An important milestone has passed in the Cold War between Disney and DirecTV.
As Jets vs. 49ers began on “Monday Night Football” on ESPN and ABC, the networks’ parent company, Disney, has still not come to a carriage agreement with DirecTV.
The dispute includes the ESPN family of networks, FX and Disney’s owned-and-operated ABC affiliates.
While a majority of DirecTV customers in the country can still watch “Monday Night Football” on ABC this week, it is dark in big metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and San Francisco where Disney owns the broadcast affiliates.
DirecTV customers are all unable to use their accounts to stream games airing on ESPN on the network’s app.
The networks have been dark on DirecTV’s satellite and streaming services, as well as U-Verse, since last weekend.
While many sports fans can subscribe to a streaming bundle like YouTube TV, Sling TV or Fubo either by switching entirely or just keeping both until the carriage dispute is over, not everyone can switch so easily.
DirecTV has a big base of commercial customers in bars, restaurants, hotels and gyms, and it is also one of the only TV providers for deep rural residents who don’t have adequate cable connectivity where they live.
Fans were not happy as the dispute lasted into Monday night.
X user Steven Barnes urged both companies to “figure it the f–k out!!!!”
Another user posted a photo of a blacked-out TV set and asked “is this a f–king joke?!?!?!”
In late August, it was clear that the stalemate between the companies could bleed into football season, and that manifested on Sept. 1 when Disney channels went dark and sports fans had to miss the highly anticipated USC-LSU college football clash as well as the US Open.
This past weekend, a full slate of college football action plus the men’s and women’s finals of the US Open were dark.
Saturday night, DirecTV filed a complaint with the FCC alleging that Disney has been negotiating in bad faith.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the crux of the dispute has been how much Disney charges for its bundle of channels, plus “DirecTV’s desire to have more freedom in how it packages and sells Disney’s channels to subscribers,” meaning whether it could for example place ESPN on tiers where non-sports-fans could more easily subscribe to entertainment channels without having to also pay for it.
