Scrimmage begins over NFL viewers

Dish, Qwest line up heavyweights for football advertising

Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 25, 2006 at midnight

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Dish Network drafted Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer. Qwest grabbed University of Colorado coach Dan Hawkins.

The imminent kickoff of football season traditionally marks a showdown between pay-TV providers as they pit their pigskin programming against each other in a scramble to win subscribers. This year Qwest and EchoStar's Dish have escalated their marketing campaigns.

Qwest for weeks has run a series of TV ads with Hawkins and other football luminaries touting the telco's relationship with DirecTV, the exclusive provider of football juggernaut Sunday Ticket. Dish this week launched a nationwide ad campaign that positions the satellite-TV operator as the low-cost option for fans who want the NFL Network. Local spots starring Plummer were taped at Broncos training camp on Thursday and are set to run early next month, said EchoStar spokeswoman Cory Vasquez.

Football is "the holy grail of sports programming," said Jimmy Schaeffler, chairman of cable research firm The Carmel Group. "Customers will switch because of it."

Douglas County-based Dish is also trying to capitalize on a dispute between Time Warner and the NFL that could leave millions of former Adelphia customers without the NFL Network.

The league launched the NFL Network in 2003 with a 24-hour lineup of interviews, highlights and footage of past games. For the first time this year, it will carry Thursday and Saturday prime time games live.

This is only the second season that EchoStar, which has nearly 12.5 million subscribers, has carried the NFL Network. The network reaches 71 million homes, including subscribers to Comcast's digital cable service in Colorado.

Time Warner is the nation's only major cable operator that doesn't carry the NFL Network,. When it acquired Adelphia's systems earlier this month in a complex swap with Comcast, Time Warner immediately took the channel away from the Adelphia and Comcast customers who were getting it.

The NFL cried foul, arguing that the move violated Federal Communications Commission rules that require operators to give subscribers 30 days' notice of changes to channel lineups. The FCC agreed and ordered the channel reinstated, but it could get dropped again if the NFL Network and Time Warner don't reach a carriage deal by Sept. 3.

In the meantime, EchoStar's making sure people in Time Warner markets know they could see the NFL Network through Dish. The company launched a nationwide ad campaign featuring New York Giants running back Tiki Barber. It also is targeting Dallas customers with Cowboys quarterback Drew Bledsoe and Milwaukee viewers with Green Bay Packers defensive end Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila.

Qwest doesn't currently offer its own video service outside of a handful of markets, but its reselling agreement with DirecTV is a central part of Qwest's ad campaign heading into the official start of the NFL season. Satellite provider DirecTV offers NFL Network as part of its entry-level package, thought it's best known among football fans for its Sunday Ticket package.

The exclusive deal with the NFL gives DirecTV rights to 14 games a week from outside a viewer's local markets, meaning it's often the only way for Denver transplants to see their hometown teams play.

Laura Sankey, Qwest's vice president for marketing and advertising, said the Denver-based telco decided to run with football-themed ads after customer research indicated that more than 50 percent of Americans described themselves as "passionate" about football.

Steve Sander, sports marketing and advertising principal at Pure Brand Communications, agreed that football has a national appeal in a way that no other sport can replicate.

"The sport of football in general has so much more power in terms of motivating people," he said.

EchoStar

DISH:Nasdaq

$31.52

+ 17 cents

Qwest

Q:NYSE

$8.65

- 3 cents

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