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Credit: Inside the MagicUPDATE: DirecTV is currently offering to pay for its customers to watch Monday Night Football, college football, and the U.S. Open while Disney continues to stonewall them. Read your options below:
As the leaves turn each fall, you can be sure of two things – football season will be in full swing, and Disney will do everything it can to keep you from watching your favorite team unless they offer it to you exclusively (oh, Disney now owns all of Hulu too). Don’t take our word for it. You can ask Spectrum customers in 2023, DISH customers in 2022, or YouTube TV customers in 2021.
Unfortunately, Disney is back at it again, this time targeting DIRECTV customers. That’s why we’re giving you more ways to watch this weekend’s college football games, Monday Night Football and the U.S. Open – on us.
- Visit fubotv.com/deal to start your 7-day free trial from Fubo, either for their Pro or Elite with Sports Plus plans, and $30 off the first month after that. In addition, DIRECTV will provide a $30 credit; or
- Visit sling.com/DIRECTV to get the Sling Orange service, offset by a $30 credit from DIRECTV.
Both alternatives allow you to access Disney networks, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, Disney Channel, Freeform, and others.
Learn more about these alternatives and how to redeem your $30 credit from DIRECTV at TVPromise.com starting Saturday, Sept. 7. Once redeemed, credit will apply to active DIRECTV accounts within two months.
This is a small way to help you stay connected to your sports and entertainment while we work with Disney to reach a new agreement.
Communications between DirecTV and Disney have completely broken down, and millions of customers are left in the lurch until the two mega-companies can settle their beef.
On Sunday night, September 1, approximately 11.3 million DirecTV customers across the United States abruptly lost access to Disney-owned channels, including ESPN, ABC, FX, Freeform, Disney Junior, and the classic Disney Channel. This is a huge problem for fans of Monday Night Football, the SEC Network, and live sports in general.
As Inside the Magic had previously warned, relations between the Mouse House and the third-largest pay-TV provider in America had soured to the point that not even making lots of money together (and not alienating their customer base) could get them to work together.
Related: Disney Officially Promises to Stop Raising Streaming Rates in Historic New Deal
Although both companies claim that they were working as hard as they could to provide great prices and quality entertainment to their customers, something seems amiss because those subscribers are out a lot of content now.
According to DirecTV, Disney is trying to force it to sign away the ability to make antitrust claims against the company (an issue very pressing for the Mouse) as well as forcing all future legal action to take place in its corporate home of California rather than New York.
As DirecTV puts it, the Mouse’s “last-minute demands to foreclose upon any legal accountability for its growing pattern of anti-competitive actions should be troubling to all pro-consumer advocacy groups, regulators, and Department of Justice attorneys alike.”
While the satellite company has not provided much evidence for its allegations against Disney as of yet, it at least is doing the right thing and offering refund credits to customers affected by the dropped channels.
DirecTV has issued a new statement regarding the dropped channels and offering some kind of compensation, which reads in part:
Our contract with Disney to offer its local broadcast stations and national channels has expired.
- Disney typically makes its content available at network websites and apps, like ABC.com, ESPN.com, nationalgeographic.com, DisneyNow.com, or the WatchABC, ESPN, National Geographic, or DisneyNow apps.
- Disney-owned local broadcast stations typically stream newscasts and other programming at the station websites and apps.
- Check online for availability in your area.
We’re pursuing every avenue to get your station back. To thank you for your patience, until the situation is resolved, we’re offering you a bill credit.
The amount of credits being offered will likely vary per customer and coverage area, but at least it is something. The Walt Disney Company, on the other hand, is just playing the blame game and touting how good its content is.
Statement from The Walt Disney Company and ESPN regarding DirecTV
More: https://t.co/KYeyXFlU9u pic.twitter.com/jRZ8v7tz7N
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) September 1, 2024
In its own statement, Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, Co-Chairmen of Disney Entertainment, and Jimmy Pitaro, Chairman of ESPN, squarely put the blame on its former partner and basically tell DirecTV to acquiesce to its demands for the greater good. It reads:
DirecTV chose to deny millions of subscribers access to our content just as we head into the final week of the US Open and gear up for college football and the opening of the NFL season. While we’re open to offering DirecTV flexibility and terms which we’ve extended to other distributors, we will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs. We invest significantly to deliver the No. 1 brands in entertainment, news and sports because that’s what our viewers expect and deserve. We urge DirecTV to do what’s in the best interest of their customers and finalize a deal that would immediately restore our programming.
Interestingly, a key part of Disney’s statement here, that they have invested a lot of money into their content and so they should get what they want, is also a big part of their legal argument in a crucial antitrust lawsuit directly connected to this whole debacle.
Related: Goodbye, Disney Movie Insiders: Beloved Free Rewards Program Abruptly Shuts Down
Just a few weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett ordered a preliminary injunction against the launch of Venu Sports, the massive upcoming sports streaming partnership between Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
The judge called it, “multi-year monopolistic runway they have created for themselves will provide powerful incentives to thwart competition and hike prices on both consumers and other distributors.”
In their swift appeal against the judge (who they have since claimed didn’t “understand the issues”), Disney, Warner, and Fox made the novel case that the injunction should be dropped because not being able to have a potentially monopolistic sports app is “losing tens of millions of dollars that they have invested in a start-up business that has been blocked from coming to market.”
Basically, it seems that Disney thinks that if it spends money, it shouldn’t have to deal with “carriage deals,” “antitrust lawsuits,” or “negotiations.” A judge disagrees, and so does DirecTV. How about you?
More information on DirecTV credits can be found here.