The holidays can be an ignition point for some families, and the small world of television — where everyone knows everyone — is no exception.
This week, Disney-owned streaming service Fubo started trading public barbs with Comcast’s NBC Universal, just in time for Thanksgiving. The issue? Fubo’s decision to pull dozens of NBC-owned channels from its sports-inclusive streaming platform after a distribution agreement between the two sides lapsed without a new one in place.
The common element of the dispute is the price Fubo and Disney must pay NBC Universal and Comcast for the privilege of offering local NBC stations and affiliates, regional NBC-sports branded channels and national networks like CNBC, MS NOW, Bravo, E!, USA Network, SyFy and Golf Channel, plus more than a dozen streaming, ad-supported channels like Bravo Vault, NBC Vault, NBC GolfPass, NBC News Now and SNL Vault.
Fubo is also holding out hope that NBC Universal will let it sell subscriptions to Comcast’s streamer Peacock through its newly-launched Channel Store platform, similar to how it sells third-party apps like Paramount Plus with Showtime, Starz and MGM Plus. Fubo is hoping NBC Universal will allow it to offer Peacock’s shows, movies and live sports directly through its platform, rather than forcing subscribers to switch out of Fubo and into the Peacock app.
Some of NBC Universal’s agreements allow for this: Amazon sells Peacock through its Prime Video Channels, and offers Peacock’s live and on-demand catalog through the Prime Video app. But others, like YouTube TV, only have permission to sell access to Peacock — content isn’t offered through YouTube TV natively.
Comcast is hoping for an arrangement that is similar to its agreement with YouTube TV, rather than the one it brokered with Amazon. The company apparently feels Fubo is closer in nature to YouTube TV — both are, essentially, streaming cable TV replacements — while Amazon is on an island of its own.
“Fubo has chosen to drop NBC Universal programming despite being offered the same terms agreed to by hundreds of other distributors,” a spokesperson for NBC Universal said in a statement. “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.”
That is true — Fubo has walked away from other programming partners in recent years. Most notably, the company ended its agreement with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) in 2020, which means subscribers of the sports-inclusive service can’t watch live events from TNT Sports and don’t have access to other channels like CNN, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet and TBS. (Both companies have held off-and-on discussions in the years since about returning the channels, but nothing has materialized.)
Fubo also dropped channels from AMC Networks in 2023 after the company started selling access to its linear networks and on-demand programming through AMC Plus, and Fubo stopped offering channels from Televisa-Univision around this time last year.
On Tuesday, Fubo went into damage-control mode, telling its 1.6 million subscribers that it is simply looking out for their best interests.
Among other things, the streamer noted that Comcast is in the process of spinning out many of its cable networks into a new company called Versant, which includes sports-inclusive channels like Golf Channel and USA Network. Other ancillary channels, like E! and SyFy, aren’t “worth the cost to Fubo subscribers,” the company said, but it still offered Comcast a one-year deal to carry them — just enough time to cover the transitionary period.
Comcast didn’t like that arrangement. Instead, it wants the future Versant channels to be covered under the same agreement as NBC, Bravo, the newly-launched NBCSN and the regional sports networks — an agreement that it hopes will run for several years.
Comcast also wants Fubo to offer “non-sports channels” in its lower-priced, sports-focused tier called, appropriately, Fubo Sports. Fubo didn’t say which channels Comcast wanted it to offer; in the past, the company has required services like DIRECTV and its own Xfinity TV service to offer national news networks CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), in lower-priced, sports-inclusive tiers.
“Fubo is committed to bringing its subscribers a premium, competitively-priced live TV streaming experience with the content they love,” the company said on Tuesday. “That includes multiple content options, including a sports-focused service, that can be accessed directly from the Fubo app. We hope (NBC Universal) reconsiders their stance, or we’ll be forced to move forward without them.”
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