Versus goes black on DirecTV

Last night DirecTV pulled the feed to Versus.

DirecTV and the Comcast owned sports cable network, Versus, were in the middle of a pricing dispute with Comcast officials demanding a 20 percent increase in fees. DirecTV reportedly got 18 cents per subscriber before the blackout.

DirecTV's website offers this official statement,

"They (Comcast) regularly try to charge us amounts well in excess of what is fair and reasonable to carry the programming they own," the message stated. "Their reason is obvious: They want to stifle competition from DirecTV. Comcast's unfair terms undermines DirecTV's ability to offer our customers the best possible value. If we simply accept these terms, we would have to absorb the unreasonable costs Comcast wants to charge us, and in turn we will be forced to increase the rates our customers pay. We do not want this to happen. In fact, Comcast has forced us to remove Versus because we would not accept the terms they demanded."

 DirecTV reaches 24 million households though it is unclear how many of them are subscribers to the Versus feed.

For MMA fans this directly affects Zuffa and the WEC. The WEC's television contract is with Versus and much like the NHL I am sure Zuffa officials are not happy with Comcast's negotiating tactics.

The WEC recently postponed WEC 43 and there was speculation that the impasse between Comcast and DirecTV was a principal reason for the delay.

[Update: Note by Zak Woods, 09/01/09 9:33 AM EDT ]

Michael David Smith says that the WEC made the right move postponing WEC 43 due to the Versus-DirecTV break up,

If WEC 43 were taking place as scheduled on Wednesday, a large chunk of the audience would have missed it, as DirecTV and Versus are not expected to come to an agreement within the next 36 hours. But DirecTV and Versus are expected to come to an agreement within the next six weeks, which means WEC 43 should be available to DirecTV subscribers.

So whatever this mysterious injury to Ben Henderson that pushed back WEC 43 was, it will allow DirecTV subscribers to watch his fight with Donald Cerrone. If the fight were taking place as originally scheduled, DirecTV subscribers would be left in the dark.