{"id":37732,"date":"2025-11-04T22:31:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/disney-is-fighting-an-uphill-battle-against-googles-youtube-tv-but-has-its-own-advantages\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T22:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:31:14","slug":"disney-is-fighting-an-uphill-battle-against-googles-youtube-tv-but-has-its-own-advantages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/disney-is-fighting-an-uphill-battle-against-googles-youtube-tv-but-has-its-own-advantages\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney is fighting an uphill battle against Google&#8217;s YouTube TV &mdash; but has its own advantages"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/690a67d5c007ca8c27383f1c?format=jpeg\" alt=\"ESPN and Disney logo.\"\/><figcaption>ESPN is at the center of Disney&#039;s spat with YouTube TV.<\/p>\n<p>Illustration by Igor Golovniov\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC, are not available on YouTube TV due to a deal dispute.<\/li>\n<li>The spat could be more painful for Disney than for YouTube&#039;s mammoth parent company.<\/li>\n<li>Both sides have reason to come to terms, however.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Who has the upper hand in the battle between Google and Disney?<\/p>\n<p>Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC, have been unavailable on YouTube TV since October 31, after Disney and Google&#039;s premium TV service failed to reach a new licensing deal.<\/p>\n<p>Disney has a market capitalization of $200 billion. But in Big Tech terms, it&#039;s small fry. Google parent Alphabet has a market cap of more than $3 trillion.<\/p>\n<p>The spat is a problem for Disney in a way that it isn&#039;t for Google&#039;s YouTube, said Rich Greenfield, partner and analyst at LightShed Partners. Greenfield said the drivers of investment interest in Google are search, AI, cloud, and maybe YouTube.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&quot;<\/strong>No one is betting on the future of YouTube TV for their investment thesis in Google,&quot; he told Business Insider.<\/p>\n<p>He said that for Disney, the blackout means losing 15% of its subscriber base across ESPN and ABC.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;This is a real problem,&quot; he said. &quot;If this doesn&#039;t get settled, this is financially really painful.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>YouTube TV is much more important to Disney than to Google, said Dan Salmon at NewStreet Research.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s true that Google&#039;s business overall won&#039;t feel a big impact from the outage. Looking more narrowly at the live TV business, though, shows Disney has some advantages of its own, analysts say.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;No Disney means no ESPN, which is a major loss for YouTube TV,&quot; said Marisa Jones, an analyst at EMARKETER. YouTube has offered its subscribers $20 if the outage drags on.<\/p>\n<p>Google has talked up how serious it is about winning the living room and growing YouTube TV subscriptions. It recently shared numbers showing YouTube TV was the No. 4 pay-TV service in the US. Losing ESPN could hurt its growth prospects.<\/p>\n<p>Disney also has its own YouTube TV rival in Hulu + Live TV, and a 70% stake in Fubo, another streaming TV service. It recently launched its stand-alone ESPN flagship streaming service.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Disney has these alternative monetization channels that weren&#039;t characteristics of the battles of yesteryear,&quot; Guggenheim analyst Michael Morris said.<\/p>\n<p>Guggenheim published US Apptopia data on Tuesday, showing an 88% increase in Fubo TV downloads from October 31 through Monday compared to the prior week, while Hulu downloads have increased by a more modest 33% compared to the prior week. ESPN downloads were up 5% on the same basis. It hasn&#039;t been all bad for YouTube TV \u2014 the data showed that its downloads have also increased, up 25% compared to the prior week.<\/p>\n<p>In general, neither company benefits from a prolonged disruption.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The path of least resistance is to reach an agreement, and I think these two will reach one,&quot; Morris said. &quot;If YouTube is serious about YouTube TV \u2014 and it&#039;s a major player in the bundled channels economy \u2014 it does matter to Google. So when they&#039;re digging their heels in, it shows they do care and they&#039;re going to try to use their negotiating leverage to get what they want.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ESPN is at the center of Disney&#039;s spat with YouTube TV. Illustration by Igor Golovniov\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC, are not available on YouTube TV due to a deal dispute. The spat could be more painful for Disney than for YouTube&#039;s mammoth parent company. Both sides have reason to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}