Cable Subscribers Won’t Be Able To Watch Wild Season-Opener Friday

The Minnesota Wild's highly anticipated season-opening game in Anaheim will not be offered on ESPN, Bally Sports North or any other channel in your cable lineup. Instead, Wild fans will have to pony up for either a Hulu or ESPN+ subscription to watch the game.

For the last couple of years Minnesota sports fans have lamented the lack of local sports options on streaming services like FUBO, Hulu, YouTube TV and others, causing many to pony up and pay for a cable subscription. Unfortunately, your monthly cable bill will not allow you to access Friday night's Wild game.

You have a couple of options if you want to follow the game. The first being paying for (yet another) streaming service for an entire month to watch one hockey game. ESPN+ costs $6.99 per month, while a Hulu subscription costs the bargain price of $64.99 per month. At that price, you are basically stealing the Wild game from them.

New Hulu users are eligible for a seven-day free trial, which is probably the best way to do this if you really wanted to watch the game.

As a shameless plug, AM 1240/FM 95.3 WJON will be airing the Wild game on the radio and we won't even take a penny out of your bank account. Consider this our gift to you.

I'm not sure why professional sports (outside the NFL, which airs 95% of its content on free, over-the-air TV) insist on making their product so difficult (and expensive) to follow, but there has to be a breaking point.