It’s not a good week to be a Green Bay Packers fan who lives outside of Wisconsin — at least if you want to avoid having to look into NFL Sunday Ticket to watch this Sunday’s game. Green Bay travels south to face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in an early game in Week 4, and with the two teams both massively struggling (having a combined record of 1-5), that game is not going to be on local television in very many media markets.
FOX has the rights to this Sunday’s Packers-Bucs game, but it is no better
than third on the network’s schedule this week, and it’s probably even lower than that in reality. With CBS having the doubleheader this week, that further limits the distribution of this game, as markets need to pick between five FOX games across two time slots.
Packers-Bucs will be shown on local TV in the areas shown in green on the map below from 506sports.com, an area that is limited to Wisconsin, Michigan, and portions of Florida:
As a reminder, fans outside of the green areas will need NFL Sunday Ticket to watch the game or else they will need to head to a local establishment with access to the bar and restaurant package.
To make matters worse for fans who can see the Packers-Bucs game, Jonathan Vilma will be the color commentator on the call for the second time in three weeks. Vilma will be joined this week by play-by-play commentator Chris Myers, as FOX has bumped all of its lower-tier PBP men up a notch. Joe Davis, the network’s #2, will be off calling playoff baseball games, so Vilma’s normal partner, Kenny Albert, takes Davis’ spot on the #2 tandem with Greg Olsen, while Myers bumps up a spot as well to pair with Vilma.
FOX’s #1 team of Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady will call the Rams-Eagles game, which is represented in red on the map above. Blue is the Cowboys-Texans contest, while yellow is Jets-Bears and orange is Dolphins-Vikings.
As a reminder, NFL Sunday Ticket offers a free 7-day trial for new subscribers. That could be an option for Packers fans outside of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida who are looking for a way to watch the game at home with minimal financial commitment.
