Several Sun Devil football and basketball games, as well as six women's soccer games and nearly half of the women's volleyball games will be televised by the Pac-12 network in 2013.
Yet, more than 20 million cable subscribers will miss out as the Pac-12 network and the world's leading provider of digital television entertainment services, DirecTV, have gone almost a year without being able to reach an agreement that would provide its subscribers with access to the channel.
DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said in an email that DirecTV wants fans of the Pac-12 to have access to the channel, but it has been unable to reach a deal with the conference because it will not let the provider offer the channel, only to those who wish to pay for it.
"Pac-12 continues to cling to its 'all or nothing' strategy, insisting that every one of our customers foot the bill for the network when only a fraction of them have expressed any interest in watching it," he said. "Where pricey sports networks are concerned, we believe our customers should have the opportunity to choose and get the best value for their money. We can reach an agreement quickly if Pac-12 is willing to give customers a choice at a reasonable price."
Pac-12 vice president of communications Kirk Reynolds said more than 50 other cable providers have chosen to carry the network and have found that doing so is valuable to their customers. He said offering DirecTV a different deal wouldn't be fair to the other providers.
"They have heard loud and clear from our fans who are their customers that want the network," he said. "Now we just hope they come to the table and take care of their customers."
He said negotiations with DirecTV have not completely broken down, and the network remains adamant about making a deal happen.
"Our main priority is to expand distribution for our fans, because they want to see the network," he said. "DirecTV is not showing much interest in making a deal happen right now, but we're not going to stop until we can do that."
Reynolds said the main issue at stake in the battle is the exposure for student athletes, especially in smaller sports like tennis, baseball and soccer.
He said the Pac-12 tends to dominate these sports, and the network can finally offer these athletes national exposure.
"DirecTV is trying to paint the Pac-12 network with a brush that just isn't accurate," he said. "Hopefully the deal will come, because these kids deserve all the exposure they can get."
Doug Tammaro, ASU director of media relations, said carrying the network would make sense for DirecTV because most of the Pac-12 markets are in heavily-populated cities.
The network offers cable customers around-the-clock access to under-publicized sports and airs classic games like last season's Territorial Cup and Jahii Carson's 34-point game against Stanford, Tammaro said.
He said the network recently aired a special about a Pac-12 women's volleyball team playing in China, which includes ASU star Macey Gardner.
"We share the frustration of this deal not happening," he said. "But if 50 other providers weren't carrying the channel, we might think the Pac-12 is shooting for the moon too much. But the fact is everyone else is carrying it."
Elliott Simmons, a manager at Devil's Advocate, which runs DirecTV on the majority of its TVs, said he thinks the Pac-12 network should do whatever it takes to come to an agreement with DirecTV.
Simmons said Devil's Advocate has resorted to carrying two cable providers, Cox and DirecTV, in order to offer fans access to Sun Devil sports events and all other sports programming.
"It's a major, major pain," he said. "We literally have every single sports package on DirecTV and we pay a lot of money to have that, and now we have to pay additional money to have one cable box just to show one ASU game on the Pac-12 network."
Simmons said the bar was packed for ASU's first football game of the 2012 season against NAU. When bar managers and patrons realized it was on the Pac-12 network and DirecTV didn't carry the network, many people left, he said.
"We went to turn the game on and we couldn't find it, and we were like 'What in the world?'" he said. "It was terrible for us because we lost money, and it hurt us as a small business."
Reach the reporter at npmendo@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @NPMendoza
