Disney and Spectrum owner reach deal to restore ESPN and other channels to the cable TV network’s 15 million subscribers after week-long blackout
Just in time for the opening game of Monday Night Football — and with potentially 15 million New Yorkers potentially waiting to find out if they can watch their Jets — Disney and Spectrum have settled their 11-day carriage dispute.
Disney and Charter Communications announced the resolution of their fight on Monday, restoring ESPN and other networks to Charter’s Spectrum cable.
The deal guarantees Disney from about $2.2 billion in Charter fees that had been compromised, while giving the communications company access to the streaming world that has encouraged millions of former cable customers to cut the cord.
Disney co-chairman Dana Walden praised the deal for what it did alongside The Worldwide Leader in Sports.
“We need to continue to grow our streaming business, which is a core focus of our strategy right now,” Walden said.
Just in time for the opening game of Monday Night Football — and with potentially 15 million New Yorkers potentially waiting to find out if they can watch their Jets — Disney and Spectrum have settled their 11-day carriage dispute
The deal allowed 15 million New Yorkers with Spectrum service to watch Aaron Rodgers’ abbreviated debut for the New York Jets on ABC and ESPN
“And this deal gives us the opportunity to distribute Disney+ Basic to Charter’s nine and a half million Select subscribers, which is great for us and allows us to grow our subscriber base, revenue and our advertising business, and it also allows us to maintain our primary channels. on the linear entertainment side, which are important for monetization.”
“We love the flexibility of this deal,” said Jimmy Pitaro, president of ESPN. ‘We love the creativity.’
Disney on August 31 had pulled the stations it owned from Charter’s Spectrum TV system, including ESPN, ABC, National Geographic and FX.
It was during the US Open tennis tournament and at the start of the first weekend of college football.
But “Monday Night Football,” which is shown on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, is on a whole different level.
In addition to Rodgers’ debut – which ended abruptly – Monday’s game involved the Jets and Buffalo Bills, two New York teams marking the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
“When the passionate fan base is robbed of something they crave, you’re going to hear about it,” said John Fortunato, a communications professor at Fordham University who specializes in sports media.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul applauded the deal and said her office would work to obtain refunds for the estimated 1.5 million New York families who lost Disney stations in the dispute.
Disney co-chairman Dana Walden praised the deal for what it did alongside The Worldwide Leader in Sports
Disney had previously offered a price reduction for its services in response to the impasse
This was the message Spectrum viewers saw on their TVs when they tried to watch a Disney show
Under the deal, Disney+ and ESPN+ streaming services will be made available to Spectrum cable customers at no additional cost, which Disney had initially protested.
Additionally, Charter customers will eventually receive the planned direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming service that is in the works but has no launch date.
While making a direct-to-consumer product available through a cable system may seem counterintuitive, the deal will help the soon-to-launch ESPN service establish itself and gain greater access to advertisers, Pitaro said.
Charter had floated rumors about shutting down cable operations with ESPN entirely, and had even told its customers about other ways to access the network.
But that is an incredibly risky move. Essentially, the deal allows both Charter and Disney to own both cable and streaming while they wait to see how these businesses will develop in the coming years.
Charter had also sought more flexibility to stop “bundling,” or forcing cable customers to take stations they don’t necessarily want.
Monday’s deal reduces the size of the Disney “bundle” from 27 to 19 networks, but still guarantees Disney will get paid for a large percentage of those stations.
Charter’s “carriage fee” to Disney – what it pays for access to its networks – is expected to rise, although financial terms were not disclosed Monday.
Disney pulled ESPN, ABC and its other cable channels from Spectrum on September 1 due to a rate dispute with Charter. Disney CEO Bob Iger is seen above
Worldwide Disney+ subscribers in the first three quarters of this year. The ability for Spectrum customers to access the service is seen as a boon to the deal
“On the surface, the terms of the settlement that have been made public suggest that Disney could not afford to let the dispute simmer, and Charter may have been bluffing when it said it was ready to walk away from the cable TV business,” says Paul Verna. , principal analyst at Insider Intelligence.
The deal leaves many unanswered questions, especially how much more consumers will have to pay for these various services, he said.
“In addition to these unknowns, the larger issues surrounding the viability of the traditional pay-TV bundle and the challenges of monetizing streaming media will continue to haunt the industry as it navigates the transition from linear to digital,”
Verna said: “Other transportation disputes are inevitable, and these will once again raise these unresolved questions for media owners and distributors.”