ExpressVu and NHL Blackouts - What Gives?

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The_Grudge

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I live in Kingston, Ontario. I guess I should say the "Sens Region" then.
As a result of my location any regional Leaf broadcasts should be blacked out in my area.

My first question is - why? What's the reasoning for blackouts in the first place?

My second question surrounds the series of weird events going on since I became an ExpressVu subscriber 2 years ago. Some nights, when a regional Leaf game is on, they are blacked out as I suppose they should be in my area. Other nights though (like last night - March 20,07), the game was shown (I think by mistake) on channel 402 - the channel that normally displays text ads for TSN HD. This happens fairly frequently as well. Is Bell screwing this up?

The wierdest thing though was last week. Toronto played Ottawa at home and the game was blacked out on Sportsnet Ontario for my dad that lives 10 minutes away, but not blacked out on Sportsnet Ontario on ExpressVU. It gets wierder.....the game was also available on PPV!!

What the hell.

So much to the dismay of my local friends on here I'm sure, I emailed the NHL last week to clarify all of this for me. I'd hate to lose my Leaf games but I'd give them up for life if I could get Bell in hot water (that's another post) :mad: .
The NHL emailed this to me...


Bell made a mistake and the issue is being rectified.
Thanks,

NHL TV


I guess I'd like an explanation for all of this.
 
Reason for blackouts: Blackouts are in effect for a couple reasons.

1. a local black out may be in effect for leafs home games... in the toronto region if the game was not sold out. Highly unlikly in toronto though as most if not all leaf games are sold out.

2. a black out may be ineffect say for leaf games out side the leaf region (say for those that live in ottawa) because either, the game is only on ppv in the outside area or if there was a sens game in ottawa on the same night, you won;t get that leafs game shown in the ottawa region if the ottawa game is not sold out.

3. black out are also put into effect for many rogers sportsnet games as they are a regional provider of nhl hockey. so for instance leaf games on sportsnet ontario may be blocked out to anyone outside of ontario-south region.

TSN is a national broadcaster. They're games are generally avaiable throughout the country. They do have blackouts though at times.

And finally.... blackouts sometimes happen purely by mistake, meaning someone hit the wrong switch somewhere. And the opposite also happens where blackouts are missed and the game is shown by mistake.

There are times when blackouts are lifted only at the last moment. The decison can litterly be made a few minutes before the game starts.

Blackoyts are controlled mainly by an agreement the nhl has with its team owners.
 
There are several reasons for the draconian blackouts. The main one is that the NHL and all the teams want you to buy Centre Ice for $200 a year for the privilege of seeing "out of market" games. See http://members2.boardhost.com/scrapbook/msg/1171038151.html

2. Before the Sens joined the league, the Leafs argued that another team in Ontario would hurt their TV revenue (probably because they knew that no team could be any worse than the Leafs!) just as they have argued against a franchise in Hamilton. There is a long history which if you searched long enough you'd probably find something back in the early 90's on this ridiculousness.
 
NHL blackout rules and format are basically the same as NBA and MLB. Not like NHL is doing something that other leagues aren't doing.
 
i have centre ice and all Ottawa games are blacked out and they want you to pay another $11 to see each of those games
 
Try living in Alberta, paying for 4 sportsnet channels, and then seeing them all blacked out because hockey is on.

Basically I pay to see Sportsnet connected 55 times a day
 
Mr Rt: 'Move' to the leafs region and never be blacked out of any hockey game ever again... until they try PPVLeafs... which hopefully never will happen. PPV is just plain greedy...

Grudge: Unfortunately, living in Kingston seems to put you on the boundary as far as Leafs/Sens region so it must be a coin toss every night of what black outs you get... frustrating...

BEV uses your postal code to determine your 'viewing' zone... so perhaps 'move' closer to the region you want to be in...

Hint: Your billing address and your service address do not have to be the same.
 
Hint: Your billing address and your service address do not have to be the same.


yep I am from Vancouver and my "billing address" is from Nova Scotia.;)

I still remember the CSR asking me what time zone BC is in. I was like Atlantic time zone sir:D
 
kittie, it's because you live in the Ottawa viewing area. Everyone outside the Ottawa viewing area gets to see all Ottawa games.
 
Change your SERVICE adress postal code...put you dad's postal code on if he gets it it would work! This has no impact on your bill since we use the BILL TO adress to send the bill

The SERVICE adress is the one that determines viewing zones and the BILL TO is the one where we send bills.
 
Strange eh? You live in the city, you pay, spend all kinds of money to support it. You probably love the sens. Can't go to the game for whatever reason. Ah, we'll just sit down and enjoy it on the NHL packgage that I paid for, NOT. Doesn't that just pi** you off? I really sympathize with you. It's not right. Especially when all the games are all sold out!!! Everybody outside the area gets the game and probably don't watch it. It blows my mind.......
 
I guess the only problem with changing your service address to another time zone is your receiver/program guides time will be off.
It could create a flag when you receiver dials it from your bill's area code not your service area code. Not not expressvu will notice something as obvious as that.:)
 
It could create a flag when you receiver dials it from your bill's area code not your service area code. Not not expressvu will notice something as obvious as that


you don't need to dial in ever. to order PPV you can do it via the phone and online now.
 
Another crazy situation is when Sportsnet carries the odd Toronto Raptor game only on Sportsnet1 (on Bell), and it gets blacked out in BC because of a later NBA game from Seattle being carried on Sportsnet Pacific. I know that Seattle is MUCH closer than Toronto, but what are they thinking? I am Canadian and I want to watch the Raptors, not the Seattle Sonics!
 
Yes so leave your receiver unpluged i guess, but the MRVP office might call though and that could raise some questions (They call your number at home in NS and your able to provide location id for your receivers that are listed at a service address in Ontario)...not that it matters seeing as you not account sharing or stealing anything.
Then again they probley wouldn't pick up on that.;)
 
Come to think of it my billing and service address's have been different for the past 5 years, even though the service is located at the billing address. I told a csr the same last year, but they never changed it.
 
Who said they were thinking? All these blackout rules are there to line the pockets of these multi-million dollar teams/owners/leagues. It has nothing to do with me and you aka the average joe/joeline tv watcher.
 
The blackout rules are controlled by the NHL. If you want to vent your frustration, send an email to [email protected]. It likely won't do any good but maybe if enough people complain they will eventually wake up and realize the blackout rules do nothing but alienate fans.

BTW, US TV viewers get to see more broadcasts of Canadian (non-Leafs) games than Canadians do because there are no blackout rules for Canadian teams in the US (except Buffalo).
 
I have been a bell subscriber for 10 years. Prior to the centre ice package, the games out west were being shown on the respective sports net feeds. All of a sudden games were blacked out. I'm 45 min south of Ottawa.I complained to bell and the crtc. Amazingly enough i received an email within 24 hours from crtc. The NHL has the discression to set the regions for the teams. My consistent bitching resulted in bell giving me a 25$ ppv credit. My biggest aggrivation however is the blackouts of western games when Ottawa is playing away or not at all. Bell kissed the NHL's ass to get exclusive rights for centre ice initially. If they would give me an option to pay 50$ to watch my team of choice, i would gladly pay it, as i'm sure would others who don't want to part with 200$ for the whole package. To make matters worse, (i'm not a sens fan or leafs for that matter) Ottawa has 6 games on ppv that are blacked out regionally from the centre ice package. At 10$ per games this is complete B.S. Games blacked out cos of centre ice was bad enough, but blacking out games on centre ice to try and wring more money out of fans in Ottawa area to watch their sens play is asinine considering they have a tough time filling the arena most nights. Is this going on in other regions as well?
 
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