Minnesota Football: BTN and Comcast Reach a Deal

If you remember back about a month ago to Big Ten Media days, BTN president Mark Silverman spent most of his time at the podium sounding the alarm that there was a good chance Comcast might take BTN off the air from its subscribers when their carriage agreement ended on September 1st. Well, for those of you who have Comcast, you can stop shopping new ways to watch TV this fall. Comcast and BTN announced they had come to an agreement on a new deal on Friday afternoon, and all BTN content and Big Ten football games on FS1 will be continued to be available.

Well, if you read the actual statement that the two entities put out, it is good news for those subscribers who still live in the Big Ten footprint. For those of you in states that are not in the footprint, you still might need to find a new way to watch games, at least for football season.

For those in the Big Ten footprint nothing will change and the network will remain in the basic packages. However, if you remember back to the spring, Comcast removed BTN from states NOT in the Big Ten footprint. This deal makes it sound like that will be changing and BTN will be available on Comcast’s extra sports package; However, it won’t be immediate. It will be “in the coming months”. So if you are a Minnesota Golden Gophers fan in say Washington or Colorado and have Comcast, you might not have a way to watch games on BTN for a bit longer. Hope you like basketball and hockey.