The Sporting Class: Inside Google's $200 Million War on ESPN

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Not my target demographic, but I appreciate the compliment.

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He is a professional.

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Does that mean he gets paid to do this?

Speaker 1 A lot. I get paid for a Segway, actually.
Wow.

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Speaker 1 Thursday is a day that used to mean a lot in the life of John Skipper and still does as a focus of this episode because it's Disney's fourth quarter earnings call day.

Speaker 1 And we are hearing and analyzing the sounds coming from two different corners. On one side is Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC.
The other side is what we call Alphabet, Google, which owns YouTube TV.

Speaker 1 And there is something that we got to explain for everybody who doesn't know the term that, of course, we're fluent in here on the sporting class but the term is carriage dispute

Speaker 1 john no i was trying to think of some funny joke about horses and carriages but i couldn't it does feel like

Speaker 2 there are potentially some horses asses involved here always the people who run your companies but the reason why you want to bring up carriage disputes is that you can't get something for nothing.

Speaker 2 And these companies have content. And content costs money to make, costs money to produce.
And there are platforms that want that content. YouTube TV charges people to get channels.

Speaker 2 Disney's got channels. They have to negotiate a price.

Speaker 2 And the reason you get all these disputes is there is a huge schism that exists right now over what people think their content is worth and what the platforms think their content is worth.

Speaker 2 And then you get major fights, the likes of which we're seeing right now.

Speaker 1 Right. So if you're a YouTube TV subscriber, as I am, I don't get ESPN.
ESPN has been blacked out. ABC, the games, likewise, blacked out.

Speaker 1 And a carriage is viewed, despite the conjuring of top hats and

Speaker 1 petticoats. And I think

Speaker 1 petticoats? Petticoats?

Speaker 1 Is it that I want those undergarments that women wore? Not

Speaker 1 coaches,

Speaker 1 not what the

Speaker 1 carriage drivers do. Well,

Speaker 1 my Google search does indicate that I may be providing a level of visibility that is unwanted. Actually.

Speaker 2 But expected.

Speaker 1 It's drag. And

Speaker 1 in this world, that's not allowed. Drag.

Speaker 1 So, petticoats. So, you've got carriage drivers wearing petticoats.

Speaker 2 Do you have people with you who still go over this show to see what's allowed in it? Or now that you're not in charge of bonuses, it's just balls to the wall.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 We can keep it in then.

Speaker 1 There's a manure reference that I've been holding on to that I'll discard. A manure, carriage disputes, horse manure,

Speaker 1 and the question of when John Skipper was president of ESPN, how many carriage disputes did you have to navigate?

Speaker 1 We never had a carriage dispute. If dispute is defined as not reaching an agreement, it goes public and you come off the air.

Speaker 1 Disney had such a formidable lineup, buttressed overwhelmingly by ESPN sports portfolio that made it pretty unthinkable for anybody to take ESPN off.

Speaker 1 I believe

Speaker 1 it still is destructive to any distributor who tries to take ESPN off, as I believe this is. I spent

Speaker 1 last Thursday and Friday at the University of Iowa. I was at the journalism school, creative writing school, and asked and was shocked when I asked for a show of hands and who has YouTube TV.

Speaker 1 So, one thing I discovered was its subscribers are overwhelmingly young. And by the way,

Speaker 1 it was the carrier of choice choice for the students. They all said they liked YouTube TV better.

Speaker 1 That was their carrier. I asked them who they blamed.
They said about 65, 35, we blame ESPN. By the way, they didn't say the Walt Disney Company.
They said we blame ESPN.

Speaker 1 And I said, what are you doing about this? And they said, we're switching carriers. So while they blame the SPN,

Speaker 2 we can stop there for one second because that's the whole game here, because we need to go a step further. Does Disney have any sort of platform? Yes, they have Hulu Live.
They have an ESPN app.

Speaker 2 So this is not like a work stoppage that happens in sports where there are no games being played. ESPN is still out there.
You can get it. You're a YouTube TV platform holder.
You can still get ESPN.

Speaker 2 You just have to get it a different way. It's not like when baseball goes on strike and there's no games being played.
It doesn't matter where you are or through what lens you're looking.

Speaker 2 There's no games. In this case, you can clearly still get ESPN and people are going to vote.
And the way they're voting is, hey, I can get rid of YouTube TV and I can get Hulu Live. Guess what?

Speaker 2 Hulu Live is the Disney company.

Speaker 2 So why would it not be a strategy for the Disney company to strangle YouTube TV, who's trying to overtake all of them, including Charter and NBC and Peacock are involved here because you've got Dish and Comcast.

