Comcast/Xfinity TV customers could miss out on the Oregon Ducks’ and Washington Huskies’ season-opening football games on Saturday.
Fans of the four West Coast schools added to the Big Ten — Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA — are reporting blackouts of their schools’ live sporting events on the Big Ten Network through Comcast/Xfinity. Customers who tried to tune in for the Huskies’ soccer match on Monday night instead received a message about what appears to be a carriage dispute.
Comcast/Xfinity did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday morning.
“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,” a BTN spokesperson said in a statement. “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.”
The QR code in the televised message links to allbtngames.com, which allows fans to enter their zip code and determine whether live events are being blacked out. Entering Portland-, Eugene- and Seattle-area zip codes returns a message indicating a blackout in those areas.
Big Ten Network is owned in part by Fox, but a blackout wouldn’t likely impact Big Ten football games airing on Fox or FS1 this weekend. So far, Comcast/Xfinity customers have only reported blackouts of live events airing on BTN.
Should the dispute not be resolved by the weekend, fans can stream Week 1 Big Ten college football for free with Fubo (free trial), or with DirecTV Stream (free trial).
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