Are you ready for some football? If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, you might be out of luck — again.
Another “Monday Night Football” showdown on ESPN and ABC will be blacked out on YouTube TV unless Google and Disney reach a new carriage deal in the next few hours. The two companies have spent the past week and a half negotiating over how much YouTube should pay each month to let its 10 million or so customers watch Disney’s networks.
In the last 11 days, YouTube TV customers couldn’t watch a slew of college football games, an NFL game, and NBA games featuring the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers. The blackout also impacted Disney’s other shows, including ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”
Disney analyst Joe Bonner of Argus Research said he’s “a little surprised” that Disney and Google haven’t come to terms yet.
“The prospect of missing an NFL game typically creates enough subscriber discontent to bring parties to the table, though that doesn’t seem to be happening in this case,” Bonner said.
Advertisers are collateral damage
It’s not just sports fans who’ve missed out. The advertisers hoping to reach fans ahead of the lucrative holiday shopping season are also affected by Disney and YouTube’s standoff.
“While a couple of days might not hurt people, a couple of weeks could, especially coming into the end of the year,” Tim Lathrop of media agency Mediassociates told Business Insider last week.
Live sports are a key way to reach audiences — especially the higher-income cohort that pays to remove ads on other streaming services, said Alan Wolk, an analyst at research firm TVREV. Sports are also one of the best ways to cut through a polarized and fragmented media landscape.
The rise of personalized, curated algorithms means that audiences are rarely in the same place at the same time, Wolk said.
Ashley Silver of media agency Crossmedia said that ad buyers impacted by this blackout “have fewer viable alternatives,” and added that “lost reach in this window is materially harder and more expensive to replace than usual.”
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Disney may also have to issue so-called “make-good” credits to advertisers if it doesn’t deliver as many ad impressions as it promised. It’s unclear how big that financial hit would be for the Mouse House, which is also missing out on carriage fees from YouTube TV.
Morgan Stanley analyst Ben Swinburne just reduced his Disney earnings estimate by nearly $25 million, or 2 cents per share, based on how much revenue Disney is losing from YouTube TV per week and an assumption that the carriage dispute will end this week. Disney reports quarterly earnings on Thursday.
The PR tide could turn
Meanwhile, Google just gave YouTube TV subscribers a $20 credit, even though there are some caveats: Customers must take action to get the rebate, which won’t arrive until their next bill. Still, Wolk said this move by YouTube removes some pressure and makes them look like the “good guys.”
This current fight is approaching the length of Disney’s longest carriage battle. The company had an 11-day spat with Charter in 2023 and a 13-day skirmish with DirecTV last year.
If YouTube TV doesn’t get a deal done soon, and the standoff threatens to stretch from Halloween to Thanksgiving, Wolk said Disney could regain the upper hand in the PR wars.
“They’re banking on the fact that people will eventually get pissed about not being able to watch the games,” Wolk said of Disney.