Speaker 2 Why wouldn't this be a strategy for Hulu to try to get in the conversation and overtake all of those platforms?

Speaker 1 At least in the survey, which is not scientific, nor did I really

Speaker 1 add up the votes, they did not talk about switching to Hulu. They talked about switching to Comcast and DirecTV,

Speaker 1 right? I mean, that's the more logical for them place is just to go back and get another

Speaker 1 Disney options. Yeah.
And by the way, YouTube TV,

Speaker 1 everybody talks about it like it's different than Comcast. It's the same thing.
It's just delivered digitally rather than through coaxial cable or a telephone line.

Speaker 1 It's just a delivery of a multi-channel subscription. And these students want to get ESPN.
Nobody said a thing about missing Freeform

Speaker 1 or any other channel, including ABC. They were concerned about missing ESPN.

Speaker 1 And they said that while they believed that ESPN was somewhat responsible, they were going to end up punishing the distributor, whether they thought ESPN was responsible or not, because they want their games.

Speaker 1 And that's always been the power that ESPN brings to this. It is about the only channel, Fox News probably is the other one, that people will change their

Speaker 1 supplier. if they can't get ESPN.
If they can't get Fox News, they probably would as well. I don't think there's another channel.
Am Am I missing somebody?

Speaker 1 There's the.

Speaker 1 I think that's right. I think that's generally correct.
But I want to actually emphasize what is different about Google.

Speaker 1 Because the thing that happened in 2023, which we covered, by the way, with Charter, right? There was a carriage dispute, lasted 11 days. Now, that one did not touch Monday Night Football, right?

Speaker 1 And Monday Night Football, John, you've described it on the show previously as like the ultimate bulwark

Speaker 1 against canceling or against someone winning the arm wrestling contest with Disney over like what you get to charge for these games.

Speaker 1 And then 2024, September, a year ago, DirecTV, this is a 14-day carriage dispute in which they missed the season opener.

Speaker 1 They missed the NFL's kickoff September 9th, and it did cost them one Monday night football game.

Speaker 1 And that is unprecedented and also a symptom of something that seems to be changing at ESPN in terms of the landscape and the leverage it has, because now we're standing on the precipice of a second Monday Night Football game being cost, according to this Google carriage dispute.

Speaker 2 But you started and we talked, are they losing, reports are $5 million a day? And you started the show by talking about the earnings call that's coming.

Speaker 2 And if you're a Wall Street analyst and you are looking at a daily problem of $5 million a day, the impact it may have on this quarter's earnings, it may be there, a quarter of a penny, a half a penny, but what you're being told by the Disney people, by the C-suite people, by Iger is listen, problem now, maybe, but long term, if we don't hold our ground here, if we do not explain to YouTube TV the way we are going to operate, and then he's still going to go into his other assets like Hulu.

Speaker 2 So you're telling your analysts on the call, yes, we are guiding you toward this $5 million per day problem, but we are also showing our shareholders the benefit of this strategy and what it will do to our share price so they know what they're doing clearly i certainly believe that they will hold because

Speaker 1 what does youtube tv have about 10 million subscribers

Speaker 2 so that i don't know that they give a number but i've i've read that somewhere i've read that

Speaker 1 yeah as of november currently over 10 million ish that's the estimate i would be shocked that after two weeks that they haven't lost a six-figure number of subscribers and that was like to 9,900,000?

Speaker 1 Well, somewhere between 100,000 to 999,999.

Speaker 1 And I would guess it's somewhere in the middle of that. But I would guess they've lost a quarter million subscribers, probably.
But the pain tolerance, right?

Speaker 1 So Google and Disney are both enormous, enormous companies. Google,

Speaker 1 particularly formidable, though, when it comes to who gets to win a war of attrition in terms of that tolerance.

Speaker 1 Well, they certainly, it's not, it's barely material to the alphabet company that they will lose 200,000. I'm making it up.
I do not have a source.

Speaker 1 250,000 subscribers headed to 500,000 subscribers.

Speaker 1 That matters to them because their goal is to become the largest distributor, and this is going to hinder that. And they're going to discover the power of ESPN to make people change their

Speaker 1 subscription. These people are all our kids, and they want to see the OWL game next week and they play away from home

Speaker 1 and they're going to be unhappy when they can't watch that game and they might switch their carrier.

Speaker 2 I couldn't possibly disagree with you more because if you're a Google and you're YouTube TV, you want to make Disney a zis and you're just, you're happy to pop it.

Speaker 2 You're happy for it to get big and red and you just, you, you will do anything to crush them.

Speaker 2 And if it requires this sort of standing where you are dark, you're losing 250, 500,000, the whole argument they're having is what happens when YouTube takes over the world.

