On Thursday night, YouTube TV and Fox made a deal to renew their carriage agreement, keeping Fox-owned channels live for YouTube TV subscribers. Now, Puck’s John Ourand is sharing information from sources that give more insight into YouTube TV’s future plans that may have played a part in the negotiations, including the possibility of launching a new sports package.
In the report, Ourand says that “YouTube TV has discussed launching a broadcast-and-sports tier, and there’s debate around what networks will be included.” YouTube would want to include Fox in that package and Fox would likely want to have all of it’s channels, even non-sports channels, included, which may have been a disagreement between the two companies during the negotiation.
That’s likely exactly what happened with DIRECTV’s MySports Genre Pack. That pack includes Fox, FS1, and FS2 but also includes Fox Business and Fox News.
Also impacting the negotiation was YouTube TV wanting to add FOX One as an add-on, similar to set up of Amazon’s Prime Video Channels. Yesterday, Amazon made a deal with NBCUniversal to bring Peacock to Prime Video Channels, for example. Add-ons and channel subscriptions give platforms the ability to keep subscribers in their ecosystem, share revenue, and collect viewer data. Ourand reports that Fox argued that YouTube TV is “more similar to distributors like Charter”not a streamer like Prime Video, but rather a distributor like Charter or DirecTV” and should be making similar deals to other distributors rather than trying to get into the channel add-on game.
YouTube TV’s carriage agreements with NBCUniversal and Disney are also set to expire soon. It’s likely that the Fox deal will come into play with those negotiations. So, YouTube TV subscribers prepare for more possible blackouts and last minute distribution deals, and keep an eye out for a new sports package.