What happens when two multi-billion-dollar companies are at loggerheads over rights deals and financial negotiations? It results in blacked-out live programs, angry customers, and a whole lot of backlash on social media.
That is exactly what is going on currently, as YouTube TV and ESPN, or rather their parent companies, Google and Disney, respectively, are unable to reach an agreement. What started out as an issue between the two companies over the weekend eventually led to a blackout of the Monday Night Football (MNF) game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Dallas Cowboys.
YouTube TV, which has around 10 million subscribers, did not showcase college football games on Saturday, nor the MNF game between the Cardinals and the Cowboys. This has left several customers, who have paid a good amount of money for the subscription, upset and wanting a resolution as soon as possible.
Among the plethora of customers to be left unable to watch their favorite live sporting events, former NFL defensive end turned analyst J.J. Watt voiced out his concerns on behalf of all subscribers while speaking on the ‘Pat McAfee Show’.
Watt’s passionate rant over missing out on being able to watch his former team, the Arizona Cardinals, play on MNF was the voice of millions of others who felt the same way. As a fan of the game and as a paid customer, Watt expressed his dissatisfaction over the situation and appealed to the respective companies to ‘Figure it out’.
“It’s football. We need it,” Watt said on the Pat McAfee Show. ”And I’m not going to enter my information on another frickin’ website, and I’m not getting a confirmation code sent to my email, clicking it and coming back and putting it in—I’m not doing it. I did it once, I have some sort of subscription, I have no clue what it is because I can only watch frickin’ half the content apparently, or it’s replay content that’s bull…..Figure it out.”
Apparently, with all that is going on between the two companies, several media personalities requested users to visit another website so that they could continue watching the games. Watt lashed out over that as well, unhappy that he should have to enter his details into another website when he has already done it once.
The fact of the matter is that whatever the issues are in terms of negotiations, it is the common man who wants nothing more than to watch sports, is having to suffer due to no fault of his own. A speedy resolution is the need of the hour, else the backlash will escalate further as people continue to miss out on their favorite sporting events.
Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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