Sept. 12 (UPI) — Football fans across the United States who paid hundreds of dollars to subscribe to DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket were inexplicably blacked out for hours during the first weekend of the new NFL season.
Fans said they received error messages or couldn’t even sign into their accounts on Sunday to watch games. One error message said the reason for the problem was because some viewers, who were trying to watch at home, were in or near an NFL stadium. As part of its blackout policy, Sunday Ticket is blacked out in and around stadiums.
DirecTV addressed the problems on social media later Sunday afternoon after many of the first games had ended. But it wasn’t clear exactly what the problem was.
“We’re aware some customers are unable to access NFL Sunday Ticket online or through the app,” DirecTV spokesperson Alisha Laventure said according to The Verge.
“Our teams are working to resolve this, but in the meantime, we recommend satellite customers watch on TV.”
Some NFL fans watching NFL RedZone on Sling TV and YouTube TV also had issues.
“We are aware that some customers currently do not have access to RedZone. We’re actively working to resolve the issue,” Sling TV said in a tweet.
The Red Zone channel features live coverage of all games and switches from game to game with commentary from an anchor at the channel’s headquarters.
Some have speculated that the problems on Sunday might be related to DirecTV losing NFL Sunday Ticket after this season, that the satellite carrier hasn’t been motivated to fix the technological issues that contributed to Sunday’s troubles.
Beginning next season, Sunday Ticket will move to a streaming platform. Amazon, Apple, ESPN and YouTube have all bid for the package. The league will announce the winner sometime this fall.
Sunday Ticket began in 1994 and DirecTV has been its distributor during the program’s entire run. There are two subscription packages, one costing about $300 and the other roughly $400.
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