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Credit: Inside the MagicFootball season has officially started, and with the kickoff, the federal government is getting involved in the dispute between DirecTV and Disney.
It has been one week since the talks between DirecTV, one of the largest pay-TV companies in the United States, and The Walt Disney Company, one of the most powerful media companies in the world, fell through. More than 11 million customers lost a large number of channels they had already paid for.
Both companies are blaming each other for the debacle, while DirecTV customers are increasingly furious. The NFL season has begun, and since ESPN and its popular Monday Night Football program are blacked out for millions, a whole bunch of people are missing out on America’s most-watched sport.
The satellite TV company has offered partial refunds to its subscribers and offered to pay for memberships to Sling and FuboTV (which has its own beef with the Mouse), but the fight to watch football is ongoing.
Related: Disney Officially Promises to Stop Raising Streaming Rates in Historic New Deal
Now that Sunday football is here and a number of NFL games are underway, DirecTV has issued a new statement directly to Inside the Magic, revealing that it has officially filed a complaint against Disney with the Federal Communications Commission over its “bad faith” practices and anticompetitive demands.
The statement reads, “The negotiations have stalled because Disney insists on bundling and penetration requirements that a federal district court judge in New York recently found in the context of the “Venu” joint venture to be unlawful, anti-competitive, and “bad for consumers.”
Apparently, DirecTV is now involving the federal government in its battle for Disney channels, which is a huge escalation in the legal fight.
The statement continues, “Disney wants to force DIRECTV to carry a “fat bundle” including less desirable Disney programming—while itself offering cheaper, ‘skinnier’ bundles of programming that consumers want. The Commission has never considered a good faith complaint in these circumstances, and DIRECTV may well wish to bring one in the future concerning Disney’s conduct.”
The concept of “skinny bundles” is key to DirecTV’s enlistment of the FCC in the conflict. For years, Disney (as well as competitors like Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal) have forced pay-TV companies like DirecTV and Dish to include less-popular channel options like Freeform and National Geographic alongside the Disney Channel and ESPN.
In practice, this meant that the financial burden of including these channels (which make less money via advertisers) had been passed to DirecTV subscribers. You can guess how happy this makes everyone.
DirecTV has finally been putting its foot down and demanding the ability to offer channel packages that have only the programming that customers want.
The New York court decision alluded to above was in regards to Venu Sports, the massive prospective sports streaming app that Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox want to launch but has been shut down (for the time being anyway) over alleged anticompetitive practices.
According to DirecTV, Disney is demanding that it waive any ability to take legal action against similar monopolistic practices, and football fans are caught in the middle.
The statement concludes, “Along with these anti-competitive demands, Disney has also insisted that DIRECTV agree to a “clean slate” provision and a covenant not to sue, both of which are intended to prevent DIRECTV from taking legal action regarding Disney’s anticompetitive demands, which would include filing good faith complaints at the Commission. Not three months ago, however, the Media Bureau made clear that such a demand itself constitutes bad faith.”
Rob Thun, chief content officer at DirecTV, has been even more blunt, saying:
“The Walt Disney Co. is once again refusing any accountability to consumers, distribution partners, and now the American judicial system. Disney is in the business of creating alternate realities, but this is the real world where we believe you earn your way and must answer for your own actions. They want to continue to chase maximum profits and dominant control at the expense of consumers – making it harder for them to select the shows and sports they want at a reasonable price.”
The FCC has not yet commented on the complaint, but this is a major new development in the battle for college football and ESPN.
The full FCC complaint can be read here:
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