At Tom Reid\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201dDid they score?\u201d yelled a man across the bar.<\/p>\n
Garza nodded enthusiastically and then bent over the bar again, focused on the small screen.<\/p>\n
Heading to your favorite sports bar to watch a Minnesota Wild game? Be sure to bring your cellphone \u2014 or better yet, your laptop.<\/p>\n
In September, the National Hockey League announced that Minnesota Wild games will be available exclusively on \u201cWild+,\u201d a streaming service that\u2019s an add-on to subscription platforms like Amazon Prime Video or standard with the pricier sports streaming service Fubo TV. In some markets, it\u2019s available on smaller networks like Spectrum Cable, a competitor to Comcast Cable, but Spectrum is not available in St. Paul.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, businesses cannot subscribe to Wild+ through Amazon Prime, so sports fans saddling up to the bar at Tom Reid\u2019s, Patrick McGovern\u2019s Pub and other bars near Grand Casino Arena need to bring their own streaming devices.<\/p>\n
In other words: Pack the iPad on game nights or prepare to land in the penalty box.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a mess,\u201d said Kathy Gosiger, general manager at Tom Reid\u2019s, on Monday evening, shortly before the puck dropped at Grand Casino Arena for the Wild\u2019s game against the Vegas Golden Knights. \u201cThe Wild created Wild+. That is available to individuals. It\u2019s not available to businesses, so it\u2019s caused some mass confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s forced unhappy patrons to bring their own viewing devices to watch Wild games from the bar, using their own streaming subscriptions.<\/p>\n
The Wild opened their season on Oct. 1 against the Nashville Predators, and Tom Reid\u2019s was sardined with hockey fans expecting to see the game with a beer and a burger in hand. They were soon to be disappointed \u2014 and many vented online that the bar was being cheap or incompetent. Neither was true.<\/p>\n
Negotiations with DirecTV, Comcast continue<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first game, DirecTV told us for sure it would be on,\u201d Gosiger said. \u201cWe had a packed bar, because we\u2019re the hockey bar, and we couldn\u2019t get the game. People were telling us, \u2018What\u2019s wrong with you? For $20 a month, you couldn\u2019t get the game on?\u2019 But it\u2019s not available to businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re streaming, there\u2019s copyright laws, so legally you can\u2019t stream,\u201d Gosiger added. \u201cThat\u2019s not to say that people aren\u2019t doing it, but we\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t very tech-savvy.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I\u2019m not Techy Tim,\u201d said Mahoney on Monday, shortly before his customers crossed Rice Park to hit Grand Casino Arena. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahoney said he was surprised to see that his mom, who lives in Rochester, could get games on Spectrum Cable. He didn\u2019t believe her when she said she had no problem watching.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, sure enough, I turn on her TV, and it\u2019s there,\u201d he said. \u201cI watched a game with her. Now I\u2019m trying to figure out if I can subscribe to their app or streaming service or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Downtown St. Paul, industry woes<\/p>\n
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\u2019t helped.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a hard year, with all the construction in St. Paul, and the concerts all going to Shakopee,\u201d Gosiger said. \u201cIt\u2019s really affecting the business. It\u2019s our kitchen, it\u2019s our staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s got to find games that aren\u2019t being shown on Sunday Ticket on other streaming services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd now I\u2019m paying more money for other services. There are some ways to get around it \u2014 there\u2019s a lot of gray area as far as streaming is concerned. We\u2019re trying to figure out what\u2019s legal.\u201d<\/p>\n
When a group of young men came into Tom Reid\u2019s to watch the game Monday night and saw it wasn\u2019t on an overhead screen, they promptly left for a nearby bar that was showing it illegally.<\/p>\n
Gosiger pointed a reporter to a printout from DirecTV, titled \u201cHow Live Sports Piracy Can Affect Business,\u201d that discusses potential fines and legal ramifications for unauthorized broadcasting and violations of intellectual property laws.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s up to the NHL to negotiate viewing agreements with platforms and providers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything you read, it sounds like it\u2019s getting closer with DirecTV than with Comcast,\u201d said Gosiger, who has reached out to DirecTV and just about everyone else she can think of for solutions. \u201cYou get the runaround: \u2018You need to get the NHL Center Ice package.\u2019 Well, guess what? We already pay for that, and these games are blacked out. I\u2019m looking at my bill right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
As those negotiations play out, small businesses like her bar remain stuck in the middle, losing customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight, when everyone files out to go to the game, we\u2019ll have just a small amount of people who will stay,\u201d Gosiger said. \u201cWe\u2019ve said, \u2018You can bring your laptops.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Tom Reid\u2019s Pub on West Seventh Street in St. Paul on Monday night, Adrian Garza buried his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,99,9436,7524,575,18601,85,12943,35549],"class_list":["post-926229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-food-and-drink","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nhl","tag-restaurants","tag-sports","tag-things-to-do","tag-wild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}