Speaker 2 The whole argument they're having is YouTube wanting more money when they become the player in this space.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't,

Speaker 1 I would, I would put it slightly different, which is Disney has the pain tolerance to put up with this for a while.

Speaker 1 And the pain that will be inflicted upon them if they pierce the MFNs, we'll talk about what that is,

Speaker 1 is greater, a lot more than $5 million.

Speaker 1 That's sort of like the stakes here a bit, because one note is that YouTube, by the way, of course, famously, they purchased the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket.

Speaker 1 And so even though they might not be able to watch the games, it's hard to imagine that those subscribers necessarily would leave with that.

Speaker 1 degree of immediacy because they're also already subscribing and paying a lot of money, hundreds of dollars annually to get Sunday ticket. But you mentioned NFNs

Speaker 1 and I want to get to the whole like

Speaker 1 what is actually being argued over here. I just would make the point if we do that.
College football may be just as important as the NFL

Speaker 1 for ESPN. We've had these contract disputes for DirecTV and other places with CBS.

Speaker 1 Their most valuable asset is Monday Night Football. I suspect more people cancel.

Speaker 1 These Iowa kids were not complaining about missing Monday Night Football because you can go to a bar, you can go to a friend's house and watch it somewhere.

Speaker 1 But if you want to watch the college football game that's only on ESPN, that is more, I think, more acute than an NFL game.

Speaker 2 I love what your research tells you, but you were in Iowa, and I love Iowa.

Speaker 2 I love the people in Iowa, but I don't believe that Bob Iger is sitting there calculating what's going on in Iowa as dictating his strategy. I don't think you can extrapolate what you're in in Iowa.

Speaker 1 What I heard in Iowa is that ESPN is not the party that's going to get most hurt by this. Now,

Speaker 1 Alphabet has a higher pain tolerance than Disney. They're a bigger company.
This is less material to them. So they can hold their breath

Speaker 1 and for a long time. But I don't know

Speaker 1 Disney, the burden for Disney is to figure out something they can give them, which is not the price on either ESPN or ABC.

Speaker 1 And I think there are recent news reports that the dispute may be more about ABC than ESPN, though that could also be PR spin

Speaker 1 from Alphabet suggesting that I know you're mad about ESPN, but it's not even ESPN. It's ABC.
And by the way, nobody is saying, I'm going to change my subscription because I can't get ABC.

Speaker 1 I want to actually use, I like how, A, we're sounding like we're doing exit polls for the Iowa caucuses right now.

Speaker 1 No, it's just a point of data.

Speaker 1 And I do believe it to be accurate. I believe that unlike previous disputes, when we actually did them, we always discovered it was the distributor they blamed.
So we didn't get any emails.

Speaker 1 We didn't get any complaints. That's clearly changed a little bit.
But I don't know that it means that the outcome here will change a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think anecdotally, the Google YouTube TV product is just a good product. And I think people are inconvenienced.
And what they blame as a result of that inconvenience, I think mileage varies.

Speaker 1 But I actually want to just call call upon your expertise and experience inside of these Disney earnings calls. Like, what's it, what happened?

Speaker 1 For those who have no idea what the f that is, like when you say, you know, potentially, according to Morgan Stanley, right, their analyst, Ben Swinburne, is calculating that Disney is losing 30 million a week, right?

Speaker 1 And we're about to enter fully week two.

Speaker 1 What's it like on a call like that, John? Like, what's actually happening at an earnings call?

Speaker 1 Well, they've released what the results in the last last quarter were, and they are asking the CO because Bob takes the call is usually with the CFO,

Speaker 1 and sometimes he brings in a segment leader if there's something to talk about. I doubt they will hear.
So, Bob will do it, and he'll get questions about it.

Speaker 1 I don't think Wall Street is going to get that excited about $5 million a day. So, let's explain what an earnings call is, though.

Speaker 1 That's not a lot of money for a big company like the Walt Disney Company.

Speaker 2 Can I take one minute just to set the table of what it's like? It's picture a Zoom and on there are a bunch of kids and their job is to say buy, sell, hold.

Speaker 2 And those are the kids who then get information within a Wall Street bank who say buy, sell, hold. And I'm not impugning them and what they do because it's very hard to be an analyst on Wall Street.

Speaker 2 The people on the investment side, the wealth management side, who are calling their customers and saying, hey, buy Disney shares. They are basing it on on what their firm and other firms are saying.

Speaker 2 Should you be buying Disney, selling Disney, or holding Disney?

Speaker 1 So they're listening and making decisions based on what they hear.

Speaker 2 So that is what is supposed to be happening, but it's not. It is very rare.
It's like the Supreme Court or anybody changing what their vote's going to be based on oral argument.

