The Disney networks, including ESPN and all ABC stations, were pulled from YouTube TV Thursday night after the sides failed to reach a new carriage deal.
In a statement, Google-owned YouTube TV said that it would “not agree to terms that disadvantage our members while benefiting Disney’s TV products,” and — as is now standard for the company — said it would offer users a $20 credit if the blackout lasts for an “extended period of time.”
For its part, Disney accused Google of “refusing to pay fair rates” for Disney content and said “using its market dominance to eliminate competition and undercut the industry-standard terms we’ve successfully negotiated with every other distributor.”
YouTube TV has gone down to the wire in multiple carriage negotiations this year, averting blackouts of NBCUniversal and Fox Corporation content through last-second extensions, but dropping the Univision networks and Washington D.C. RSN Monumental Sports Network. The streamer previously failed to reach a deal with Disney nearly four years ago in December 2021, resulting in a blackout that lasted less than 48 hours.
According to John Ourand of Puck, the issues in the current conflict are purely financial and not motivated by the issues that affected other negotiations — specifically YouTube’s desire to ‘ingest’ streaming services or create skinny bundles. But Ourand also noted that channels “rarely go dark when disputes are over price.”
The last time the Disney networks were blacked out on a major distributor was two years ago, when they were pulled from DIRECTV for nearly two weeks at the start of the pro and college football seasons. The previous year in 2022, the Disney networks were blacked out on Charter in a dispute that also coincided with the start of football season.
Those conflicts concerned broader issues than price, with the Charter conflict at the time being considered potentially existential for the distributor.
One key difference between the current situation and previous blackouts is that Disney now offers all of its sports content direct-to-subscriber via the ESPN app.
