will be shown nationally and are not affected this weekend.
Comcast owns NBC, which carries the conference’s Saturday Night package, but Fox owns most of BTN.
The Big Ten said in a statement: “The Big Ten Network is proud to present an expanded slate of live sporting events featuring the newest members of the B1G conference.
However, most Comcast subscribers will not see these games. As the one distribution partner that declined to expand along with us, Comcast Xfinity viewers in many areas will not have access to live broadcasts of the highly anticipated inaugural B1G season games for Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington.”
Comcast responded by saying, “We’re sensitive to the impact these costs have on our customers and have been in discussions with Fox and the Big Ten Network to find a solution to make certain former Pac-12 games available to the people who want them while not forcing others to pay for content they don’t want to watch.
We hope to reach a fair agreement with Fox and the Big Ten Network to be able to offer these games to our customers.”
