Disney agreed to $50M settlement over claims it made live-TV streaming expensive

Lawsuit alleged Disney inflated market prices by making carriers include ESPN. The Walt Disney Company has agreed to pay $50 million to subscribers of YouTube TV and DirecTV’s live TV streaming services to settle a lawsuit that claimed that Disney forced these services to raise their prices. In November 2022, four YouTube TV subscribers filed a class action complaint (PDF) against Disney in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. They accused Disney of entering “anticompetitive agreements with YouTube TV” and other companies that provide access to broadcast channels via the Internet. The complaint argued that Disney forced over-the-top (OTT) live TV services to cost more by requiring distributors to include ESPN, which Disney owns, with their base packages. Additionally, by raising prices for ESPN and for Hulu + Live TV, (Disney’s own OTT live TV service that includes ESPN), Disney drove up prices across the industry, the complaint argued. The filing claimed that Disney had “pricing power over the entire” streaming live pay TV (SLPTV) market for two main reasons: … these carriage agreement mandates—which now cover all of Disney’s leading competitors in the SL