One of the great things about modern cable and satellite TV is all of the sports programming now available to subscribers across the country. While 25 years ago you would see a couple of college football games on Saturday and a few on Sunday, today you can literally pick from two dozen or more games every weekend. Even the NCAA Men’s tournament has additional coverage with the Mega March Madness on Direct TV.

Content is king today, and as the saying goes the sports networks want to bring as much sports content as possible to the sports fan so they can sell more advertising. Lots of brand new all-sports networks have sprung up in the past few years. A few of the new networks are Altitude Sports, which carries Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche games, and also the Big 10 network and the Mountian, the network of the Mountain West conference.

Sure these channels are great for folks in certain regions of the nation, but disputes between the providers of sports programming and cable networks that deliver the content have brought trouble at times to the customer. For example, the Big Ten Network began broadcasting in 2007, but they were unable to strike a deal with big cable provider Time Warner. Customers of Time Warner in the midwest were unable to watch some of the local teams play due to this dispute. Fortunately, the parties came to an agreement before the 2008 season, so customers could remain with with Time Warner rather than having to switch to one of the satellite television companies like DISH Network or DirecTV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Time Warner vs Direct TV.

Specialized sports packages are another issue to deal with for the customer. Some Dish Network customers have switched providers because the NFL Sunday ticket is exlusively with Direct TV. This has upset some pay television subscribers, who do not understand why a package Sunday Ticket isn’t available to every provider, especially a bicompany like Time Warner. Other sports packages though are more fan friendly, such as the National Hockey League Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company. DIRECTV seems to have all of the premium sports packages like the NFL Sunday Ticket package.

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