Bad sign for ‘Monday Night Football’: DirecTV files FCC complaint against Disney, leaving some NFL viewers in the dark

By Robert Ilich, CNN

(CNN) — DirecTV filed a complaint Saturday with the Federal Communications Commission alleging Disney did not negotiate in good faith as the two sides remain at an impasse on a distribution deal.

“Disney has violated the FCC’s good faith mandates by predicating any licensing agreement on DIRECTV’s waiving any legal claims on Disney’s past, current, or future anticompetitive actions, including its ongoing packaging and minimum penetration demands,” a DirecTV spokesperson told CNN on Sunday.

In the 10-page complaint, DirecTV claimed the negotiations stalled because, “Disney insists on bundling and penetration requirements that a federal district court judge in New York recently found in the context of the ‘Venu’ joint venture to be unlawful, anticompetitive, and ‘bad for consumers.’”

On August 16, a federal judge temporarily blocked the launch of Venu Sports, a joint sports streaming venture from Disney, Fox Corporation and Warner Brothers Discovery after Fubo, a sports streaming service, filed a lawsuit against the media giants. Warner Brothers Discovery is the parent company of CNN.

More than 11 million subscribers have been affected by Disney pulling its ABC stations, ESPN and other cable networks from DirecTV’s lineup last week. The blackout came ahead of the upcoming presidential debate on ABC between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the final rounds of US Open tennis and the start of the NFL season. ESPN owns the broadcast rights to “Monday Night Football,” which will be blacked out for DirecTV subscribers unless a deal is reached.

“We continue to negotiate with DirecTV to restore access to our content as quickly as possible,” a Disney spokesperson told CNN on Sunday. “We urge DirecTV to stop creating diversions and instead prioritize their customers by finalizing a deal that would allow their subscribers to watch our strong upcoming lineup of sports, news and entertainment programming, starting with the return of Monday Night Football.”

DirecTV subscribers have been blacked out of Disney’s owned-and-operated ABC local stations in six major media markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and San Francisco — as well as the smaller markets of Fresno, California, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

The opening game for “Monday Night Football” features the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers. In 2023, the first “Monday Night Football” game — a matchup between the Buffalo Bills and the Jets — drew 22.64 million viewers, its biggest audience of the ESPN era, which dates back to 2006.

The blackout also includes ESPN’s suite of channels and the Disney Channel, Disney Jr., FX and National Geographic.

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CNN’s Liam Reilly contributed to this report.