A 15-year partnership dissolved late Saturday as the long-running deal between Altitude Sports and two of its major distributors, Comcast and DIRECTV, expired.

Despite recent talks between the two sides, there was no deal in place as of Sunday. One person familiar with negotiations described the two sides as “not close.”

Late last week Altitude Sports, the Kroenke-owned regional sports network of the Nuggets, Avalanche and Rapids, among others, was dropped by DISH Network. There remains the possibility, however remote, that the split could jeopardize fans’ ability to watch preseason games and season openers for their respective teams.

The Avalanche open its preseason Sept. 17 and open the regular season two weeks later on Oct. 3. The Nuggets open their preseason Oct. 8.

As of Sunday morning, DIRECTV customers read this message when turning to Altitude:

“Altitude unfortunately forced AT&T to take this channel down. AT&T made a fair offer to keep the channel up, but Altitude rejected it. Customers have made clear they want more choice over the channels they pay to receive in their home.”

The message continued that their “goal is to offer” Nuggets, Avalanche and Rapids games but won’t do “bad deals on behalf of our customers.”

Kenny Miller, the executive vice president of Altitude, insisted that what Comcast and DIRECTV were offering wasn’t a sustainable business.

“I don’t know if it’s confident, it’s hopeful,” Miller said of the possibility of reaching a deal before the respective season openers. “I keep going back to the fact that they’re regional sports network owners and they know what production costs and rights fees and everything that goes into a regional sports network and what makes business viable. A 50 percent cut in rates and going to 20 percent of the subscriber base is not a viable business. You would hope that there is a reasonable deal. Fair is not putting a company out of business.”

In a statement to The Denver Post on Sunday, Comcast said: “We are disappointed that Altitude has chosen to pull its channel from our customers, and we no longer have the rights to carry Altitude’s content. For years, Altitude has demanded significant annual price increases for the same content, which has driven up costs for all of our customers in Colorado and Utah, even though most customers do not watch the channel. We have been negotiating in good faith with Altitude and want to reach an agreement with the network, but it must be at a reasonable price.”

At issue is the distributors’ insistence that Altitude isn’t widely watched by their subscriber base, thus making the carriage cost an unfair burden on the majority of their customers. Related Articles Grading the Week: LeBron James, Lakers lobbying officials may look shameless, but it’s hardly anything new

Down 3-1 again, Nuggets are blaming themselves, not NBA refs: “We put ourselves in this position”

Keeler: How special is Jamal Murray? Just ask LeBron James, who’s got the bruises to prove it.

Nuggets’ Michael Malone will go through “proper channels” to address officiating, stealing Lakers’ ploy

WATCH: Jamal Murray shows off his inner Jordan in Game 4 with acrobatic layup off the glass

Comcast said that over the last year more than 95 percent of their customers watched less than the equivalent of one game per week.

“I don’t know where that number comes from,” Miller said late last week. “I don’t know how their math worked on that.”

“There’s obviously in our brave new world a whole bunch of options to look into distribution, which everybody has,” Miller said. “We’ve had a tremendous relationship on the business side and the community side with our distributors. … It’s always been preferable when you’ve had a good partner like that to do business with them. There wasn’t an aggressive, ‘Hey, we’re going to explore YouTube and Amazon and Twitter and all these companies that are getting into the distribution of sports rights.’”