Afternoon Edition |
October 31, 2025 |
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As it stands right now, YouTube TV subscribers won’t be able to watch ESPN, ABC, and other Disney channels ahead of a huge weekend of college football and NFL games.
—Eric Fisher and Amanda Christovich
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Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports
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After reaching carriage deals with Fox and NBCUniversal, YouTube TV failed to do the same with Disney, and a series of channels, including ESPN and ABC, are now dark on the No. 4 U.S. pay-TV distributor.
Amid an already tense negotiation that’s grown progressively worse in recent weeks, more than 20 Disney channels were pulled at midnight on Friday, and the current dispute arrives in the midst of a particularly crowded point of the sports calendar.
Core of the Dispute
Like many other distribution battles, the Disney–YouTube TV conflict centers mostly on carriage fees, though larger structural issues, such as how Disney’s Hulu interacts with YouTube TV, are also at play. As programming costs continue to rise, the ability of Google-owned YouTube TV to present itself as a low-cost alternative to traditional cable and satellite TV—a core part of its original business model—becomes more challenged.
“Last week, Disney used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers,” YouTube TV said late Thursday in a statement. “They’re now following through on that threat, suspending their content on YouTube TV. This decision directly harms our subscribers while benefiting their own live TV products, including Hulu + Live TV and Fubo.”
In its own statement, ESPN lamented the loss of key upcoming sports coverage on YouTube TV, “anchored” by the NFL, NBA, and a college football slate this weekend that includes 13 of the 25 top-ranked teams on its networks.
“With a $3 trillion market cap, Google is using its market dominance to eliminate competition and undercut the industry-standard terms we’ve successfully negotiated with every other distributor,” ESPN said. “We know how frustrating this is for YouTube TV subscribers and remain committed to working toward a resolution as quickly as possible.”
Before the expiration of the prior pact, ESPN had increasingly used top on-air talent such as Stephen A. Smith, Mike Greenberg, and Scott Van Pelt to alert viewers of a potential blackout.
In a company memo sent Friday to Disney employees, the company’s leadership continued its criticism of YouTube TV and Google.
“Their actions make clear how little regard they have for their customers and are consistent with an attitude which has been prevalent throughout our negotiations—YouTube TV and its owner, Google, are not interested in achieving a fair deal with us,” wrote ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman. “Instead, they want to use their power and extraordinary resources to eliminate competition and devalue the very content that helped them build their service.”
Deal Points
There have been negotiations between the two sides about creating more genre-specific packages, including in sports, similar to the more flexible offerings that Disney has developed with other distributors. Nothing definitive has emerged there, however.
YouTube TV reiterated that if the Disney channels remain dark for an “extended period of time,” it will offer subscribers a $20 credit. A similar situation is unfolding with Spanish-language TelevisaUnivision, which has also been dark on YouTube TV since Sept. 30.
Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr has publicly remained on the sidelines of the YouTube TV–Disney dispute, perhaps surprisingly after he weighed in on several others.
The YouTube TV situation is also happening in an otherwise busy week for Disney, including the closing of its acquisition of majority control of Fubo and a separate settlement with YouTube regarding executive Justin Connolly. Connolly has reportedly recused himself from the Disney–YouTube TV carriage talks. Fubo, meanwhile, will now be merged with Hulu + Live TV.
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By the time LSU officials sat down Friday morning to address the media, they were solemn and bleary-eyed from the theatrics of the previous week.
It began Sunday night with the abrupt firing of football coach Brian Kelly; then the public meddling of Louisiana’s governor, emboldened without a university president. It ended with LSU and athletic director Scott Woodward parting ways Thursday night. The university had no permanent football coach, athletic director, or university president.
But Friday morning, flanked by LSU board chairman Scott Ballard and board athletics committee chairman John Carmouche, interim AD Verge Ausberry tried to take the power back for LSU athletics.
“LSU,” Ausberry, a Louisiana native, former LSU football player, and longtime athletics official, proclaimed, “is not broken.”
Ausberry said the athletic department has assembled a search committee—which includes himself as well as Carmouche, Ballard, and big-name LSU donors—to find “the best football coach there is.” He added, “Whatever it takes to get that person here, we will do.”
Damage Control
The trio also distanced themselves from the comments Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry made Wednesday and Thursday during a media blitz. They denied Landry’s claim that taxpayer dollars might find their way into Kelly’s pocket. They also implied that the next coach could still receive a major buyout, appearing to dismiss Landry’s request to avoid another Kelly-esque buyout in the next contract.
Going into last Saturday’s game against Texas A&M in Baton Rouge, there were already disgruntled rumblings about Kelly. But after the Aggies trounced the Tigers 49–25, bringing LSU’s record to 5–3 (2–3 in SEC play), Kelly’s tenure came to an end hours later. He is owed a $53 million buyout for his troubles per his contract, though the university said it was negotiating an exit agreement.
During his Friday presser, Ausberry said he walked onto the field between the third and fourth quarters of the A&M game. “I saw empty seats. Empty suites. … It’s not a good thing.”
After the firing, rumors flew that Landry—a Republican Louisiana native with a thick Cajun accent—had been involved in the decision, given that a meeting was held in the governor’s mansion Sunday afternoon.
The Governor Sounds Off
On Wednesday, during a press conference not about football, Landry addressed those rumors.
He explained the purpose was to discuss the terms of Kelly’s buyout and how it would be funded, not to weigh in on whether to fire him.
