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Subscribers to satellite and cable television literally have hundreds of choices when it comes to sports programming. While 15 years ago you might find a couple of college football games on Saturday and a game or two on Sunday, today you can literally pick from two dozen or more games every weekend.  Even the NCAA tournament has additional coverage with the Mega March Madness package on Direct TV.

The motto today is “Content is King” and as the saying goes the sports networks of course want to bring as much sports content as possible to the end user so they can sell more advertising. Lots of new all-sports channels have popped up over the last few years. Included among these are Altitude Sports, which carries NBA Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche matches, and also the Big Ten Network and the Mtn, the broadcast home of the Mountain West conference.

Sure these networks are great for people in certain parts of the country, but disputes between the providers of sports programming and cable networks that deliver the content have resulted in difficulties to the customer. Consider what happened last fall, the Big Ten Network started airing in 2007, but they were in a carraige dispute with big cable provider Time Warner. Customers of Time Warner in Wisconsin were unable to watch some of the local teams play due to this dispute. Fortunately, the companies involved came to an agreement before the fall football season, so subscribers could remain with with Time Warner instead of having to switch to one of the satellite TV providers such as DISH Network or Direct TV.  An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing DIRECTV against Time Warner.

Specialized sports packages are another issue to deal with for the customer. The DirecTV Sunday Ticket package is exclusive to the satellite TV provider, so if you want this package you have to switch. 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 sports bundles 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 provider. Direct TV seems to have all of the sports programming.