Copyright Athlon Sports
One of the biggest stories in the sports industry over the past week has been the contract standoff between ESPN and YouTube TV. Since Oct. 31, none of Disney’s catalog of channels has been available on YouTube TV, as the previous deal between Disney, ESPN’s owner, and Google, YouTube TV’s owner, ended the day prior. This has meant that fans across the sports world have missed out on over a week’s worth of games and shows, including last Saturday’s college football slate and the “Monday Night Football” matchup between the Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys. On Friday, a memo was obtained by The Athletic of Disney’s executives calling out Google for its role in the negotiations, and YouTube TV responded. According to Andrew Marchand and Dan Shanoff of The Athletic, three top Disney executives wrote a memo to ESPN employees, which said, in part, that Google has not been negotiating in good faith. “Rather than compete on a level playing field, Google’s YouTube TV has approached these negotiations as if it were the only player in the game,” the memo read, per Marchand and Shanoff. In response to this, YouTube TV put out its own statement, accusing Disney of leaking the memo to the press. “Once again, Disney is resorting to their old tactics like leaking documents to the press, negotiating in public through their paid talent and misrepresenting the facts including from the deals they’ve offered and taking credit for our product proposals,” the streaming service said, per Marchand. Our team stands ready to make a fair agreement in line with their deals with other distributors and we encourage Disney to come to the table and do what’s best for our mutual customers.” While both sides have now called each other out in this situation, the two media behemoths have not come to an agreement, putting YouTube TV users at risk of losing another weekend of sports.
