Copyright Deadline
Disney has been ‘unnecessarily aggressive and assertive” in carriage talks with YouTube TV, with an “antiquated view” of the economics of pay-TV. That’s the assessment of a YouTube executive involved in the negotiations, who agreed to share perspective from inside the tech giant with Deadline on the condition that their name and job title would not be attached. ABC, ESPN and other Disney networks went dark Thursday night on YouTube TV, leaving 10 million subscribers without access to programming like college football and other major sports. Earlier Friday, Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, along with ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, accused YouTube TV of trying to “eliminate competition” and “devalue the very content that helped them build their service.” Dating back to its founding in 2017, the YouTube executive recalled, YouTube TV had sought to “super-serve the consumer” with a bundle of channels delivered “in a streaming package, without all the baggage of traditional pay-TV.” YouTube had “just come out of the Viacom situation (a $1 billion lawsuit filed in 2007 and ultimately settled out of court in 2014) and we wanted to establish great relationships with media companies and broadcast partners.” Because of its determination to deliver pay-TV in a different way, however, YouTube has increasingly clashed with traditional media companies, including four prior carriage fights in 2025 alone. One programmer, TelevisaUnivision, has been dark on YouTube TV since late September. The YouTube executive told Deadline that Disney was not being reasonable to expect steep carriage fee increases despite the fact that many of the networks have seen “flat-ish” viewing in recent years on YouTube TV. “There are aspects of their portfolio that are doing well on our platform,” especially sports, the exec added. “But remember, they have a very broad portfolio of channels where viewership on many networks is in decline or non-existent.” Despite those viewership trends, the executive continued, “They still have this very antiquated view that the customer should be forced to pay for the full portfolio.” While YouTube TV, in just eight years, has vaulted to the No. 3 ranking among all pay-TV providers (and will likely soon eclipse Comcast and Charter to become No. 1), Disney is giving up on its stake in that market. Earlier this week, as the carriage talks were going down to the wire, the company announced the closing of its acquisition of Fubo, giving it 6 million subscribers across Fubo and Hulu + Live TV. “They frequently tell us in negotiations that they don’t care if it goes to a drop because they have those two,” the YouTube executive said. Disney and YouTube TV had a blackout on the way to a renewal in 2021, and Disney has had similar clashes with Sling TV (2022), Charter (2023) and DirecTV (2024). The Charter battle, which resulted in a 10-day blackout and ultimately a game-changing agreement dropping some linear network carriage but bolstering Disney+ and Hulu, got the entire industry’s attention. “Highlighting Charter is really important,” the YouTube exec said, though the YouTube environment is different in some respects from a cable and broadband provider like Charter’s. Still, the executive says YouTube is committed to try to “partner with them to grow the size of their streaming portfolio.” ESPN’s recently launched service, whose Unlimited tier offers more than a dozen linear networks as well as programming from 7-year-old streaming outlet ESPN+, is a key strategic priority for Disney. But it has become a new ingredient in already-complex carriage discussions, and two months after launch it is not offered as a free add-on to some major pay-TV services. Asked about whether an agreement would include ESPN access the YouTube executive said, “We’ve talked to them about investing with them in helping it grow.”
