The Walt Disney Company has filed a tortious interference lawsuit against Google-owned YouTube for poaching a top sports executive while the two sides were in the middle of negotiating a new carriage deal.
The matter concerns the hiring of Justin Connolly, a former Disney executive who left the company earlier this month to take a job at YouTube as its new global head of media and sports.
Disney first learned that YouTube had made Connolly an offer last month, according to the lawsuit. Connolly informed his managers at Disney that he was leaving the company for another role, but didn’t disclose he was going to YouTube, the company asserts.
The departure came as a bit of a surprise, given that Connolly had executed a new contract with Disney that was supposed to keep him at the company through 2027, Disney said.
The move also came at a time when Disney was in the process of negotiating a new contract with YouTube for the continued carriage of ABC, ESPN and other channels on YouTube TV. Disney last renewed its carriage deal with YouTube in 2021 after a brief dispute.
“Connolly has intimate knowledge of Disney’s other distribution deals, the financial details concerning Disney’s content being licensed to YouTube, and Disney’s negotiation strategies, both in general and in particular with respect to YouTube,” Disney said in its complaint. “It would be extremely prejudicial to Disney for Connolly to breach the contract which he negotiated just a few months ago and switch teams when Disney is working on a new licensing deal with the company that is trying to poach him.”
Disney has not commented publicly about the matter beyond its lawsuit. Google and YouTube have not made public statements about the issue.
In addition to the YouTube renewal, Disney is in the process of developing and launching a new direct-to-consumer streaming service that brings ESPN’s cable multiplex to the Internet without a traditional pay TV bundle for the first time.
