'I literally live in Kanata': TSN blackouts perplexing some local Ottawa Senators fans

Flipping the channel to the Ottawa Senators game has turned into a total crapshoot for some local hockey fans.

Jamie Burns lives in Ashton, 16 minutes south of Canadian Tire Centre, and has dealt with inaccurate regional blackouts for two hockey seasons in a row.

He streams through TSN Direct, but often when he tunes in to TSN5 to watch his beloved team, a dreaded message on the television screen reads: “The scheduled program is not available in your region.”

At the core of the dilemma seems to be viewers’ internet protocol (IP) addresses incorrectly reading that they are located outside of the broadcasting region.

Burns switched internet providers over the summer, ditching Bell for Starlink in hopes of better luck. It didn’t work. And he says TSN has been difficult to deal with in troubleshooting the issue.

“Zero success,” he told the Ottawa Citizen. “TSN support confirmed my postal code is in-region but said their system reads my Starlink IP as Toronto and they can’t override it. They escalated it twice and promised a supervisor would email me twice. Neither email ever came.”

So, what does he do when faced with a blackout minutes from puck drop?

“Honestly? Illegal streams,” Burns admitted. “My cell data doesn’t work either. It maps me to Barrie for some reason. So, I pay for TSN and then have to pirate the game anyway. That’s my only option.”

The Senators’ regional rights, defined by the National Hockey League, comprise of Eastern Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

That includes the city of Kingston — we double-checked using the NHL’s local broadcaster guide — where Dave MacDonald has dealt with sporadic blackouts in recent years. He pays for cable through Bell and, when he turned on TSN’s broadcast of the Sens’ home opener against the Philadelphia Flyers last Thursday, he was denied viewership.

MacDonald didn’t resort to pirate sites last week, but he has in the past.

“If this happens one more time,” he told the Citizen, “I will be sailing the high seas for sure.”

Much closer to the CTC — say, a five-minute drive — Griffin’s cable subscription didn’t allow them to watch the Sens-Flyers contest either.

“I literally live in Kanata,” they said. “It doesn’t make sense at all.”

On Tuesday night, Griffin sent the Citizen a photo of their TV screen during the first period of the Ottawa-St. Louis game. Blacked-out again.

TSN has the rights to 53 regular-season Senators games during 2026-27. Including Thursday at home to the New York Islanders, there are 50 remaining on the broadcaster’s schedule.

The Citizen reached out to Bell Media representatives over the weekend to ask four questions on the matter:

• Is the company aware of the problem?
• If so, how widespread is the issue?
• What is the company doing to address the situation?
• In the meantime, what should affected Sens fans do?

Here’s the response we received on Tuesday: “We’re aware of blackout issues during live coverage of the Ottawa Senators on TSN5 affecting fans located within the team’s broadcast region. We take these matters seriously, and our TSN Help technical teams are available to assist viewers with escalating and resolving the issue.”

Blacked-out fans have “flooded” the social media mentions, direct messages and email inbox of Senators vice-president of communications Ian Mendes to begin the season.

Mendes has been the top advocate for fans on the issue — first hearing about in 2018 when he hosted TSN 1200’s The Drive — using his platform to emphasize the scale of the problem and relay helpful information.

In his Monday column on the team’s website, Mendes offered some potential solutions:

• Unplug your Internet modem and plug it back in (this could reset the IP address)
• Email mobileappfeedback@bellmedia.ca
• Get in touch with TSN through its “Contact Us” page
• For now, watch the game on your mobile device using cell phone data

“But we know that’s not a viable, long-term solution,” he wrote. “It’s a temporary fix and it beats the alternative.

“We know this isn’t our fault, but it’s our problem to solve. And we’re willing to work tirelessly to find a solution.”

Coincidentally, TV blackouts were originally implemented in live sports to target local fans.

All National Football League home games were blacked-out in each team’s respective region up until 1972, forcing area fans to buy tickets as the league’s main source of revenue was bums in seats.

A political battle ensued after Washington’s playoff success in ’72. The team won two post-season home games — its first playoff victories in 29 years — and no one in the district outside the stadium could watch.

After some back-and-forth between the NFL and the attorney general, U.S. Congress intervened ahead of the 1973 season to pass Public Law 93-107, prohibiting local blackouts if 85% of tickets were sold 72 hours before kickoff.

It took until 2014 for the Federal Communications Commission to scrap the rule entirely.

A similar precedent exists in the NHL. Outside of national broadcasts in the playoffs, the Chicago Blackhawks refused to allow their home games to be televised during the vast majority of infamous owner Bill Wirtz’s 41-year reign (the team rolled out a pay-per-view service that cost $29.95 a month from 1991-93). Wirtz was singularly focused on the revenue flowing from his arena and believed that TV incentivized fans to stay home.

Mere months after Wirtz’s death in 2007, son Rocky Wirtz righted the wrongs of his father. In Patrick Kane’s first NHL season, the Hawks began showing some games through cable TV partner Comcast SportsNet. The following season, all 82 were televised and it’s been like that ever since.

Today, blackouts are only intended to affect out-of-market consumers, as leagues claim that such policies protect broadcasters from outside competition.

But who is there to protect when only Sportsnet and TSN have regional rights to NHL hockey in Canada? (Prime Video has a sub-licensing agreement with Rogers to nationally broadcast Wednesday night regular-season games).

In reality, all the current system does is force consumers to buy more expensive sports packages.

Part of the reason why Sens fans in southern Ontario are blacked-out of TSN5 broadcasts goes back to the early 1990s.

Shortly after Ottawa won its bid for NHL expansion, the Senators struck a deal with the Montreal Canadiens to share mid-week broadcast rights. The Habs could show their games in the Ottawa-Gatineau region and the Sens could do the same in Quebec’s largest metropolitan area.

But as Bruce Firestone, the founder of the modern-day Senators, wrote in his 2015 memoir Don’t Back Down, the Toronto Maple Leafs were defiant when approached with the same proposal and threatened to broadcast their mid-week games into Ottawa without prior agreement.

“I told them that this was going to be the greatest day in the modern history of the Ottawa Senators up to that point in time,” Firestone wrote, “because, if they infringed on Sens territory without our permission, all their broadcast revenues could be forfeit (under the NHL’s constitution) to the Sens.”

The Leafs’ alleged intimidation never developed into action, but the line in the sand — from Pembroke straight down to Belleville — remains today. And it’s not going anywhere, as brand-new broadcasting deals with the NHL are a dozen-years long.

For Burns, a self-proclaimed die-hard, the blackouts on his television are “infuriating,” regardless of whose fault it is.

“I’m paying for a legal service that blacks me out of my own team’s games in my own market,” he said, “And the only way to actually watch is (illegally).

“Nobody will take ownership of it. This league can’t get out of its own way in growing the game.”