WFAA-TV

The fight may mean some Cowboys fans don't get to see tonight's game.

Thursday night's much-anticipated matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers will be hard to find in Austin, a battleground in the ongoing contract dispute between the NFL and major cable companies.

"It should be a good game, I hope it's a good game, and it'd be nice to see it," said Packers fan Joe Seely.

But the game will be seen only on the NFL Network, which is not carried on Time Warner Cable, the area's dominant cable provider.

The bitter marketing battle between cable and the NFL has been seen on Central Texas airwaves, with NFL Network spokesman and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones encouraging viewers to switch away from cable and the cable companies firing back.

The NFL is pressing cable companies to run its network. But cable companies have argued that the network's subscriber fees are way too high, and those fees would have to be transferred to cable subscribers unless the network only ran on a subscriber-only sports tier.

"It's gonna make our cable customers pay a lot more money than they should have to pay," said Ron McMillan, Time Warner's Regional VP for Government Relations. "And it would make the majority of the customers pay."

As the companies continue their rivalry, the fans are forced to find a place away from home to watch the action.

Downtown Austin sports bar, The Tavern, expects a big night.

"We started answering the phones, 'Thank you for calling The Tavern, we have the NFL Network," manager Bo Hensley said. In a match up between the NFL and cable, the biggest winner may be the sports bar.