At Tom Reid’s Pub on West Seventh Street in St. Paul on Monday night, Adrian Garza buried his head in his cellphone on the bar counter, clapping with enthusiasm.

”Did they score?” yelled a man across the bar.

Garza nodded enthusiastically and then bent over the bar again, focused on the small screen.

Heading to your favorite sports bar to watch a Minnesota Wild game? Be sure to bring your cellphone — or better yet, your laptop.

In September, the National Hockey League announced that Minnesota Wild games will be available exclusively on “Wild+,” a streaming service that’s an add-on to subscription platforms like Amazon Prime Video or standard with the pricier sports streaming service Fubo TV. In some markets, it’s available on smaller networks like Spectrum Cable, a competitor to Comcast Cable, but Spectrum is not available in St. Paul.

What’s more, businesses cannot subscribe to Wild+ through Amazon Prime, so sports fans saddling up to the bar at Tom Reid’s, Patrick McGovern’s Pub and other bars near Grand Casino Arena need to bring their own streaming devices.

In other words: Pack the iPad on game nights or prepare to land in the penalty box.

“This is a mess,” said Kathy Gosiger, general manager at Tom Reid’s, on Monday evening, shortly before the puck dropped at Grand Casino Arena for the Wild’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights. “The Wild created Wild+. That is available to individuals. It’s not available to businesses, so it’s caused some mass confusion.”

Bar owners have been told in no uncertain terms they could face large fines for airing games for mass viewing through their personal streaming accounts. That’s forced unhappy patrons to bring their own viewing devices to watch Wild games from the bar, using their own streaming subscriptions.

The Wild opened their season on Oct. 1 against the Nashville Predators, and Tom Reid’s was sardined with hockey fans expecting to see the game with a beer and a burger in hand. They were soon to be disappointed — and many vented online that the bar was being cheap or incompetent. Neither was true.

Negotiations with DirecTV, Comcast continue

“For the first game, DirecTV told us for sure it would be on,” Gosiger said. “We had a packed bar, because we’re the hockey bar, and we couldn’t get the game. People were telling us, ‘What’s wrong with you? For $20 a month, you couldn’t get the game on?’ But it’s not available to businesses.”

“If you’re streaming, there’s copyright laws, so legally you can’t stream,” Gosiger added. “That’s not to say that people aren’t doing it, but we’re not.”

The Wild confirmed last week that the NHL is negotiating with DirecTV and Comcast Xfinity on behalf of four teams: the Wild, the St. Louis Blues, the Carolina Hurricanes and the Columbus Blue Jackets. Those talks appear to be ongoing. KSTP-TV (Ch. 5) and KSTC-TV (45TV) will broadcast 10 Wild games through March, about one or two per month, but none in October following the Boston Bruins game on Oct. 3.

For many Wild fans, following the broadcast breadcrumbs as the team has skated from Bally Sports to its short-lived experience on FanDuel and now onto Wild+ and smaller networks and cable providers has been little short of dizzying.

In downtown St. Paul, Loon Cafe owner Tim Mahoney said the hodgepodge of streaming services for all sports games is difficult to navigate, especially for someone who isn’t very tech-savvy.

“Look, I’m not Techy Tim,” said Mahoney on Monday, shortly before his customers crossed Rice Park to hit Grand Casino Arena. “The streaming services for that first game were an absolute nightmare. Some people on our staff had Prime, so they logged in on our smart TV. Basically, we could only really get it on one TV, and everyone crowded around it like back in the day.”

Mahoney said he was surprised to see that his mom, who lives in Rochester, could get games on Spectrum Cable. He didn’t believe her when she said she had no problem watching.

“Then, sure enough, I turn on her TV, and it’s there,” he said. “I watched a game with her. Now I’m trying to figure out if I can subscribe to their app or streaming service or whatever.”

Downtown St. Paul, industry woes

The new hurdle for St. Paul sports bars comes on top of months of downtown construction detours, including a 35-foot deep sinkhole that emerged along West Seventh Street last year, partially closing the road from Kellogg Boulevard to Grand Avenue. Competition from emerging concert venues like the new Mystic Lake Amphitheater hasn’t helped.

“It’s been a hard year, with all the construction in St. Paul, and the concerts all going to Shakopee,” Gosiger said. “It’s really affecting the business. It’s our kitchen, it’s our staff.”

Mahoney noted that streaming services are already costly for businesses. The cost of NFL Sunday Ticket for a business is astronomical already, he said, and now he’s got to find games that aren’t being shown on Sunday Ticket on other streaming services.

“The other thing is, you know, in our particular industry, which has been devastated for the last five or six years for many reasons, when you start looking at costs, Sunday Ticket is around $10,000,” he said. “And now I’m paying more money for other services. There are some ways to get around it — there’s a lot of gray area as far as streaming is concerned. We’re trying to figure out what’s legal.”

When a group of young men came into Tom Reid’s to watch the game Monday night and saw it wasn’t on an overhead screen, they promptly left for a nearby bar that was showing it illegally.

Gosiger pointed a reporter to a printout from DirecTV, titled “How Live Sports Piracy Can Affect Business,” that discusses potential fines and legal ramifications for unauthorized broadcasting and violations of intellectual property laws.

Gosiger said she bears the Wild no ill will for the decision to air games on Wild+ after FanDuel announced in April it was going out of business, as it’s up to the NHL to negotiate viewing agreements with platforms and providers.

“Anything you read, it sounds like it’s getting closer with DirecTV than with Comcast,” said Gosiger, who has reached out to DirecTV and just about everyone else she can think of for solutions. “You get the runaround: ‘You need to get the NHL Center Ice package.’ Well, guess what? We already pay for that, and these games are blacked out. I’m looking at my bill right now.”

As those negotiations play out, small businesses like her bar remain stuck in the middle, losing customers.

“Tonight, when everyone files out to go to the game, we’ll have just a small amount of people who will stay,” Gosiger said. “We’ve said, ‘You can bring your laptops.’ ”