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Fresh off solving one distribution battle, three more carriage fights are emerging for YouTube TV.
NBCUniversal said late Thursday that it may be dropped on the No. 4 U.S. pay-TV distributor if it does not come to a new agreement with the Google-owned YouTube TV by Tuesday. A large array of sports programming will be quickly at risk, including college football and the Week 5 NFL Sunday Night Football game between the Patriots and Bills. Later in October, NBC will also begin its much-anticipated return to NBA coverage.
“Google, with its $3 trillion market cap, already controls what Americans see online through search and ads—now it wants to control what we watch,” NBC said in a statement. “YouTube TV has refused the best rates and terms in the market, demanding preferential treatment and seeking an unfair advantage over competitors to dominate the video marketplace—all under the false pretense of fighting for the consumer.”
The emerging situation arrives less than a month after YouTube TV resolved a similar fight with Fox, but only after rising public pressure from Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr.
“NBCUniversal is asking us to pay more than what they charge consumers for the same content on Peacock, which would mean less flexibility and higher prices for our subscribers,” YouTube TV said in a blog post.
If a deal is not reached and NBC content becomes unavailable “for an extended period of time,” YouTube TV is offering subscribers a $10 credit.
YouTube TV is approaching 10 million subscribers according to unofficial counts, and continues to close in on Charter, Comcast, and DirecTV, the top three traditional pay-TV distributors. As YouTube TV seeks to manage costs and continues to present itself as an alternative to cable and satellite TV, carriage fights such as these have become more common, and it is also in the midst of a separate and similarly fraught negotiation with the Spanish-language TelevisaUnivision.
Local Issues
The distribution fights extend to the regional level, too. Monumental Sports Network, the Ted Leonsis–led regional sports network that airs his NBA Wizards, NHL Capitals, and WNBA Mystics, said its deals with YouTube TV and Hulu will expire before the NBA and NHL seasons start next month, and that it is failing to reach common ground with both entities. Without new agreements, MSN could be dropped on those platforms in its coverage area.
“In each case, we’ve encountered a lack of meaningful engagement, despite our ongoing efforts to find a fair solution,” MSN general manager Friday Abernethy said in a statement. “These actions by Hulu, owned by Disney, and YouTube, owned by Google, reflect a broader crisis in the pay-TV industry, where large streaming providers are prioritizing large media conglomerates over the interests of local communities.”
The end of the month is also when a short-term deal between the YES Network and Comcast expires, and discussions are fractious there, too. Similar to some of the arguments from Comcast in that dispute, YouTube TV says that MSN generates minimal viewership relative to the overall Washington-Baltimore market.
“We know how important live sports are to YouTube TV subscribers, but we will not ask them to pay more to continue carrying a channel that very few of them actually watch,” the company responded.
