DirecTV has brought its distribution fight with the Walt Disney Company to some of the biggest college sports conferences in the country.
This week, DirecTV’s Head of State and Local Affairs Hamlin Wade sent letters to the commissioners and other key leaders at the Southeastern Conference (SEC), Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and Big 12 Conference, asking for their support in its ongoing dispute with Disney over broadcast and cable channels that were carried on the satellite and streaming platform.
Pro Access: Read the letters DirecTV sent to college sports conferences
Disney-owned ESPN offers games played by schools who participate in the three conferences, with some games also available through the broadcast network ABC. ESPN and other Disney-owned channels have been unavailable to millions of DirecTV residential and business customers since September 1, when a contract between the two companies expired without a new agreement in place. The programming dispute also affects customers of DirecTV Stream and U-Verse (formerly AT&T U-Verse).
On Wednesday, DirecTV said it was appealing to the college conferences with the hope that they would support the company’s mission of “allowing alumni, students, and fans to obtain more flexible programming packages and lower-priced options in one simple experience.”
To that end, DirecTV is asking Disney to be more flexible in how its broadcast and cable channels are distributed to customers. In prior public statements, DirecTV executives noted Disney was willing to embrace the model for its own service, called Venu Sports, which sought to sell sports-inclusive channels without entertainment or news networks owned by it, Fox Corporation and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) — but won’t extend the same genre-based bundling model to other pay TV distributors.
“Fan loyalty is at the core of our mission: We want to offer maximum choice and value by empowering fans to choose the content they want at lower price points, not forcing them to accept a bloated bundle of expensive channels they don’t watch,” Wade wrote in the letter to the conferences. “Instead of digging in their heels and demanding the status quo, we need Disney to work with us to create more flexible options that better serve today’s consumer preferences.”
Related: Get the latest news on the dispute between DirecTV and Disney
For its part, Disney executives say they’re willing to work with DirecTV on more flexible options, and have already offered the company the ability to drop certain channels from programming packages and hook up DirecTV subscribers with access to Disney-owned streaming services. The arrangement is substantially similar to an agreement reached between Disney and Charter Communications following a brief programming blackout that affected Spectrum TV customers last year.
Sports is a major driver of interest to pay television and a big revenue generator for broadcasters like Disney. The Mickey Mouse company recently plunked down $3 billion to secure the rights to college sports from the SEC over the next decade. It also programs a dedicated channel, called SEC Network, which is sold to cable and satellite companies alongside ESPN and other sports-inclusive networks. (It has a similar arrangement with the ACC.)
“Disney’s actions have denied alumni, students, and fans the simple pleasure of cheering on their favorite teams and reinvesting their loyalties into these universities,” Wade continued. “This (flexibility and choice) will help guarantee the public, whose taxes and tuition help pay for the public universities in your conference, access to the content they love and deserve.”
The letter claimed Disney’s “unwillingness to evolve” through DirecTV’s idea of distributing channels around genres makes it “harder and more expensive for your fans to watch the teams they love.”
“We can smoothly transition to a new service model to give consumers more choice, control, and value to complement Disney and other programmers’ streaming offerings, delivering a new solution where everyone wins,” the letter concludes.
