"Notre Dame" Football Blacked Out on Broadcast Television for 2021 Home Opener
"Notre Dame" Football's home opener against Toledo on Saturday afternoon is being blacked out on broadcast television, in favor of online streaming through "Peacock."
As a practical matter, it bears noting that "Notre Dame" essentially no longer has a TV contract with the old NBC. "NBC" is now ultimately owned by cable company Comcast, which also provides internet service through "Xfinity" branding.
So the net effect is that Comcast owns the TV rights to "Notre Dame" home games, and is using them to actually prevent a game from being broadcasted, to coerce signups for "Peacock."
As an added measure, there is a fee for Peacock, yet the Peacock fee apparently is waived for persons who also have signed up for Comcast. The same deal is also offered for subscribers of Cox, with whom Comcast apparently has been striking deals.
So, directly or indirectly, Comcast is using "Notre Dame" Football TV rights to block a game from being broadcast, to coerce subscriptions to Peacock and Comcast itself.
Back in the day, when Notre Dame Football was an elite program, one of their main incentives for arranging the original NBC contract in the early 1990's was to ensure actual nationwide broadcasts. One phenomenon they wished to avoid was mere regional broadcasting on ABC.
Since then, NBC itself leveraged the deal to black out a few games on broadcast television to coerce viewers to sign up for cable television and, even worse, a more deluxe cable TV package including NBC's cable channel for sports.
Now Comcast is pushing a blacked out home game onto computers and cellphones.
Additional resource:
Notre Dame Football home opener airing exclusively on Peacock - WNDU 7.7.21