ESPN star weighs in on YouTube TV standoff — ‘all you’re doing is pissing everybody off’
As Disney and Google continue to negotiate fees, sports fans who signed up for YouTube TV are out of luck as games and events on ABC and ESPN continue to be unavailable.
YouTube pulled more than 20 Disney-owned channels including ESPN and ABC right before Halloween after Google and Disney couldn’t come to an agreement. At the time, YouTube TV claimed that it “”will not agree to terms that disadvantage our members while benefiting Disney’s own live TV products.”
For sports fans, that meant missing out on a slate of college football games over the weekend, including marquee matchups in the SEC, across ABC and ESPN. As the standoff continued, it also meant the ESPN Monday Night Football game between the Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys was not available — perhaps no great loss if you like competitive games; the 2-5 and Cardinals beat the 3-4-1 Cowboys by a score of 27-17.
“We’re all done with it,” McAfee said on his show before complaining about channels begging viewers to go to websites to “save the channel.” You may have noticed similar messages before Google struck a deal with NBC at the end of September.
“And also, if you’re on TV, stop telling people to go to a website to save a multi-billion-dollar deal,” McAfee added. “Nobody cares what you have to say. There will be nothing that we have to say or any website that will be visited. There are, I don’t want to say the exact names, but these people (hands up high), let’s put our swords down. Let’s put our swords down for the good of sports.”
Let’s put our swords down for the good of sports.”
— Pat McAfee
Meanwhile, Disney and YouTube TV have had dueling proposals to allow ABC back on the streamer. Disney asked YTTV to briefly bring back ABC for this week’s election coverage, which Google rejected.
On Wednesday, Google proposed letting ABC and ESPN return while the companies negotiate: “We propose immediately restoring the Disney channels that our customers watch: ABC and the ESPN networks, while we continue to negotiate. Those are the channels that people want.”
As far as we can tell, Disney has not publicly responded to this tactic. Neither company wants to cave — Disney wants more money for its channels, and of course, Google wants to pay less.
‘All you’re doing is pissing everybody off’
McAfee called on Disney and Google to sign a deal.
“We need each other. A lot of people saying ‘greedy corporations,’ it’s like, yeah. We need each other, especially with where sports are right now,” McAfee said. “And we’re in the middle of it, so let’s get it done. And stop asking me to go to a website. I don’t want to do that, so stop … all you’re doing is pissing everybody off even more. So it’s like, let’s just not do that.”
If the two giants can’t reach a deal, YouTube TV is offering a discount to customers if the outage lasts “an extended period of time.”
How to watch ESPN sports in the meantime
While YTTV is among the best streaming services and with ESPN the best live streaming service, there are alternatives, especially if you want to watch ESPN and ABC.
Sling TV is the cheapest way to stream ESPN with its Day Pass, which will cost you $4.99 for 24 hours of access to Sling Orange. However, it is limited and doesn’t include channels like the SEC and ACC networks or ABC.
There are three streaming alternatives, which include the Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Unlimited bundle, Hulu with Live TV, and DirecTV genre packs. They each have their own drawbacks, which we’ve broken down here.
NFL fans who paid for Sunday Ticket may be in for prolonged frustration if this doesn’t resolve soon. YouTube TV has reportedly been pointing people to its customer service to restore access.
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