The Utah Jazz have expanded the reach of their broadcast offerings to include significant parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
The team’s new streaming platform, Jazz+, will now be available to fans in western Wyoming and southeastern Idaho. Fans in those markets can also get KJZZ through fuboTV, one of the largest bundled streaming services.
Utah Jazz broadcast territory map.
Meanwhile, fans in parts of Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon can get certain Jazz games on Root Sports, the regional sports network primarily owned by the Seattle Mariners.
The bad news: Fans who subscribe to NBA League Pass in those markets will now be subject to blacked-out Jazz games. In practice, the cost of watching games in those markets went from $100 per year to the cost of a cable or satellite subscription, usually nearing $100 per month.
Jazz owner Ryan Smith on Tuesday said the franchise would look into solutions for those fans.
“We’ll get it figured out. Like, I promise we’ll get it all figured out with League Pass and blackouts working with the NBA,” Smith said. “I’ll just tell fans right now: send me your receipt of your League Pass and your zip code, (and) some verification. I’ll give you a Jazz+ account.”
But Smith largely defended the move, pointing out: “The Root Sports territory, and subscribers there, are so much greater than the number of fans who have League Pass. So we looked at the greatest distribution.”
Smith said that the plan was a work in progress, but the team’s overall goal was to get Jazz games available to the largest number of people possible in order to grow the team’s footprint.
