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

The motto today is “Content is King” and as the saying goes the networks of course want to bring as much content as possible to the sports fan so they can make more money on ads. Lots of brand new all-sports networks have popped up in the past few years. A few of the new networks are Altitude Sports, which carries NBA Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche games, as well as the Big 10 network and the Mtn, the network of the Mountain West conference.

Certainly these networks are great for fans in certain areas, disagreements between the providers of content and those who deliver the content have brought difficulties to the customer. For example, the Big Ten Network started airing in 2007, but the network was unable to strike a deal with big cable provider Time Warner. Subscribers of Time Warner in the midwest were unable to see some of the local teams play because of the carraige dispute. Finally however, the companies involved came to an agreement before the fall football season, so customers could stay with Time Warner rather than having to switch to one of the satellite TV companies such as DISH Network or Direct TV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Direct TV vs Time Warner cable.

Specialized sports programming are another thing sports fans should consider. Many cable customers have switched to DirecTV because the NFL Sunday ticket is exlusively on satellite TV. This has left a bad taste in the mouth of some consumers, who don’t understand why a high demand package like this isn’t available to every provider, especially a big company like Comcast. Other sports bundles though are more friendly to subscribers, like the National Hockey League Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite provider. Direct TV seems to have all of the sports programming like the Sunday Ticket.

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