One of the great things about modern cable and satellite TV is the explosion of sports programming now available to customers across the country. While 25 years ago you would see a couple of college football games on Saturday and a few on Sunday, today you can literally pick from two dozen or more games every weekend. Even the NCAA Men’s tournament has expanded coverage with the Mega March Madness package on Direct TV.

Content is king today, and as the saying goes the networks want to deliver as much content as possible to the viewer so they can sell more ads. Lots of new all-sports channels have popped up in the last few years. Some of these include Altitude Sports, which carries Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche matches, and also the Big Ten Network and the Mountian, the broadcast home of the Mountain West conference.

Sure these channels are great for folks in certain regions of the nation, but disputes between the providers of content and cable networks that deliver the content have brought difficulties to the customer. For example, the Big Ten Network started airing in 2007, but they were in a carraige dispute with cable TV provider Time Warner. Subscribers of Time Warner in the midwest were unable to watch some of the local teams play due to this dispute. Finally however, the parties came to an agreement before the fall football season, so customers could stay with Time Warner instead of having to switch over to one of the satellite TV companies like DISH Network or Direct TV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Time Warner cable vs Direct TV.

Out of market sports programming are another consideration for the customer. Many Comcast customers have switched to DirecTV because the NFL Sunday ticket is exlusively on satellite. Many customers of large companies like Comcast are upset too, not understanding why a package like NFL Sunday Ticket isn’t available to them. Other packages though are more fan friendly, like the National Hockey League Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company. DIRECTV seems to have all of the sports programming like the Sunday Ticket.

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