49ers-Jets Monday Night Football: DirecTV customers won’t get the game

And you thought the Brandon Aiyuk contract was strange.

Fans of the San Francisco 49ers anticipating watching Monday Night Football might want to check your TV provider. If it’s DirecTV, you may want to look for an alternate that night.

DirecTV is currently in a contract battle with Disney (owner of ESPN) over having the channel on their service, and ESPN is dangling the Monday Night Football games as an incentive to get it done. Does it get done in time? Well, it’s Saturday so you better be getting Plan B.

SF Gate reports that anyone plugging in a San Francisco zip code to troubleshoot missing channels gets this message:

“We’re excited to see the start of the new college and NFL football seasons too. If you’re concerned about possibly missing one of your favorite teams in the next few weeks, here’s the good news. The 49ers will play nearly all their games this season on FOX, CBS, NBC, and Amazon Prime Video. The 49ers play on MNF twice this season, (Sept. 9, Dec. 30), and we hope to avoid any interruption to that first game just as we always have in the past.”

Translation: “Hey, you can watch 16 of the 17 games, maybe. It might be 15 if this goes on.”

For those of you thinking, “Just turn it to ABC”, well, guess who owns ABC also? That’s right, Disney. And that’s part of the brouhaha going on.

DirecTV hasn’t been having a good run. They lost the Sunday Ticket monopoly last year, and before that of their side-packages removed the NFL Network. In a somewhat petty response, NFL Network removed DirecTV’s thumbnail from the list of quick options, instead forcing customers of the service to a massive page of alphabetical providers to select them.

The Monday Night Football game between the 49ers and Jets is on ESPN. If you are planning on watching it, make sure you have access to it, or go find a place that does.

A word of warning: do NOT post links in the comments on alternate (READ: Illegal) ways to watch the game. Your comment will (probably) be deleted, and you will face action for violating the terms of service. You have been warned.