Notre Dame Football will open its 2023 season in Dublin, Ireland Saturday against Navy, a game simulcast at 2:30 p.m. EST on NBC and Peacock.
Thanks to DirecTV's protracted 160-station blackout of Nexstar Media Group, Nexstar-owned NBC affiliates in more than 30 markets aren't available DirecTV's three platforms right now, and probably won't be restored by Saturday.
Still, the pay TV operator lives a charmed life when it comes to the Fighting Irish.
Even if they don't subscribe to Peacock or have an OTA antenna, DirecTV subscribers can still see the 4K/UHD national feeds of Notre Dame games this season on DirecTV channels 105 or 106 (depending on the week), thanks to a 2016 deal with the school and its broadcast partner, NBC Sports.
Indeed, even in times of carriage war, TV business -- and major sponsorship deals -- move on.
DirecTV announced on Thursday that it has also become an official sponsor of Notre Dame athletics, joining Citi, Allstate and Howard Bailey on the Fighting Irish sports sponsorship roster.
"Having worked with sports teams, leagues, and events across the entire United States since inception in 1994, DirecTV brings a long-standing legacy of innovation in sports content and distribution and will bring that know how as a partner with Notre Dame’s 26 varsity teams," a statement from the pay TV company reads.
DirecTV is also sponsoring USA Baseball's venture to the World Baseball Classic next spring, and it's also the presenting sponsor of The Soccer Champions Tour.
Still, the Nexstar impasse -- which has separate DirecTV blackouts by smaller station outfits Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting tied into it -- is sucking up all the oxygen right now.
Earlier this week, DirecTV pressed its complaint with the FCC that Nexstar is using management services agreements with Mission and White Knight to effectively add scale to its retrans negotiating might. The "blackout" extends to more than 200 stations when those two broadcasters are factored in. That makes it the biggest pay TV station blackout ever.
Nexstar's response to that FCC missive has all the hyperbolic haymakers of a pay TV carriage war in mid-flight.
“With yesterday’s FCC filing, DirecTV continues its campaign to thwart fair marketplace negotiations and instead use the impasse it created to pursue its broader regulatory agenda," Nexstar said in a statement sent to our sibling publication, Broadcasting + Cable.
"DirecTV has a history of this behavior. Since 2019 it has dropped more than 150 channels or networks from its systems for various lengths of time," the station group added. "In total, these drops have resulted in more than an entire year’s worth of programming being lost to viewersTrue to form, DirecTV has manufactured this crisis by declining an extension that would have kept all of Nexstar’s stations available throughout this impasse. "
