There we were, happily channel surfing at home last night, and suddenly it appeared out of nowhere: the NFL Network. We have the Comcast digital classic plan and have never, ever had access to the NFL Network before. Surely a mistake, right? Not at all. Somehow back in May I missed the earth-shattering news that Comcast and the NFL Network had finally come to a peaceful resolution in a years-long standoff. After much “friendly” haggling, Comcast finally agreed to carry the network by August 1st with no additional fee required from digital subscribers. As with the dispute over the the Big Ten Network, it was all a matter of finding the right price. In the end, the NFL didn’t have to hand over any channel equity, but it did reduce the cost per subscriber from 70 cents to just over 50 cents on average.
In combination with the NFL Network, I also now get ESPN360 as a Comcast broadband subscriber, and I should be getting ESPNU before the start of college football season. Unlike Dave, I’m not much of a college football fan, but the ESPN360 access will certainly come in handy for those out-of-market Redskins games. Yes, I’m a Redskins fan. And I’m ready for some football!
Just checked. I’m not getting NFL Network yet. I checked ESPN360.co, which worked. That was a nice surprise.
Hope NFL Network and ESPNU is rolled out soon to my area (Atlanta, GA)!
http://www.hdsportsguide.com/ has a full listing of all the preseason games on NFL Net (that’d be all of them, 12 will be shown live)
Thanks for the 360 info; I hadn’t heard that yet. And the U is a nice addition–I wonder if it’ll be HD?
I am not sure how you’d get Redskins games on 360 outside of maybe MNF? The Sunday rights are owned by DirecTV if I am not mistaken. The big benefit is 360 will have all the ESPN Gameplan games! So now there’s no need to purcahse the Gameplan games…
I checked ESPN360.co, which worked. That was a nice surprise.
The Sunday rights are owned by DirecTV if I am not mistaken. The big benefit is 360 will have all the ESPN Gameplan games!