DirecTV loses ESPN channels amid rate dispute
Millions of sports fans tuning in to see U.S. Open tennis, a key National League East baseball game and one of the marquee matchups of college football’s opening weekend got an unwanted surprise Sunday night. Due to a dispute between DirecTV and the Walt Disney Company, which owns the ESPN family of channels and the ABC affiliates in eight TV markets, the channels were no longer available to the satellite operator’s subscribers. The immediate impact of the impasse was that the Atlanta Braves-Philadelphia Phillies game on ESPN and the tennis on ESPN2 were blacked out for DirecTV customers.
In addition, the college football game featuring No. 23 Southern California and No. 13 LSU, which was airing on ABC, was unavailable for DirecTV customers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Durham-Raleigh-Fayetteville and Fresno. DirecTV wrote in a statement, “Just hours before Disney pulled its programming from millions of DirecTV customers, they demanded that to reach any licensing agreement or extend access to its programming, DirecTV must agree to waive all claims that Disney’s behavior is anti-competitive.
Disney and ESPN issued a statement that read, “DirecTV chose to deny millions of subscribers access to our content just as we head into the final week of the U.S. Open and gear up for college football and the opening of the NFL season. While we’re open to offering DirecTV flexibility and terms which we’ve extended to other distributors, we will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs.
