{"id":1749,"date":"2025-11-07T22:01:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T22:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2025-11-28T01:35:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T01:35:21","slug":"disney-youtube-tv-sports-fans-wont-have-espn-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/disney-youtube-tv-sports-fans-wont-have-espn-this-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney: YouTube TV Sports Fans Won’t Have ESPN This Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second straight weekend, it appears that YouTube TV subscribers will be missing ESPN<\/a> and other Disney content due to the ongoing dispute between the network and service provider.<\/p>\n

Friday afternoon, Disney Entertainment co-chairs Alan Bergman and Dana Walden and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro sent the following memo to employees at Disney:<\/p>\n

Team,<\/p>\n

We promised to keep you updated on our negotiations with Google\u2019s YouTube TV following their decision last week to pull our channels from their service, and we are writing today with the latest. We realize this has been a challenging week, with everyone asking the same question as millions of YouTube TV subscribers during the busiest time of the year in sports: When will ESPN and ABC be back on the service? We wish we could give you that answer today, but unfortunately, we are headed into another sports-packed weekend without a deal in place.<\/p>\n

We know you\u2019ve seen a swirl of information about the impasse, so we wanted to share some of the facts:<\/p>\n

We began these negotiations by offering YouTube TV a deal that would cost less overall than the terms of our recently expired license. That\u2019s real savings that YouTube TV could pass along to its customers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve offered innovative, bespoke programming packages\u2014tailored to sports fans, entertainment fans, kids and families\u2014that would provide tremendous flexibility for YouTube TV and greater choice and value for its customers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve offered fair terms that are in-line with the more than 500 other distributors that have renewed their agreements since last summer, including the top distributors, who are far larger than YouTube TV.<\/p>\n

Despite all this, YouTube TV continues to insist on receiving preferential terms that are below market and has made few concessions.<\/p>\n

Rather than compete on a level playing field, Google\u2019s YouTube TV has approached these negotiations as if it were the only player in the game. It goes without saying that the reason so many consumers value our programming above others is because we invest in the best talent, creators and content in the world, and we cannot allow anyone to undercut our ability to do so.<\/p>\n

We know how difficult this situation is for the YouTube TV customers we serve, and for all of you who provide the sports programming, entertainment, news and live events that our fans know and love. Thank you for the incredible work you do each and every day and for staying focused on maintaining such a high bar throughout this difficult situation.<\/p>\n

We will continue to work diligently to find common ground with YouTube TV and will keep you informed as we have more news to share.<\/p>\n

With Gratitude,<\/p>\n

Alan, Dana & Jimmy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Disney pulled its content, including ABC, ESPN, FX, Nat Geo, and the Disney Channel, from YouTube TV after the two sides failed to reach an agreement last week<\/a> on continued carriage.\u00a0 Google, who owns YouTubeTV, says the fee Disney was looking to get would have caused the provider to have to raise rates, which are currently at $82.99 per month.\u00a0 Disney has blamed Google for keeping YouTube TV subscribers from being able to view their favorite sports coverage from the ESPN family of networks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the second straight weekend, it appears that YouTube TV subscribers will be missing ESPN and other Disney content due to the ongoing dispute between the network and service provider. Friday afternoon, Disney Entertainment co-chairs Alan Bergman and Dana Walden and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro sent the following memo to employees at Disney: Team, We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":1750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[396,267,238,266,283],"tags":[369,75,370],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disney","category-espn","category-sports-media","category-networks","category-youtube","tag-disney","tag-featured","tag-youtube-tv"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1754,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/1754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}