Copyright Athlon Sports
The battle of contract talks between YouTube TV and ESPN has caused an uproar from fans across the sports world. The previous deal between YouTube TV’s parent company, Google, and ESPN’s parent company, Disney, expired at the end of the day on Oct. 30. Since then, Disney’s host of channels, including ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2 and many others, have not been carried by YouTube TV. This means that sports fans who are YouTube TV users were unable to watch a full weekend slate of sports on Disney’s networks, including “College Gameday” and several top college football matchups on Saturday, and the “Monday Night Football” matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals. Earlier this week, a development emerged that Disney was losing around $5 million each day its networks are not carried by YouTube TV. This means that now, on the sixth day of the blackout, approximately $30 million has been lost by Disney due to the standoff in contract negotiations. While “College GameDay” was not shown on YouTube TV due to it being aired on ESPN on Saturday, Pat McAfee, who has excited college football fans since joining the show as an analyst in 2022, streamed the entire three-hour broadcast on his X account. McAfee revealed this week that ESPN allowed him to stream the whole “College GameDay” broadcast on X, even though his initial pitch was to just post the final hour of the show. During his show on the network, “The Pat McAfee Show,” McAfee shared a screenshot of the viewership numbers that came from the free livestream of Saturday’s edition of “College GameDay,” per Awful Announcing. This screenshot reported that his livestream accumulated 1.33 million minutes in viewership, had 1.18 unique viewers, 1.37 million total views, over 2 million impressions and 5,500 favorites on X. ““[College GameDay] is a unifier. This show should be seen by people. Because we have a business disagreement. We should make it as easy as possible,” McAfee said, according to Awful Announcing. “It was on the ESPN app in front of the paywall. It was on X.” While contract negotiations between Disney and YouTube TV are ongoing, McAfee has not announced whether he will livestream this Saturday’s edition of the show from Lubbock, Texas, ahead of the matchup between the No. 7 BYU Cougars and No. 8 Texas Tech Red Raiders.
