With football season here, more and more people have started signing up for streaming cable to try and legally get the channels that show football, without having to deal directly with the cable companies. (If you missed our guide on the available services, here you go.)

As with all new services, there are some hiccups that happen along the way, but last night was a new one that I had never encountered before.

I got home for the second half of the Saints-Vikings game, and fired up DirecTV Now on my phone to put the game on…and was told that the game in my area was blacked out. Which makes no sense, because the game was on ESPN on national TV, was between two teams not anywhere near me, and not available on a local channel.

Turns out, you couldn’t stream the game on your phone due to the NFL and Verizon flexing their financial muscles.

Because Verizon is the exclusive NFL partner/provider when it comes to smartphones, no other services, including DirecTV Now, are allowed to show games on mobile phones, even though you are paying for a separate service.

I checked to see if this was also an issue on Sling TV and others, but haven’t been able to find anything telling me if they have the same issues, so it may just be a DirecTV Now thing.

So if you’re hoping to catch Monday Night Football on DirecTV Now, you still can, but you’ll need to do it on a smart TV, laptop, tablet, or some other system that isn’t your phone.