Some subscribers lose NFL Network
If you counted on AT&T U-Verse TV or the DirecTV Now streaming service to watch NFL Network’s announcement of the league’s 2019 schedule Wednesday night, you had to make alternative plans.
“Our rights to provide the NFL Network in your TV lineup have expired,” AT&T said in a note to Uverse TV and DirecTV Now customers on its website. “We’re sorry for any inconvenience.
“The NFL Network and RedZone Channel remain available to all fans on DirecTV (satellite service). However, as we continue to manage content costs, we could not reach an agreement with the NFL to continue to carry their channels on U-verse TV and DirecTV Now.”
The absence of RedZone should not be noticeable to U-Verse TV and DirecTV Now consumers until Sept. 8, the first Sunday of the season.
But in addition to the schedule announcement on NFL Network, the channel the league co-owns has its nonexclusive coverage of the NFL draft set for April 25-27.
Even though DirecTV satellite viewers with NFL Network (available to those with the Choice package and above) and RedZone (included with NFL Sunday Ticket Max) will not be affected, it’s possible this disruption is collateral damage to a far greater potential battle brewing between AT&T and the NFL.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell indicated in a March 22 interview with Bloomberg that DirecTV’s long-standing exclusive rights to the league’s Sunday Ticket package of outof-town game telecasts might be winding to an end after this season.
“We’re having great discussions with DirecTV and AT&T,” Goodell told Bloomberg. “We’ve had a 25-year partnership and we want to continue that partnership, but we also are looking to see how we can change the delivery. We want it delivered on several different platforms.”
That raised the specter of the NFL splitting its Sunday Ticket rights between a traditional outlet and an online service.
That could be DirecTV Now, which last year tested online streaming of Sunday Ticket games in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Boston, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Hartford, Conn., and Louisville, Ky.
But it also could be an outlet such as Amazon, which has a streaming deal for Thursday night games, or Verizon, which has a nonexclusive deal for streaming games.