Speaker 2 It very rarely changes the opinion of a justice, although it feels good to the lawyer to have an oral argument. It's the same thing with these earnings calls.

Speaker 2 These analysts have a very good idea because they pressure test these companies. That's all they do all day long.
They don't wait for four times a year to learn, oh, what's going on at Disney, Bob?

Speaker 2 Please tell me. They know when Disney takes a dump.
They know when Bob Iger is skiing. They know everything that's going on.

Speaker 2 What the cost is.

Speaker 1 I'm glad you separated those two. Those are two different things.

Speaker 2 I was trying to give you the full scale that these analysts, their whole job is to know the companies they cover.

Speaker 1 Well, it not only is, but if you actually go in and are a little bit cynical, they all have models. And what they're mostly trying to do on the earnings call is test their models.

Speaker 1 So, what they're going to do is ask questions to see if they need to lower the revenue assumptions they have in their model, how much that might be, and how that changes what their projections of next year's earnings.

Speaker 2 That's a huge part of what the earnings call is. It's not just about what's happened, it's also part of a forecast.

Speaker 2 This is what we got going so when you're doing your models and you're making your buy sell hold decisions by the way you should see what we got going first quarter of 26 and so that's another part of what the earnings call is and it's a big pain in the neck for public companies you have to spend time prepping for them and you're dealing with these people at the wall street firms on the zoom it's funny but

Speaker 1 i do i what do you i'd be interested to know what you think i don't think this will be that big a deal at the earnings call they want to to know, so they're going to ask because they got to figure out how to change their model.

Speaker 1 But it's just not that material, $5 million a day.

Speaker 2 No, it's the PR part of it. So it's getting a lot of attention within our world of sports business.

Speaker 2 But for the people in Wall Street, when they're going through Disney or they're going through Google, they are hardly spending time pressure testing saying, all right, how long is this going to go?

Speaker 2 What's this? What is the impact? Now, if it is true that YouTube is going to lose 250,000 subs a week, and so we

Speaker 2 didn't say, but that would be a material number. And so you're losing 10% in a month.
And so you are under a year away from YouTube TV disappearing. Well, you would.

Speaker 2 If that were the case, then that would be a much more serious issue.

Speaker 1 Only because the people who are going to switch switch pretty early, right? I mean, because they want to see a specific game next Saturday and they're prepared to switch in time to see that game.

Speaker 1 It won't go at a steady rate every week.

Speaker 1 And I think I probably underestimated what they've lost so far, but it will start coming down pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 And then,

Speaker 1 and it's Disney, what Disney's got to do is go in and figure out something to give them. Remember, they settled the charter agreement by, I think, agreeing to let Charter sell or carry Disney Plus.

Speaker 2 There was a bundle, it was a bundle solution, which is fascinating given the companies fighting because they all have bundles that they're selling and trying to promote.

Speaker 2 So bundles have become part of the solution now.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay.
So, so one side note before we get to like what is actually the nitty-gritty of like the negotiation here.

Speaker 1 Um, it is worth noting as we're speculating, like, what is Google here potentially losing? They did offer this $20 credit to all 10 million of us-ish who subscribe to YouTube TV.

Speaker 1 And so, look, if all 10 million people claim via that link, $20, that's $200 million.

Speaker 1 Now, I think it's an opt-in problem.

Speaker 2 That's a dollar that not all 10 million people take the 20 bucks.

Speaker 1 Which is why I presume they didn't automatically discount the 20 bucks from your bill. They made you click on the email that you might have filtered into your spam folder.

Speaker 1 But I thought that was indifferent.

Speaker 2 Are you upset about that?

Speaker 2 Did you think they should have just given you a $20 credit, including to people who never use ESPN, who aren't part of YouTube TV because of ESPN at all? Why should they get $20 back?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I feel like Google can afford it, is my general perspective.

Speaker 1 David Rolls is a good idea. I don't actually understand why they did it.
I mean, I guess it's they think they're going to make people happy. They're not going to change anybody's mind with $20.

Speaker 1 If you want to switch, you're going to switch.

Speaker 1 And so theoretically, they put it at risk that they could pay up to $200 million. And by the way, they set a precedent.
Are you going to get another $20 next month?

Speaker 1 I don't know whether they're subtly trying to say, by the way, you're paying $20

Speaker 1 for ESPN. They might be trying to do that.
sort of it it has that feel that it might be what you might think you were paying for that was my first thought is i was surprised it wasn't 9.99

Speaker 2 i was surprised that it wasn't a smaller number because it would be easy for someone to then extrapolate that oh so this is the portion of youtube tv that is espn and abc

Speaker 1 i suspect by the way it's pretty close to it All of it does feel to the point of PR, though, like, you know, that's their version of putting Bob Iger in a Packers hoodie on the Manning cast.

