YouTube TV’s standoff with Disney got real on Friday as the streaming service dropped ESPN midway through a Laker game.
Google-owned YouTube TV removed ESPN and all other Disney-owned channels at 11:59 PM ET Friday night after failing to reach a new carriage deal with the media giant. The move not only occurred during ESPN’s Lakers-Timberwolves NBA game, but just hours before the college football bowl season was set to begin in earnest.
ESPN’s absence will not be immediately acute for fans of professional sports. The network’s next Monday Night Football game will be simulcast on over-the-air ABC and available on ESPN+, a predetermined move unrelated to the conflict. Following the conclusion of Lakers-Timberwolves, ESPN is not scheduled to air any more NBA games until Christmas Day. The network also has no NHL games until January.
For fans of college sports, the situation is not as easy to ignore. ESPN has 12 college bowl games scheduled in the week before Christmas and the usual slew of college basketball games, assuming those are played as scheduled.
YouTube TV had carried ESPN and the other Disney networks uninterrupted since its launch in 2017.
In a statement, Disney said that YouTube had “declined to reach a fair deal with us” and that it stands “ready to reach an equitable agreement with Google as quickly as possible.” Google said that the sides have “been unable to reach an equitable agreement” and that it will “continue conversations with Disney to advocate on [subscribers’] behalf in hopes of restoring their content.” As previously announced, the monthly price of YouTube TV will drop from $65 to $50 while the ESPN channels are unavailable.
When YouTube TV was at odds with NBC earlier this year, the sides reached a temporary extension just before the expiration of their deal that allowed NBC’s various channels to remain on the service as they negotiated further. The lack of an extension in this circumstance could be seen as an indication that a deal is not particularly close.
With ESPN now dark on YouTube TV, the only streaming services carrying the network as of now are Sling, FuboTV, DirecTV Stream and Disney-owned Hulu.
Per a Disney annual report filed last month, ESPN was in just 76 million homes before being dropped by YouTube TV — down about eight million from the same point last year.
