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November 28, 2007

Packers-Cowboys: The big game that most won't see

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The Dallas Cowboys host the Green Bay Packers tomorrow night in one of the National Football League's most anticipated games this season.

Chances are, you won't be able to watch it.

The NFL remains locked in a pricing dispute with some of the nation's largest cable providers, preventing about two- thirds of the 109.6 million television households in the U.S. from watching football's two most popular franchises.

The game will be broadcast on the NFL Network, which the league owns and wants carried as a basic channel by the cable companies. Cablevision Systems Corp., Time Warner Inc., Comcast Corp. and other cable companies say it belongs on a so-called sports tier, where only those who want it must pay an extra monthly charge.

"There's no right, there's no wrong, there's no good guy, there's no bad guy," said Rick Gentile, a former executive producer at CBS Sports. "There's just a victim, and the victim is the sports fan."

The Cowboys, known as "America's team," and the Packers, whose former coach Vince Lombardi is honored on the league's championship trophy, each have 10 wins and 1 loss. The winner might earn home-field advantage throughout the playoffs en route to the Super Bowl, which Dallas has won five times and Green Bay three.

Eight Games

Since last season, the NFL has withheld eight games each year from its $3.7 billion television package with Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, General Electric Co.'s NBC and CBS Inc. The league broadcasts those games on its network and uses the fan interest to pressure the cable companies.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who heads the committee governing the NFL Network, said the league understood interest would be high for the Packers-Cowboys game, helping to demonstrate the network's value. The Cowboys and Packers are the most popular teams with fans living outside their home cities, according to study by Turnkey Sports and Entertainment, a Haddonfield, New Jersey-based marketing company.

"I had one of the significant cable companies dare me, `Show me just how much the interest is,"' Jones said in an interview earlier this month. "You start telling literally a couple hundred thousand people in Texas that they aren't going to get to see (Tony) Romo versus Brett Favre, and there's going to be letters to people that they're counting on."

The NFL is asking fans to drop cable subscriptions in favor of satellite or telecommunications companies that carry the network, such as DirecTV. It's also sought government help.

FCC Vote

The Federal Communications Commission delayed a vote yesterday on rules that might force Comcast and Time Warner to hold arbitration talks to resolve disputes with content suppliers such as the NFL.

"Ultimately, there has to be some sort of arbitration, but I don't think you go to the government and ask for relief," said Gentile, who now directs the Seton Hall University Sports Poll tracking public attitudes toward the business of professional sports. "They both have very valid cases, and they're both completely unreasonable."

Comcast, the biggest U.S. cable provider, moved the NFL Network last year from a basic subscriber package that reached 8 million homes to a sports tier, which has fewer than 1 million customers, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. That meant people wanting to watch the NFL Network had to pay an extra $5 to $8 per month.

`The Fairest Way'

Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said last week the switch was "the fairest way to provide the NFL's expensive programming to customers." Time Warner supported the move.
"Nobody should be fooled by the NFL's suggestion that it is such a weak player, or that its programming is so important that it requires government intervention to gain carriage on cable systems," Time Warner spokeswoman Maureen Huff said in a telephone interview. Cable operators also point to the NFL's five-year, $3.5 billion deal with DirecTV for its "Sunday Ticket" package of out-of-market games.

Tomorrow's game will be important to Cowboys and Packers fans, including former Green Bay offensive lineman Jerry Kramer. Nearly 40 years ago, he sprung Bart Starr with a block to score the winning touchdown in the closing seconds against Dallas in what is now known as the Ice Bowl, considered among the greatest games in league history.

"How the hell anybody could live without the NFL Network is beyond me," 70-year-old Kramer, who can watch the game at his Boise, Idaho, home, said in a telephone interview. "It's such a shame that it won't be widely seen, especially for a ball game like this."

Patriots

The NFL Network game that could draw even greater interest comes during the regular season's final week, when the New England Patriots (11-0) may seek to cap the league's first undefeated campaign since 1972 against the New York Giants. Goodell was asked at an owners' meeting last month which side of the squabble fans would take if they couldn't see the Patriots' run at history.

"The reality is, they'd probably be angry at all of us," he said.

Cowboys fan Claudius Bryant, a 38-year-old real estate broker who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, and grew up in Texas, will find a sports bar to catch tomorrow night's game, with disdain for both sides in the dispute.

"They're all pigs at the trough," Bryant said in a telephone interview.

Posted by Mike McDermott at 11:38 AM to Patriots | Permalink

November 28, 2007

Packers-Cowboys: The big game that most won't see

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