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Just a week after solving a bitter carriage dispute with YouTube TV, Disney now finds itself on the other side of the table in another distribution battle.
Fubo, now under the control of the ESPN parent company, is now in the midst of a standoff with NBCUniversal. That programmer’s channels fell off the Fubo streaming service late Friday after the two entities were not able to come to terms on a new contract.
“Unfortunately, NBCU has offered terms regarding pricing and packaging that are egregiously above those offered to other distributors,” Fubo said in a statement. “There is no basis for this discrimination, and, as a result, Fubo subscribers would be denied important content or be forced to pay for what we believe to be exorbitant costs.”
NBCUniversal, conversely, said there was nothing unusual about its contract proposal to Fubo.
“Fubo has chosen to drop NBCUniversal programming despite being offered the same terms agreed to by hundreds of other distributors,” the company said. “Unfortunately, this is par for the course for Fubo—they’ve dropped numerous networks in recent years at the expense of their customers, who continue to lose content.”
The ongoing dispute does not have quite the same market impact as the prior Disney–YouTube TV battle: YouTube TV is the No. 4 U.S. pay-TV distributor, and Fubo is far smaller with 1.6 million subscribers. Fubo, however, served as an alternate choice for some YouTube TV subscribers during the depths of the prior Disney blackout there.
The current blackout of NBCU channels on Fubo, meanwhile, means the loss of content such as Sunday Night Football, the NBA, college football, and the Premier League to those subscribers. Those Fubo subscribers also with Peacock, however, will still have access to the NBCU content aired there, particularly live sports.
Fubo said it will offer subscribers a $15 direct credit if the NBCU programming remains absent “for an extended period.”
Corporate Shifts
The dispute comes less than a month after Disney closed its deal to acquire Fubo. That agreement, first announced in January, helped resolve legal challenges that Fubo raised against the now-shuttered Venu Sports. The agreement includes a $220 million payment by Disney to Fubo and a $145 million loan scheduled for next year.
In the months since then, Disney went through a long regulatory review process, which included an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding potential antitrust issues.
Fubo will now be combined with Disney’s Hulu + Live TV to create the No. 6 pay-TV distributor in the U.S.
Prior to the Disney deal closing, Fubo had a history of taking a hard line with programmers, and in particular has been without channels from TNT Sports parent Warner Bros. Discovery since April 2024. Like YouTube TV, Fubo has positioned itself as a lower-cost and more-flexible alternative to traditional cable and satellite TV. That distinction, however, grows more dim with every carriage battle and price increase these streaming-based carriers have.
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