Here we go again.
We’re heading into one of the biggest college football weekends of the 2025 season so far. The #9-ranked Vanderbilt looks to continue its magical season, but has a tough task ahead of them on the road at #20 Texas. Florida and Georgia face off in their heated rivalry, with Florida looking to pull out one of their signature upsets over the #5 teams in the country. Ole Miss takes on South Carolina after a massive win on the road last week at Oklahoma. And Notre Dame and Boston College…well actually nobody really cares about that one because BC is a hot mess, but you get the idea.
Unfortunately, if you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, you won’t be able to watch any of those games.
The streaming platform announced last night that it would be dropping Disney-owned networks, including the ESPN family of networks and ABC, after the two sides failed to renew their licensing agreement:
“In order to deliver a wide variety of sports, news, and entertainment programming on YouTube TV, we enter into agreements with network partners. Each time we renew our contracts with these partners, we advocate for fair pricing and greater flexibility to offer our subscribers the best possible live TV experience.
Our current agreement with Disney has approached its renewal date, and we will not agree to terms that disadvantage our members while benefiting Disney’s own live TV products. Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to reach a fair deal, and starting today, October 30, 2025, Disney programming will not be available on YouTube TV. This means you will no longer be able to watch channels like ABC and ESPN or access recordings from these networks in your Library.”
Great. Just great. If only there were some way we could just pay one price for all of the channels and not have to worry about this every few months…
It sounds like YouTube TV wasn’t willing to meet the demands of Disney when it came time to renew their agreement, because they knew they would then have to pass the cost of the renewal on to customers.
And in case you were wondering, YouTube TV is owned by Google, while rival Hulu is owned by…you guessed it, Disney. And in recent months, ESPN launched their own direct-to-consumer streaming service – for $11.99 a month. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who this mess benefits, because it’s definitely not the consumer.
Regardless of who’s at fault, football fans were quick to flock to social media to express their frustration, especially after we just went through this at the beginning of the season with YouTube TV and Fox.
Now, in this dispute I tend to side with YouTube TV, because it sounds like Disney is just trying to massively increase the cost to YouTube to carry their networks while at the same time launching their own streaming service. Either way, they win and viewers lose.
But man, I wish we could just pay one flat fee and watch every network. Maybe through a wire, or even a cable, that you hook up to your TV. What would we even call such a service?
Unfortunately, now viewers are stuck in the middle of a dispute between two of the biggest corporations in the company. And no matter who wins, we’re going to be the ones footing the bill if we want to watch college football.
