{"id":192627,"date":"2025-09-30T16:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T16:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/192627\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T16:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T16:11:07","slug":"youtube-tv-trying-to-rewrite-pay-tv-playbook-with-streaming-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/192627\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube TV Trying To Rewrite Pay-TV Playbook With Streaming Deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHaving rapidly grown from startup to dominant pay-TV<\/a> operator, YouTube TV<\/a> now appears to be looking to level up again by incorporating partners\u2019 streaming<\/a> programming directly into its user interface.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis drive to \u201cingest\u201d content, as opposed to merely \u201cintegrating\u201d third-party services as many operators already do, has become a point of contention in a carriage standoff with NBCUniversal<\/a>. In the model preferred by YouTube, even streaming exclusives (like Premier League soccer on Peacock, for example) would be accessible directly via YouTube TV as opposed to having to leave the app. The result for the tech giant is better engagement and improved advertising and subscriber metrics, though media companies trying to goose direct-to-subscriptions would have a tougher time attracting and keeping subscribers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe current NBCU deal, as well as one with TelevisaUnivision<\/a>, are both set to expire Tuesday night at midnight ET.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBCU last week claimed that YouTube TV \u201chas refused the best rates and terms in the market, demanding preferential treatment and seeking an unfair advantage over competitors.\u201d YouTube TV countered that NBCU is \u201casking us to pay more than what they charge consumers for the same content on Peacock.\u201d Asked directly about the issue of ingesting content, a spokesperson said, \u201cWe\u2019re all about user choice and finding simpler ways for consumers to access the content they love. That flexibility is a win-win: it\u2019s better for consumers, and it presents more business opportunities for us and our partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBCU and TelevisaUnivision<\/a> disputes followed battles earlier this year pitting Paramount Global<\/a> and Fox Corp.<\/a> against YouTube TV, which has hit 10 million subscribers since its 2017 launch. Disney and ESPN<\/a>, meanwhile, are just weeks away from a fall renewal deadline, with arguably even more at stake given the recent launch of ESPN\u2019s comprehensive direct-to-consumer service.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLegacy media companies have realized just how hard direct-to-consumer streaming is compared to the historic stickiness (friction) of physical hardware in a subscriber\u2019s home tied to large bundles of programming,\u201d wrote Lightshed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield in a recent blog post<\/a>. With so much premium programming, even sports, now available outside of the large and onerous MVPD packages and subscriptions able to be canceled at a touch of a button, he added, \u201cunsurprisingly, we have seen all the legacy media streaming platforms shift back toward wholesaling their streaming services\u201d via third parties.<\/p>\n

\n\tA reliance on Amazon Channels, which enables streaming services to gain scale based on the tech giant\u2019s massive flywheel but denies them full ownership of those subscribers, was \u201cthe first shoe to fall,\u201d Greenfield wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBCU and Amazon in August announced a comprehensive distribution deal<\/a> including Peacock that likely got YouTube TV\u2019s attention, multiple industry sources told Deadline.<\/p>\n

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, while he has long been a proponent of Amazon Channels as a driver of subscriptions, recently lamented the cluttered and disjointed state of the streaming marketplace. There are \u201ctoo many players in the market,\u201d he said during a Goldman Sachs conference this month. \u201cWhen viewers put on their TV, it\u2019s a terrible consumer experience. In almost every market in the world, there\u2019s just way too many choices. And you\u2019re googling, \u2018Where is it? How do I get from one to the other? How do I get into that platform?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYouTube TV\u2019s quest to streamline that experience, as with so much else in the industry, could come down to simple economics. \u201cIt\u2019s about what they\u2019re willing to pay for that incremental content,\u201d one senior exec at a rival distributor tells Deadline of the NBCU impasse.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany of the statements from NBCU and TelevisaUnivision have pointed to YouTube\u2019s ownership by Google. On a larger level, the tech giant\u2019s Gemini AI platform has been mobilized as a way of siphoning off search traffic and keeping users on Google. Many TV industry observers, even people outside of companies negotiating with YouTube TV, have drawn that parallel and they worry that it will confer unfair advantages on a tech giant whose main business has nothing to do with media or Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet, Greenfield points out, \u201cThe irony is that while legacy media wants to build direct customer relationships and control the data, they are not very good at leveraging data nor building tech, implying that allowing YouTube TV to ingest and market the content within its platform would actually drive engagement for legacy media\u2019s content.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIngestion has come up in several recent negotiations, the pay-TV exec added, with programmers often citing Amazon Channels deals. \u201cThey have such scale and they do provide access to select data,\u201d the exec said. \u201cPeople are making us offers that if we can match the data they\u2019re getting from other companies like Amazon, then we can ingest their programming directly into our experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked at an Axios conference in New York this month about YouTube TV, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro took an upbeat tone. He pointed to recent deals with DirecTV and Fubo for their streamlined sports-centric packages, saying they bode well for talks with YouTube. The desire of distributors to offer price-sensitive consumers in a cord-cutting environment a menu of more targeted TV packages has prompted epic carriage disputes between Disney and both Charter and DirecTV given Disney\u2019s array of channels.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur mission is to serve the sports fan,\u201d Pitaro said. \u201cAnd so we want to be present across price points and across content offerings. So, this idea of a skinny bundle or sports\/broadcast offering made sense to us on the right terms. And so if you\u2019re asking me specifically about YouTube TV, our deal is coming up this fall, we\u2019re in discussions with them now. We are certainly open to a sports package or a genre-specific sports offering on the right business terms.\u201d (Left unmentioned was a major poaching lawsuit<\/a> filed last spring after 20-year Disney and ESPN distribution veteran Justin Connolly defected to YouTube TV.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Pitaro did not address the issue of ingestion vs. integration, the senior pay-TV exec said it is likely that Disney \u201cis trying to force Disney+ and Hulu and ESPN Unlimited to be integrated, rather than ingested.\u201d Especially given the value of sports rights, some programmers could also bifurcate their rights. \u201cIf YouTube is fighting for ingestion rights, Disney is likely pushing back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo-called \u201cleaking\u201d of premium programming, including sports, from linear TV to subscription streaming has exacerbated tensions between distribution partners. \u201cA lot of the controversy here has been caused by the shell game of moving content around,\u201d a distribution source tells Deadline. \u201cThere are certain SVODs connected to companies we have deals with, like WBD or AMC, we see a lot of overlap between the linear stuff we pay them for and what pops up on Discovery+ and AMC+. Creating a more centralized path to find that programming is something we are intent on doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having rapidly grown from startup to dominant pay-TV operator, YouTube TV now appears to be looking to level…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,352,16108,66294,7382,11126,72175],"class_list":{"0":"post-192627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-espn","10":"tag-nbcuniversal","11":"tag-pay-tv","12":"tag-streaming","13":"tag-televisaunivision","14":"tag-youtube-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}