During a subsequent media tour that included a cameo on The Pat McAfee Show as well as local Louisiana sports radio, Landry repeated a concern that Louisiana taxpayers might be on the hook for Kelly’s buyout, given that LSU is a public university that receives taxpayer funds, and that LSU was supposed to pay Kelly’s buyout if other donors didn’t offer their own private funds.
LSU athletics is self-funded, however, and has even given funds to the university, rather than the other way around. As is the case at many top programs, buyouts are funded through athletic department revenues and donations, Ballard said. Added Carmouche on Friday: “Let me make it clear: The state has never and the taxpayers have never paid for a coach, and never will.”
For more on the fallout inside LSU athletics and the power struggle behind these decisions, read Amanda Christovich’s full story here.
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Despite a particularly crowded sports calendar and some grumbling within hockey, the National Hockey League’s Frozen Frenzy this week posted strong viewership increases.
ESPN said it logged a 20% viewership bump compared to last year for its tripleheader coverage of the NHL Frozen Frenzy on Tuesday, which featured all 32 teams in the league playing on a single night. In particular, coverage of a Penguins-Flyers game on the network averaged 680,000 viewers, up 67% from the NHL’s season-long average on ESPN last year.
Now, in its third year, NHL Frozen Frenzy is designed to provide an additional boost to early-season play, not dissimilar to how the NBA created the Emirates NBA Cup to help elevate pre-holiday interest in that league. In addition to the three featured games on ESPN itself, the other 13 from NHL Frozen Frenzy were on ESPN+, set up with staggered starts over a five-hour period. ESPN then supplemented it with an NFL RedZone–style whiparound show.
NHL Frozen Frenzy, however, went up against Game 4 of the World Series, which generated an average of 21.5 million viewers across the U.S. and Canada. Much of the elevated audience for MLB stems from the presence of the Blue Jays in the World Series and the rabid fandom for the team across Canada, a traditional hotbed for hockey.
The NHL could not have known what the Blue Jays would do when it set the Oct. 28 date for Frozen Frenzy earlier this year. The game dates for the World Series, however, have also been established for months, and the NHL still went up against it. Multiple reports pointed to complaints from some NHL team executives about schedule disruptions in local markets created by NHL Frozen Frenzy, despite the nonstop hockey action that the night provided.
NHL Frozen Frenzy featured five of the sixteen games going to overtime and four featuring at least nine goals scored.
For the season, meanwhile, ESPN is up 40% in NHL viewership to an average of 587,000 per game.
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As the deadline to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement was about to expire Friday, the WNBA and the players agreed to a 30-day extension to continue negotiations, pushing the new deadline to Nov. 30. FOS women’s sports reporter Annie Costabile breaks down the current state of talks and whether there is still a real chance of a lockout or strike if negotiations break down.
Meanwhile, after being publicly told by the state’s governor he would not be hiring LSU’s next football coach, athletic director Scott Woodward announced he would be leaving the school just days after the university dismissed Brian Kelly with the second-largest contract buyout. FOS college sports reporter Amanda Christovich tells Baker Machado how the situation at the school has unraveled to the point that they now will need to hire a new coach, AD, and university president.
Plus, the latest on how long YouTube TV subscribers might be without ESPN and ABC after the carriage dispute between Google and Disney, and the Emirates NBA Cup 2025 tips off tonight for its third year with even more prize money at stake for players.
Watch the full episode here.
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Ohtani flexibility ⬆ With the Dodgers down 3–2 in the World Series entering Friday’s Game 6, Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said he’s considering all options for his two-way superstar, including pitching in relief or playing the outfield in Game 7, if that happens. Shohei Ohtani has never pitched in relief in his MLB career, but he has in Japan and in the World Baseball Classic, only rarely made outfield appearances while previously playing for the Angels. If Ohtani enters a game as a reliever after starting as a designated hitter, he would need to play a position to remain in the game. “I think we would consider everything,” Roberts said. “Everything should be on the table and will be, for sure.”
Bears ⬇ The NFL team’s long-embattled bid to build a stadium and mixed-use development hit another setback as it left the Illinois fall legislative session without any tangible progress. The team intends to build on land it owns in suburban Arlington Heights, Ill., but it has been looking for legislative help that would allow it to negotiate directly with local taxing authorities. The Bears have said the stadium and mixed-use development cost, already more than $5 billion, rises by more than $10 million per month.
Netflix ⬆⬇ The streaming giant is exploring a bid for the studio and streaming business of Warner Bros. Discovery and has hired investment bank Moelis & Co. to aid it, according to a Reuters report, and despite the company saying last week in an investor call about a potential acquisition that “nothing is a must for us to meet our goals.” It is not clear whether WBD will agree to a sale for only part of the company.
Dolphins ⬇ The team parted ways with GM Chris Grier on Friday, ending a 25-year tenure with the team that included holding down the GM role since 2016. The Dolphins are 2–7 after an ugly home loss to the Ravens on Thursday, and they are headed toward potentially their worst season since 2007. “We must improve—in 2025, 2026, and beyond—and it needs to start right now,” Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said. Champ Kelly will be the team’s interim GM.
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 | “The Ringer” sold to Spotify in 2020. |
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 | Betting issues will exist “at all levels for the foreseeable future.” |
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Can you rank the top 5 active NBA players by the most all-time triple-doubles?
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