Iowa State football: Dish Network subscribers to miss Cyclones opener
By Brian Spaen
Dish Network and FOX Sports 1 are in a programming dispute, meaning that those who subscribe to the service won’t be getting Iowa State’s opener against North Dakota State next Saturday.
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From Dish’s “Sports Value” page explaining the problem:
"FOX agreed to pay an inflated price for certain sports events on FOX Sports 1. Now, FOX is demanding we pay them a significant additional charge to carry these events. We are unwilling to pass these costs on to our customers."
I’m unsure exactly if the channel is off the air, or if Dish is just going to blackout the games. Either way they won’t be available. Other games that will be missed are Rutgers vs. Washington State, Colorado vs. Colorado State, and SMU vs. Baylor.
This isn’t good news for Iowa State or Big 12 fans that subscribe to the satellite service. Last year, over half of the Cyclones’ schedule was on FOX Sports 1, and that will undoubtedly be the case again this year. FS1 will generally not have the premier matchups in conference action. Those go to local ABC and FOX affiliates, or on the ESPN family of networks.
Already for this season, Iowa State has their first two games at home on FS1. There’s a high probability that the game against Kansas State will be affected by this dispute.
While none of those games are exactly eye-grabbing in the first week, Dish Network simply telling people that there are more games on other networks is just stupid. Why would they want to watch Texas-Whatever State Tech on the Longhorn Network while their favorite team is playing someone else? Besides, FS1’s lineup of games rivals the others because the football matchups are generally crap across the board in the opening weeks.
We’ll hope the dispute between Dish and FOX gets resolved soon. Otherwise, it looks like subscribers will have to find another way to watch the game(s).