Back in 2019, DIRECTV and Disney reached a new deal by September 1st, according to a report from Bloomberg News. If a deal is not reached, Disney-owned channels, including ESPN, will go dark tomorrow, September 1st, reportedly at 5pm Eastern. This confirms a report by Cord Cutters News last week that a deal was needed soon.
With this, DIRECTV has made it clear they are interested in a similar deal to what Spectrum got, which gave its customers access to Disney+ and ESPN+ as part of their subscriptions.
This comes as both sides have started to take shots at each other suggesting that no deal is near.
Last week DIRECTV came out with a list of things it wants in new TV packages, including:
- Flexible Packages. Consumers want the ability to choose from genre-based programming without piecing together and purchasing an extensive lineup of channels that don’t meet their desires.
- Lower-Priced Alternatives. Consumers want price points closer to the DTC (direct-to-consumer) options they are familiar with and the ability to pay for all their programming through one platform.
- Aggregated Experience. Consumers want access to their favorite shows and sports and the ability to discover new content in one complete experience – live ‘linear’ TV or on-demand content from DIRECTV or a third party – instead of through numerous disjointed entry points while managing multiple individual subscriptions to those products.
This raised the question: will Disney agree to all of this, and if DIRECTV is willing to hold its ground, possibly resulting in a blackout? For Spectrum to reach its deal with Disney, it resulted in a blackout that went right down to the wire and almost resulted in Spectrum customers from missing the opening night of Monday Night Football before a last-second deal was reached.
For now, the clock is ticking, and we are likely just a few weeks away from a possible blackout of Disney-owned channels on DIRECTV.