NFL Dish Contract
Dish Network dropped NFL RedZone and NFL Network on June 16, and the channels have been blacked out since then. It was the first time NFL owned channels were dropped by a service provider. During the time, Dish Network was already in carriage dispute with Tribune Media stations. Since then, more than 5 million consumers of Dish Network have been unavailable to watch Tribune stations in 33 markets, and 7 million were unable to view WGN America.
But now the situation has eased a little for the fans of NFL. The NFL regular season is about a month away, and the satellite TV provider has reached an agreement with the league to carry both NFL RedZone and NFL Network channels, after 6 weeks of going dark due to carriage dispute. Dish said in a statement that it “has reached a multi-year agreement with NFL Network for carriage of NFL Network and RedZone. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.”
The NFL Network said, “As the only network 100% dedicated to coverage of America’s most popular sports league, NFL Network is committed to serving the millions of NFL fans by reaching fair distribution agreements with the pay-TV industry.”
Dish Multi Year Contract
NFL network is available to more than 60 million US households through other services providers like Comcast’s Xfinity, DirecTV, Verizon FiOS, Time Warner Cable, and Charter Spectrum, and have been urging Dish customers to seek other alternatives to watch the upcoming NFL games.
It is a major relief for sports fans of Dish Network that they could watch NBL after the 6 weeks of black out, which from Dish’s side is a desperate move to hold their customers from switching to other service providers. But still, the remaining channels which have been blacked out remain at the same state.
Dish’s offer to resolve dispute with Tribune stations via arbitration was put to an end by Tribune group, which in turn proposed to let Tom Wheeler, FCC chairman’s office to monitor the discussions with daily joint calls. Dish on contrary, objected to Tribune’s “significant price increase” for its stations and wants to force bundle Tribune with WGN America, which according to the satellite distributor is an “an unrelated and low-performing cable channel.”
Tribune commented on its offering that they are offering terms that are dependable with other deals they have made. Dish Network, on the other hand, has not negotiated the deal yet.