Speaker 1 Here is a nice human gesture for all of us to appreciate as we figure out, like, are we getting a good deal or not? And the deal on the table, right?

Speaker 1 So speaking of the jousting and the dispute over like, what is actually at the heart of this dispute, it's worth noting that at Puck, John Orend, he reported that YouTube TV is attempting to negotiate rates that are lower for Disney content than the largest three paid TV distributors in the country, aforementioned, aforementioned, Comcast, Charter, Direct TV.

Speaker 1 Disney has said, apparently, that no, we're not going to give YouTube TV a lower rate because that would trigger a most favored nation clause,

Speaker 1 which I am generally familiar with in the United Nations context, but less so in this.

Speaker 2 I don't know it at all in that context. I only know it in the business context.

Speaker 2 So, John, I'm just when we want that clause, it just means that what it means really, it's the I don't want to get screwed clause.

Speaker 1 It's a protection against somebody getting a better deal than you. And the MFN

Speaker 1 traditionally, I don't know what's in these agreements now, the MFN traditionally has been about price. And it's not about a bunch of other things.

Speaker 1 It's not a general, everything in this contract, you get an MFN. It's you get an MFN on price.

Speaker 1 Again, it gets back to Disney can't give in on that. First of all, I don't, at least at ESPN, there's no scale-based

Speaker 1 rate difference, right? Everybody pays the same thing.

Speaker 1 When I was there, ABC still was negotiating individually. They were behind because CBS was way ahead in terms of getting payments for the broadcast network.
But they can't give

Speaker 1 the renegade company, which is threatening. Comcast and DirecTV and Spectrum.
Oh, and we're now going to give the guys who are taking subscribers from you a price break when they get bigger.

Speaker 1 It's just, I don't see how they can deal with that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so just to just to put it in numbers, if Disney is charging $5

Speaker 2 per subscriber per month for ABC and ESPN, and that's the deal they have with Comcast, there's a deal with Charter.

Speaker 2 There's a deal with YouTube TV that says, okay, we will not have to pay more than that because if all of a sudden you do a deal with us where we pay pay $3, then all of a sudden the $5 deal goes down to $3.

Speaker 2 So it's price protection for Disney and it's I don't want to get screwed for YouTube TV.

Speaker 2 So MFNs, they're called most favored nations, just simply means that we're all going to be sort of Perry Passeu. We're all going to be equal.

Speaker 2 And now you're going to have to gut it out to get more subscribers.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 I don't know that you help yourself describing that by calling it Perry Paso. Period Pasu.

Speaker 1 He plays second for the Twins in the 80s. Perry Perry Passu.

Speaker 1 Listen. Dominican short stuff.
That's right.

Speaker 1 The thing that's different, though, right?

Speaker 1 The thing is different.

Speaker 1 The thing that is difference as we debate romance languages, the thing that's difference here,

Speaker 1 a difference that's worth reckoning with, is that what YouTube TV's argument here, and they, by the way, have provided pushback to awful announcing to give you a sense of just like how in the trenches they are in the sports media dispute here.

Speaker 1 They're saying, hold on, there's a difference. YouTube TV is the only carrier on a growth trajectory.
Everything else is shrinking.

Speaker 1 It has managed decline because, of course, you know, cord cutting and subscriber loss for those companies, the Comcast of Charters, Direct TVs, but YouTube TV is saying all we want, according to their anonymous spokesperson who spoke to Awful Announcing, is that when YouTube TV becomes the biggest, and that is possible, the largest paid TV distributor in the country next year, they want a rate that reflects a unique trajectory.

Speaker 1 And that is what, you know, Alphabet is saying, like, hold on, you're not totally giving us the best argument here.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So if I'm Disney, that is not a compelling argument, which is that, hey, we're going to be so good at what we do.
We're getting so many more eyes on ESPN that we want a bigger rate today.

Speaker 2 The answer is we do a deal given the information we have today.

Speaker 2 And if that's why you do openers in deals, in collective bargaining deals, there are sometimes openers if the world changes within a year or two years of a five-year deal, or opt-out provisions and player contracts.

Speaker 2 If the market has changed, very rare do you get a premium based on what you suspect is going to happen, even if the trajectory is such, there's no way they would get a premature premium from, I just wouldn't see that as possible.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 and I agree with that, but I think it's even more existential that you, it's, it's why Comcast has an MFN is

Speaker 1 I don't want anybody having an advantage over me and the people they would least like to have that advantage are the ascendant YouTube TV yes subscribers so I don't see how they can agree to that they'll have to and by the way I'm not sure that's what ultimately alphabet expects I think they are playing a little bit of PR there by moving the blame off of ESPN to ABC.

