© Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Disney is losing a ton of money every day it’s off YouTube TV.
Last week, Disney announced that it would be removing their channels from YouTube TV due to a carriage fee dispute.
On Monday, Disney continued its blackout on YouTube TV during Monday Night Football, leading to angry fans, including JJ Watt, to blast both companies.
Things are getting messy after Google rejected Disney’s offer to bring back ABC for a day for election day coverage on Tuesday.
Via Variety
“We believe in putting the public interest first and hope YouTube TV will take this small step for their customers while we continue to work toward a fair agreement,” Disney said in a statement.
“We agree that the right priority here is to give customers what they want. As you know from the many content disputes you’ve been part of, customers don’t want companies fighting and content blackouts. But unfortunately, your proposal would permit us to return Disney’s ABC stations only for a day and will cause customer confusion among those who may briefly see ABC on YouTube TV only to lose it again shortly after,” Google said in its response.
It’ll be interesting to see how long the YouTube TV-Disney feud lasts, considering the significant financial losses Disney is suffering in the dispute.
According to Awful Announcing, Disney is likely losing $5 million every day their off YouTube TV.
Via Awful Announcing
Disney generally receives about $15 per month per subscriber from pay TV providers for the right to distribute the ESPN family of networks. YouTube TV boasts approximately 10 million monthly subscribers. So for each month that Disney is not getting paid by YouTube TV, it loses about $150 million (and likely a bit more when accounting for non-ESPN networks owned by Disney). On a per day basis, that comes out to about $5 million, meaning Disney has already missed out on about $20 million in revenue for the four days its networks have been blacked out on YouTube TV.
Considering Disney is a $200 billion company, $5 million probably isn’t hurting them too much.