THE NFL season is quickly approaching and ESPN and DirecTV have yet to solve their feud.
ESPN has already been involved in one feud with a major cable provider, but now they are holding out on DirecTV.
ESPN and DirecTV have a TV deal that is expiring on Sunday[/caption]
DirecTV customers could lose NFL and college football broadcasts[/caption]
ESPN was locked in a battle with Charter, the No. 1 cable provider in the US, for two weeks last year, and fans are hoping the spat with DirecTV doesn’t last as long.
Disney, the parent company of ESPN, has an expiring deal with DirecTV on Sunday, and customers could be locked out of Monday Night Football if it isn’t resolved.
If Sunday comes and goes without a new deal, the networks will have one week before customers of the No. 3 distributor in the US go without the matchup between the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers on Monday night.
Negotiations are currently ongoing, but neither side has a deal.
“We don’t have a deal,” Justin Connolly, Disney president of platform distribution told Front Office Sports.
“There are still fairly large gaps in the perspectives we’re each bringing to the table.
“DirecTV needs to roll up their sleeves and engage on things that we can execute together.”
DirecTV has over 11 million subscribers, and they are hoping to change the way their TV packages with Disney are structured.
If the two parties can’t agree on a deal, the NFL won’t be the only sport impacted by the outages.
The US Open is currently underway, and tennis fans who subscribe to DirecTV could miss the conclusion of the event.
College football is also back in season, and ESPN carries a majority of the broadcasts for the sport.
Disney is offering packages to DirecTV including its streaming services, but those offers reportedly have not moved the needle.
Meetings are ongoing every day, but Disney executives claim that DirecTV isn’t “meaningfully engaged” on the subject.
DirecTV chief content officer Rob Thun has expressed his displeasure about the negotiations in a recent blog post.
“While [direct-to-consumer] offerings have evolved, pay-TV packages have remained largely unchanged,” he wrote.
NFL important dates
August 1 – Hall of Fame Game – Houston Texans vs Chicago Bears
August 8 – Pre-season begins
August 27 – Deadline for 53-man rosters
September 1 – Final day of pre-season
September 5 – Season opener – Baltimore Ravens vs Kansas City Chiefs
November 5 – Trade deadline
January 5 – Week 18 of regular-season
January 11 – Playoffs begin
February 9 – Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, Louisiana
“Instead of allowing distributors like DirecTV to also develop smaller, more tailored packages at prices that reflect the value they get from the content, programmers have continued to impose and enforce strict bundling requirements through exorbitant minimum penetration rates.”
Disney’s involvement in the new Venu Sports venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery is also a sticking point for DirecTV, as they claim it is anticompetitive.
FuboTV has already taken legal action over the new service, which could get blocked due to monopoly laws.
“We disagree with Venu’s anti-competitive strategy and believe that distributors should have the same flexibility to thrive along DTC services by offering genre-based packages that extend beyond sports to include locals, entertainment, news, family, movies, and others,” Thun wrote.
Connolly believes that ESPN has offered the packages that Thun is looking for, and said they can make progress before the upcoming deadline.
“A lot can happen in the next two and half days,” Connolly said.
“But there’s still a lot of work to do.”
ESPN feels that DirecTV isn’t negotiating in good faith[/caption]