Speaker 1 They're also saying that, right? That they've agreed to the price for ESPN. The dispute now at the table is the price of ABC.

Speaker 2 Dollars are fungible. It's such a silly statement to make.

Speaker 2 When you're negotiating a multi-pronged deal, if you get a little discount here and a little premium there, you're still getting the number that you wanted.

Speaker 1 And that may be what they're doing, which is just negotiating.

Speaker 1 I never liked negotiating in the press, but that might be what they're doing is you're going to have to, now it tells Disney, because whatever they're asking for is what they want, right?

Speaker 1 And it's just money, To your point, Disney has to figure out a way to go back and get them something that doesn't trip MFNs, that is not essentially unfair.

Speaker 1 I would be looking for something that only YouTube TV can do

Speaker 1 to help the Walt Disney company and giving them, getting that back for something, some price support.

Speaker 2 I've been thinking about the bundle solution. I've been thinking a lot about ESPN and Disney.

Speaker 2 They have so much money in their new app, an ESPN app, and what they're trying to do there that I keep wondering whether or not they're going to come up with something where YouTube TV has to have some sort of direct where you, all the clients, all the patrons have the ability to get the app for a discount.

Speaker 1 But that is the right solution, right? If you're at Disney, what you're trying to figure out is how can I actually help myself here on something that is a priority for me?

Speaker 1 And I would think ESPN, the new direct to consumer service, would be at the top of my list. Can you help me with that somehow?

Speaker 1 And can I then reward you for that in a way which doesn't trigger the MFN and gets you the same amount of money?

Speaker 2 That's why I think that when the football games have been the pressure points in the past, and I appreciate Iowin saying they want the college football game, I actually think it's bigger than football.

Speaker 2 Oh, we got Iowa.

Speaker 1 Forget Iowa. I would suggest that throughout this country, there is a large path through the Southeast and the Midwest where they actually care more about college football than professional games.

Speaker 1 I don't disagree.

Speaker 2 I just think that the negotiation that's happening right now between Google and Disney, I don't really believe it is solely sports-based. I think, as you would say, it's much more existential.

Speaker 2 There is a lot more business out there other than sports.

Speaker 2 And to wit, we saw Bob Iger go on the Manning cast, and we in the sports media and me as a former team guy said, oh, Bob Iger's out there for PR. He's going to talk about this.

Speaker 2 He's got some talking points to get to the people who watch the Manning cast. Turns out the people who watch the Manning cast could give a flying rat's ass about the carriage dispute.

Speaker 2 They wanted to talk about Bob Iger liking the Green Bay Packers, and they wanted to know whether Iger would go for it on fourth and sixth while Peyton and Eli were telling their views.

Speaker 2 Bob Iger didn't mention a word about it.

Speaker 1 Not a word. I guess he assumed that wouldn't do any good, right? If he thought that it would be helpful, he would have done it.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 That is funny because he's talking to people who still have carriage. So maybe it's not the best place to reach the people who don't have carriage.

Speaker 2 Preaching to the choir with you all that.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

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Speaker 1 Look, one of the subplots, by the way, in terms of the dynamic between Disney and Alphabet particularly is just a note here, right?

Speaker 1 And Justin Connolly, who used to be Disney's president of platform distribution, he left Disney and there was a big controversy about that because he left to take the job of global head of media and sports at YouTube, the first such job.

Speaker 1 And he previously reported to Jimmy Pataro, Yasuen's chairman. He basically switched teams, according to the reporting, during negotiations.
Lawsuits have ensued. Settlements finally were reached.

Speaker 1 And Justin Connolly had to recuse himself from these negotiations.

Speaker 1 So the team is handling it without him, which is to say, though, that this specific negotiation is clearly a very meaningful part of the alphabet strategy for media and sports, as per the title mentioned.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Though

Speaker 1 Justin's current job would not put him in the negotiation for this anyway.

Speaker 2 It's only his institutional knowledge, and he's still giving that to the people at the table.

Speaker 1 No, he's not.

Speaker 2 You think he actually recused himself and he's not saying a word. He sits in his office, doesn't take calls, no drinks.
I'm sure that's exactly how it goes.

Speaker 1 I realize you and I will disagree about this. Justin is a person of integrity.
Part of the settlement was clearly, you will not reveal any confidential information about.

Speaker 1 I actually believe that

Speaker 1 I don't even know what to call them, Google, Alphabet, YouTube,

Speaker 1 they're going to abide by that because they don't need to get that information.

