Comcast/Xfinity TV customers may miss the Oregon Ducks and Washington Huskies’ season-opening games on Saturday.
Fans of the four West Coast schools that have been admitted to the Big Ten – Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA – are reporting blackouts on their schools’ live sporting events on the Big Ten Network via Comcast/Xfinity. Customers who tried to tune in to the Huskies football game on Monday night instead received a message about an apparent broadcast 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. “Because Comcast is the only distribution partner that has declined to expand with us, Comcast Xfinity viewers in many areas will not have access to live broadcasts of the highly anticipated B1G season-opening games for Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington.”
The QR code in the TV message leads to allbtngames.com, where fans can enter their zip code and see if live events are blocked. Entering zip codes from Portland, Eugene and Seattle will display a message indicating a blockage in those areas.
Big Ten Network is partially owned by Fox, but a blackout would likely not impact Big Ten football games airing on Fox or FS1 this weekend. So far, Comcast/Xfinity customers have only reported blackouts during live events broadcast on BTN.
If the dispute is not resolved by the weekend, fans can stream Week 1 Big Ten college football games for free with Fubo (free trial) or with DirecTV Stream (free trial).
— Ryan Clarke covers the Oregon Ducks and the Big Ten Conference for The Oregonian and is co-host of the Ducks Confidential podcast. Reach him at [email protected] or @RyanTClarke.
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