DirecTV Subscribers Lose ESPN, Disney, ABC. What’s Next?

DirecTV viewers expecting to watch the LSU-USC football game or US Open tennis on Sunday were unfortunately out of luck as Disney suddenly pulled all of its programming channels — including ESPN, ABC, Hulu, Freeform and FX — off the satellite TV service.

Disney’s decision to remove its programming appears to stem from a dispute over its licensing agreement with DirecTV. On Sunday night, Disney stated it “will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs.”

Part of the dispute could be related to a class-action antitrust lawsuit against the Disney. In a statement Sunday, DirecTV noted its objection to agree to “waive all claims that Disney’s behavior is anti-competitive” in any agreements and warned against Disney’s “last-minute demands to foreclose upon any legal accountability for its growing pattern of anti-competitive actions.”

Redditors in the r/tennis subreddit on Sunday reported on the sudden outage of US Open tennis coverage due to the loss of ESPN. One redditor lamented they were on a JetBlue flight when the channels stopped working — JetBlue uses DirecTV for its on-flight streaming TV service.

Which viewers are impacted by the Disney channel outage on DirecTV?

In its statement Sunday, DirecTV said that “millions of DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and U-verse customers” lost access to Disney programming channels. That programming includes include Disney Plus, ESPN, ABC, Hulu, Freeform and FX. According to Statista, DirecTV had 11.3 million subscribers in Q4 2023.

When will Disney channels return to DirectTV?

The beef between Disney and DirecTV this year brings a bit of football season deja vu. Last year, on Aug. 31, 2023, Spectrum TV viewers suddenly lost access to Disney programming due to another licensing agreement dispute. 

Disney and Spectrum eventually resolved their differences, but it took until Sept. 11. Since this licensing agreement dispute is different, there’s no indication yet if DirecTV viewers will have ESPN back by the time the 49ers host the Jets for the first Monday Night Football game on Sept. 9. We’ll keep updating this story as we learn more.