As Monday Night Football gets set for a hotly anticipated matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers, ABC, ESPN and other Disney networks remain dark on YouTube TV due to a carriage dispute.
It has been more than a week since the standoff began between Disney and YouTube TV. The latter has grown into a dominant force in pay-TV, racking up 10 million subscribers just eight years after its launch. The scale and stature of the combatants have made the blackout a daily conversation topic playing out against the backdrop of a similarly intractable U.S. government shutdown.
Neither Disney nor YouTube TV has commented publicly since Friday. After another lost Saturday of college football there is a growing industry speculation (or maybe “hope” is a better word) that the Eagles-Packers contest could potentially bring about a resolution of the standoff.
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Sources familiar with the negotiations tell Deadline that YouTube TV submitted a revised proposal to Disney this weekend. Negotiations are continuing and both sides declined to comment. In an overture to its customers, YouTube TV plans to start rolling out a $20 credit for customers today, sources also noted.
The 10-day mark, which is where the current dispute is as of this weekend, is at the same point when another previous fight was settled between Disney and a large distributor. In 2023, a widely followed blackout of Disney networks on Charter’s Spectrum systems ended on the same day of Monday Night Football‘s season debut.
There is also the matter of ratings. Last week’s MNF game between the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals fell 21% from the same week in 2024, a decline largely attributed to the carriage impasse. YouTube TV over-indexes with sports fans, given that the provider also has rights to NFL Sunday Ticket and pioneered the “Multiview” feature, which enables fans to watch multiple games within a single screen.
There are, of course, still ways to watch the game if you are a YouTube TV subscriber. It is available on mobile devices to subscribers to NFL+, the league’s own subscription service. It is also among the Monday night ESPN games being simulcast on ABC, meaning anyone with an antenna can pull the signal over the air for free. Research varies as to how many viewers actually go the over-the-air route, with Nielsen pegging the total percentage of homes at 18% and an April 2025 study by Horowitz Research putting it at 32%.
Another way viewers can access the game, of course, is by signing up for ESPN’s newly fortified streaming app, which offers a full suite of linear networks in a hedge against cord-cutting. From its launch on August 21 through September 30, the service drew 2.1 million subscribers, according to research firm Antenna. Presumably, it has only gained traction since then, though a study by Apptopia about consumer behavior since the carriage fight began found that YouTube TV rivals DirecTV, Hulu+Live TV and Fubo benefited equally from customer flight.
“Disney has a much different portfolio now than they did with their last couple of disputes,” a veteran pay-TV exec noted in an interview with Deadline. “They have the ESPN app and they also control Fubo and can combine that with Hulu + Live TV. They’re a major programmer, but they’re also a distributor themselves. I have to think that’s a factor in this negotiation.”
The closing of Disney’s acquisition of 70% of Fubo, which is continuing to operate as a separate service, though with many business functions merged with those of Hulu Live, was announced on the eve of the YouTube TV deadline. Fubo and Hulu Live combined have about 6 million subscribers, making them together the No. 6 U.S. pay-TV operator.
Disney has been adamant in insisting that the fight comes down to “fair market value” for its networks, nothing more. After a YouTube executive told Deadline that Disney was using Fubo and Hulu Live as leverage, the media giant strongly denied it and accused the tech company of “intentionally misrepresenting the situation.”
However the battle ends, the stakes are high. YouTube TV now ranks as the No. 3 or No. 4 pay-TV player in the U.S., depending on whose numbers you believe. But the trendlines make the current dispute even more consequential. YouTube insiders, programmers doing business with them and Wall Street analysts alike expect YouTube TV to soon become the No. 1 operator, as cable providers Comcast and Charter keep declining along with traditional satellite players DirecTV and Dish.
Of course, if there are large-scale defections from YouTube TV, the public may be none the wiser. Corporate parent Alphabet discloses numbers for the pay-TV service only selectively. Early in 2024, it announced the bundle had surpassed 8 million subscribers. Recent carriage disputes with NBCUniversal, Fox Corp. and Paramount (all resolved without a blackout) revealed that the current level has reached 10 million. Even without the blackouts, two price hikes by YouTube TV in less than two years caused about 500,000 subscribers to cancel, according to an estimate last June by veteran industry analyst Craig Moffett.
If the standoff does continue, wiping out the Packers-Eagles game, Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday will be the next piece of marquee programming hanging in the balance. The competition series does stream live on Disney+, which would at least give fans an option outside of the YouTube TV bundle. Fans of the show expressed frustration last week with the Disney+ streams, however, as they experienced streaming glitches and difficulties with features like subtitling.