With this week’s Jets-Bills game moving from Sunday in Buffalo to Monday in Detroit, one question has not been answered: How can Jets and Bills fans outside New York City and Buffalo watch the game?
The NFL has announced that the local CBS affiliates in New York and Buffalo will televise the game, but the NFL has not said whether there will be any way for fans in the rest of the country to see it.
The league is in an awkward situation because this affects three of its television partners: CBS, ESPN and DirecTV. CBS would surely love to be able to show Jets-Bills to a wider audience than just the two local affiliates, but ESPN would cry foul because that could siphon fans away from the regularly scheduled Saints-Ravens game on ESPN Monday night. DirecTV could also make Jets-Bills available to Sunday Ticket subscribers, but that could also siphon viewers away from Monday Night Football. ESPN would love to be able to show the Jets-Bills game on ESPN2 while Saints-Ravens is on ESPN, but CBS would cry foul because that’s taking a game from CBS and giving it to a competitor.
The fairest solution for fans would be to make the game available to DirecTV Sunday Ticket subscribers: If you pay for NFL Sunday Ticket, you’re paying for every game. If you’re a Jets or Bills fan who lives outside New York or Buffalo and you purchased Sunday Ticket specifically to watch your team, you’re getting a raw deal if that game isn’t available on the Sunday Ticket package.
In 2010, when the NFL had to move a Giants-Vikings game to Detroit because snow damaged the Metrodome, that game was available to the local affiliates and on Sunday Ticket.
At the moment the only thing we know is that viewers in New York and Buffalo can watch the game on CBS. The NFL is expected to announce on Friday whether viewers anywhere else can see the game.