There’s a reason networks treat the Dallas Cowboys like a guaranteed ratings cheat code. Put them in primetime and people watch, regardless of record, regardless of playoff hopes, regardless of whether they’re any good that particular season. The Cowboys are the ultimate leverage in any negotiation involving sports broadcasting rights.
Or at least they’re supposed to be.
Disney and YouTube TV entered Day 4 of their carriage dispute Monday with a Cowboys-Cardinals Monday Night Football matchup on the docket, and 10 million YouTube TV subscribers already locked out of watching it. Disney is hemorrhaging approximately $5 million per day in lost subscriber fees — $150 million per month that’s gone forever — regardless of when this dispute eventually resolves. At the same time, YouTube TV is fielding subscription cancellations and an avalanche of complaints from customers furious about missing the sports programming they’re paying $82.99 monthly to access.
Both companies had clear financial incentives to end this before the Cowboys took the field Monday night. But YouTube TV had already telegraphed its position hours earlier when Disney offered to temporarily restore ABC for Election Day coverage on Tuesday. The proposal seemed reasonable enough, allowing subscribers to watch election results, easing some public pressure, and potentially restarting negotiations.
At a minimum, rejecting it would make YouTube TV look unreasonable in the eyes of the public.
YouTube TV rejected it anyway.
“There are plenty of other options for customers,” YouTube TV said in a statement. “Election news information is very widely available across other broadcast stations and news networks on YouTube TV, as well as on the main YouTube service, for free. In fact, on the last two U.S. election days, the vast majority of tuned in YouTube TV subscribers chose not to watch ABC.”
YouTube TV backed up that rejection with data showing most of its subscribers don’t even watch ABC on election days. If they won’t move for an election, a football game wouldn’t change the calculus.
Even if it’s the freaking Dallas Cowboys.
Which brings us to Monday Night Football. If there’s one asset in Disney’s portfolio that should force YouTube TV’s hand, it’s this. The Cowboys are appointment television. Joe Buck has said multiple times he’d call Dallas games every single week if the schedule allowed it because “they get eyeballs” and “they’re the biggest draw in the NFL.”
Good TV, baby. That’s what Buck calls them. And he’s right. The Cowboys deliver ratings that make advertisers write checks and keep ESPN at the center of the sports media universe. Losing a Cowboys game in primetime means ESPN misses out on massive viewership numbers that justify its entire existence as the most expensive cable network in America.
But those ratings don’t directly translate to revenue for ESPN the way most people assume. ESPN makes its money from per-subscriber fees, roughly $15 per month per customer who gets the channel, regardless of distributor. Ratings matter for advertising revenue and for justifying subscriber fees to distributors, but missing one night of Cowboys viewership doesn’t directly cost ESPN that much.
That $5 million per day Disney is losing while ESPN remains dark on YouTube TV? That’s the real financial damage. Those are subscriber fees from 10 million YouTube TV customers that Disney will never recover, regardless of how this dispute resolves. Add it up over a month, and it’s $150 million gone. Over a full year, it would be $1.8 billion.
YouTube TV isn’t losing guaranteed daily revenue the same way. Their problem is subscriber attrition. Customers are canceling because YouTube TV no longer delivers the sports programming they signed up for. People are switching to Hulu + Live TV or Fubo because they’re not paying $82.99 a month for a service that misses ESPN during the football season.
That’s a real risk for YouTube TV. Sports are the primary reason most people still pay for live television service. Take away ESPN, and you’re asking subscribers to keep paying full price for something that just lost a significant part of its value proposition. Some customers will definitely cancel. Some will switch to competitors. The ones who bought NFL Sunday Ticket as a YouTube TV add-on are especially trapped. They can’t leave without forfeiting the $378 they already paid for Sunday Ticket.
But YouTube TV could win back subscribers once this resolves. Google can run promotions, offer discounts, and market ESPN’s return as a victory. Some people who left won’t come back, but enough might to make the short-term subscriber losses acceptable if it means establishing more favorable long-term carriage rates with Disney.
Disney can’t recoup its daily losses. Every day ESPN is off YouTube TV, those subscriber fees just disappear. When a deal is eventually reached, there’s no retroactive payment for the days YouTube TV didn’t carry Disney’s channels. The $5 million bleeding out each day is simply gone.
The Cowboys were supposed to tip that balance. Disney bet that losing Monday Night Football would create enough subscriber pressure to force YouTube TV back to the table on Disney’s terms. But YouTube TV already showed they’re willing to absorb that pain by rejecting the Election Day olive branch. If they weren’t going to panic, then one NFL game wouldn’t change things.