Ohio State takes on Purdue in Big Ten action on Saturday, and the game is going to be airing exclusively on Peacock. That’s causing problems for some sports bars in Columbus because they don’t have access to Peacock like they do for Thursday Night Football. That’s a problem for 92.3 The Fan’s Ken Carman.
Carman griped about the Peacock-exclusive game and how it’s forcing fans to sign up for the service or a free trial of the service in order to watch the Buckeyes. But when he learned that it would cost some sports bars $20,000 to work out a way to get the game up through Peacock, Carman wondered if it would really hurt Buckeye fans to not watch a potential in-conference cupcake game.
“My thought was, if you’re at home, yeah, you Peacock for the day or whatever, that’s fine,” he said. “But if you’re at the bar is it must-see television, Ohio State and Purdue? I had a couple of people getting in yesterday saying, ‘Well, they have a chance to lose a Purdue. All these coaches lose at Purdue at least once.’ I go yeah, but you’re not watching the Buckeyes game, ‘Well they could lose we got a chance here.’ Like you want to see your team beat the brakes off Purdue. That’s the whole point of watching a Buckeyes game right?”
Ken Carman mentioned that perhaps the conference and NBC chose to make Purdue/Ohio State a Peacock game over some of their other matchups for fear of facing further backlash from fans who didn’t already subscribe to the service.
“Yes. If they put Ohio State, Penn State on Peacock for sure. Right. You’re going to get a lot of people upset, and you don’t want to look bad because you want people to sample your product,” he said. “It’s perfect with Purdue. Purdue is not a very good football team.”
While this isn’t ideal for bar owners, Ken Carman figured for the Buckeye fans that already have Peacock Saturday will be a nice day to catch the game at home. NBC is banking on that and new sign-ups.
“They want people to sample their product if you’re going to be at home,” he said. “‘Alright I’ll get the free trial,’ and they’re hoping that after the Ohio State game, you click off and there’s either some other live sport you want to see or you know what? They have a very nice range of movies that you could possibly go take a look at.”
