We’ve been getting tips all week from frustrated NHL.tv customers who installed NHL.tv’s new upgrade this week, only to see the entire service dissolve into an malfunctioning mess of blackouts. At pretty much any time when games are on, the @NHLTVSupport account’s mentions are full of hordes of complainers and angry people trying fruitlessly to be able to watch games on the platform they paid $160 for. Here’s a sample, just from tonight:



Anyway, by all accounts, the service doesn’t work on Chromebooks at all, and has plenty of problems on most other devices. Not only did the NHL turn their (admittedly, already flawed) broadcasting service into a pixelated wasteland, they also slid in an extremely punitive clause threatening (in all caps!) any users who even try to get around their blackout restrictions:

IF YOU CIRCUMVENT OR ATTEMPT TO CIRCUMVENT ANY BLACKOUT RESTRICTION OR OTHER USE RESTRICTION: YOUR SUBSCRIPTION WILL BE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE TERMINATION AND A CHARGE OF ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100.00) FOR EARLY TERMINATION WILL BE APPLIED TO YOUR CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD; YOU MAY BE SUBJECT TO LEGAL ACTION; AND THE NHL RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REPORT SUCH MISCONDUCT TO APPROPRIATE LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES.

Bob Bowman—the president of BAM, who provides the service for NHL.tv—talked to Puck Daddy yesterday about the outages and said:

Bowman said he’s confident the basic issues with streaming that sunk their launch this week will be fixed in short order, perhaps even for Wednesday’s games.


Not quite, fellas.



Photo via Getty