There was a Bruins Game on Thursday?

By Matt Ingram
Fan Fanatic Sports Staff

Apparently Thursday night's opener at the TD Garden was unbearable to watch. Luckily for myself and all other Directv subscribers the game was televised on (Comcast owned) Versus Network. For now, Directv does not air the Versus Network.

Comcast and Versus are currently engaged in a noisy publicity campaign to distract attention from the fact that they are trying to take advantage of Directv and customers like myself. Directv has posted this message on their website.

Unfortunately, Versus is no longer available on DIRECTV. Comcast, the largest cable company in the U.S. and our largest competitor, owns the channel and has forced us to pull it down. Here is the situation.

DIRECTV was already paying Comcast more than any other non-Comcast distributor to air Versus — and now Comcast is demanding an overall rate hike of 20% on top of that. Comcast also forces DIRECTV to make Versus available to a much larger portion of our customer base at our own expense than they require from other TV providers — most notably, DISH Network. We simply cannot accept these unfair and outrageous terms. All we're asking from Comcast is equal treatment.

If the negotiations don't get hashed out soon there will be many NHL fans that will not be happy. The Bruins alone have 7 regular season games, including last Thursday's opener, that are not available to Directv subscribers. This doesn't even include the playoffs, which Versus has the rights to a portion of games.

Comcast is coming of as very hypercritical. The NFL Network and Comcast had been in a battle for nearly 3 years until an agreement came this past May. Before a deal was struck Comcast wanted the NFL Network on a higher tiered level so it could charge the customer a higher price. Of course, the NFL was not willing to compromise on this stipulation as this would bring down the amount of possible viewers.

Now that Comcast has a Network, and I use the term loosely, that it can distribute it is choosing to bend Directv and its customers over. Comcast has always been angry that Directv has exclusive rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket and this is just one way they can get back at Directv. I'm sure the NHL wishes it had a real TV deal with a real sports network, ESPN for example. Although this goes along everything the NHL has done this decade.