Speaker 1 What would they want to know, actually? Because I don't even know what strategy. Yeah, they'd want to ask.
Breakpoints. You'd want to say, yeah, where is the point of pain? What can we do?

Speaker 1 They're not going to get that from him because why would you?

Speaker 1 He's just not going to do it. It's part of his settlement agreement for getting to go.

Speaker 1 He left, I assume, for opportunity, not to get involved in a dispute with his former employee where he worked for a long time and was very good at what he did.

Speaker 1 The big miss is not that he's giving them information. It's that he is the most skilled negotiator or the most experienced negotiator.
They may well have very smart people. I have no idea.

Speaker 1 But they'll miss that a little bit.

Speaker 1 But other than that, they're not going to get anything. They don't need it for that, but it's not worth the risk.

Speaker 1 There are statements, of course, as David just looks askew at you

Speaker 1 with love. I'm just laughing.

Speaker 1 I'm laughing at your brain.

Speaker 1 He just believes I'm naive.

Speaker 2 Not naive.

Speaker 2 I think that you have a certain way that you like to project yourself as this amazingly honorable, morally centered, compassed executive who believes that everyone should have the same amount of money, but you will literally, literally, you will knock people down.

Speaker 2 You will crush their existence in order to get an extra penny. I've been crushed by you.
I've watched you do it. And the way you come out, it just makes me laugh.
Like, oh, that was a long time ago.

Speaker 2 I don't feel that way anymore.

Speaker 1 It's so stilly.

Speaker 2 Sorry. Go ahead, Pablo.

Speaker 1 John Mamdani aside, though, I do want to get to this question of, okay, let's now put the camera on charter, Comcast, DirecTV.

Speaker 1 What the hell do they want out of this? What are they rooting for?

Speaker 1 What ability do they have beyond asserting their MFN status to materially be relevant in what is happening here?

Speaker 2 It's like stopping a train. It's stopping the sunrise.

Speaker 2 There's no, it's funny, if you're them, are you saying to yourself, hey, if we can have YouTube TV disappear, if they can lose all their subs, then maybe those guys will come back and our decline will actually turn into an incline.

Speaker 2 there's no possible way that they're saying that

Speaker 1 I don't think they're thinking they have any place in this negotiation or there's anything that's going to help them and the only thing they're doing is telling their

Speaker 1 just the this the group at ESPN that does the negotiations they're telling them you better not give these guys any advantage over us. We've been doing business with you for a long time.

Speaker 1 Our business is already challenged. You can't make this any harder for us by giving them.
And if you do, we're going to assert our MFN. I don't think they're doing anything else.

Speaker 2 Nor do I think they're the beneficiary, either of it lasting another month, another year, or it being settled today.

Speaker 2 I really don't think what they're trying to figure out is what their business model is going to look like because the rate of decline has increased so significantly that they've had to push up their RD into figuring out what we're going to do next in order to maintain shareholder price and be a viable company.

Speaker 1 Is that, I actually don't know.

Speaker 1 Is the diminution of the pay TV universe still declining? Well,

Speaker 2 their part is. I mean,

Speaker 2 that's what I'm referring to, not the industry, obviously.

Speaker 1 Their part.

Speaker 1 The rate of decline has slowed, but is ongoing. I think that's the way that.
Does that rate of decline include the growth of YouTube TV?

Speaker 1 Because it's funny that people don't think they're in the same category. They've actually arrested the decline.
They've simply moved people over to a new carrier.

Speaker 1 And of course, what matters to them in this is their proposition to start with was we're going to be sports-centric. That was their original proposition.

Speaker 1 And then their second proposition was we're cheaper, right? They started $39.95. They're now, their average price now is $83.

Speaker 1 I think the other, I think probably the other distributors are probably a little north of there, but not much.

Speaker 1 And if they have to raise their price, which they would to cover this, and now they're $90,

Speaker 1 they're losing their financial advantage over the other distributors. So I guess that's the thing that the other distributors are hoping for.

Speaker 2 Well, you called it, you called everyone a cable company, and you called the consumers the losers, which they are.

Speaker 2 And you called the fact that everyone who pretends that they've cut their cord in order to save money as not having done that.

Speaker 2 And the companies that are taking advantage of the people who cut the cord really look, smell, and taste like a cable company, a traditional cable company. It is.

Speaker 1 I mean, they just have a slightly skinnier bundle, which is why they can be somewhat cheaper. They do provide a good service, right?

Speaker 1 I don't know whether digital service actually is better now than the other. The distribution is higher quality.
I don't know whether it is or not.

