The standoff between Disney and DIRECTV will not extend into another football weekend.
Disney and DIRECTV have reached an agreement in principle on a new carriage deal, it was announced Saturday, with ABC and ESPN restored to DIRECTV subscribers as the sides work toward finalizing the multi-year deal.
Under the deal, DIRECTV will continue to carry the full suite of Disney channels — including low-value fare such as Freeform, National Geographic and FX — but will gain the ability to include channels like ABC and ESPN in so called “skinny bundles” of genre-specific programming, such as news or sports. (Disney’s deal with Charter last year did not include all of the Disney networks.)
Like Charter last year, DIRECTV will also gain the right to distribute the Disney direct-to-subscriber platforms both in select packages and a la carte. That includes the new ESPN direct-to-subscriber service that is set to launch next year, which will be offered to subscribers at no additional cost.
DIRECTV pulled the Disney channels nearly two weeks ago, and during the standoff subscribers have missed a full weekend of college football, the US Open finals and the season premiere of Monday Night Football. With this week’s MNF game exclusively on cable — last week’s game was simulcast on ABC and ESPN+ — subscribers would have been in a particular bind had the dispute continued.
Disney has now had a major carriage dispute in three of the past four years, all during football season, though the skirmish with DIRECTV was the first one in which subscribers missed an NFL game.