Speaker 1 Looks fine to me. And by the way, I didn't call them losers.
I said they might be the losers in this discussion. Thank you.
Far be it from me to want to call the common man a loser. Losers.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I mean, back to my older sister.

Speaker 1 That's not how I want to project myself. As I go back tonight and count the pennies in my bottom drawer and think about how I could steal a few more.

Speaker 1 I'm actually Ebenezer Scrooge when I get home. That's right.

Speaker 2 Ebenezer.

Speaker 1 What did I say?

Speaker 2 It may be Ebenezer.

Speaker 1 It's Ebenezer. Ebenezer.
No, no, it is Ebenezer. Did I say something to you?

Speaker 2 You were just so excited that you started talking quickly. Okay.
It's what you do now. You never used to do that when you were running the SPN.

Speaker 2 How quickly? No, you were much more slower and firm, and you stood tall and ogre-like. You were much like Frankenstein's monster, actually.

Speaker 1 I would challenge you to find anybody who would suggest I was ever ogre-like in a discussion.

Speaker 2 I would challenge you to find anyone within my industry who doesn't view you that way.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Not today.

Speaker 2 Today, they love you with all their heart.

Speaker 1 I'm the one who gave baseball a 100% increase in the last deal.

Speaker 2 $2 is 100% over $1.

Speaker 2 Can't argue with that.

Speaker 1 I like that. David's still smarting.

Speaker 2 It's smart that doesn't go away. Much as I try, I can forgive, but I can't forget.

Speaker 1 Philosophically, I just theory, if what you're saying is true, I simply followed your plan. David is the Bob Cratchit of this

Speaker 1 Christmas parable.

Speaker 2 It is. Who's feeding you that?

Speaker 1 I'm just making sure that people understand the lore of, you know, Ebenezer Scrooge. What?

Speaker 1 You don't think I know? You don't think I know those guys? This is true. We think we have to describe what an MFN is, but just about as much of the audience probably does not know who

Speaker 1 Bob Cratchit is.

Speaker 1 And that is a shame. And America is worse off for it.

Speaker 2 We are quite the show.

Speaker 1 By the way, speaking of America being worse off for it, In Wades, FCC chairman Brendan Carr

Speaker 1 to say about this ongoing carriage dispute between Disney and YouTube TV, quote, Google and Disney need to get a deal done and end this blackout.

Speaker 1 People should have the right to watch the programming they paid for, including football, get it done, exclamation point. Was it all captured?

Speaker 1 Did he suggest they could do it the hard way or the easy way?

Speaker 2 Explain to people that's the government. That's the president talking about it.

Speaker 1 It's the federal government, that is Donald Trump, effectively empowering Brendan Carr, the chairman, to

Speaker 1 wade into this such a way. Yeah, who's a knucklehead who suggested that we could get Jimmy Fi, they could get Jimmy Kimmel off the air, or perhaps ABC will lose its broadcast license.

Speaker 1 That is an astonishing thing for someone in that position to say.

Speaker 2 But there are, it is true, but there are, there could be some pressure points.

Speaker 2 If there are some deals that Google is working on, that Kierkegaard is working on that require approvals, you have to pay attention to what the chair is saying.

Speaker 2 You have to pay attention to what it's like the president saying he wants to name Commander Stadium. That's obviously laugh out loud until you need the president to do so.

Speaker 1 So he's doing a broadcast in the Fox booth.

Speaker 2 This is all I'm saying, that there are pressure points. What we talked about in negotiation, that's the biggest part of it, is learning what are the points of pain.

Speaker 1 Well, and certainly they will understand that in this administration, they have no right to believe that they will behave

Speaker 1 in an ordinary manner of governmental business. They're not.

Speaker 2 Which causes you to act accordingly,

Speaker 2 which makes the markets uneasy, which makes the earnings calls more interesting.

Speaker 1 Of course, anybody who believes that

Speaker 1 you know what mollifying Donald Trump does for you?

Speaker 2 Gets you to the next subject.

Speaker 1 It gets you to mollify him again, as the Democrats have just learned. You'll give in on the ugly effing bill.

Speaker 1 You will get to give in on the

Speaker 1 continuing resolution.

Speaker 2 It is one of the reasons when you think about negotiating with a bully on how you do it.

Speaker 2 And that's one of the things we would talk about, not to make this about John, but when you're negotiating with the SPN as an industry, as a sports league, one of the things we talk about behind closed doors is, hey, we cannot indicate any willingness to budge on this for fear that he will mistaken this for the desire or the fact that we ever would budge on that.

Speaker 2 So these things, stop laughing, the fact that you would cause these conference calls and cause meetings, galore with

Speaker 1 his coffee.

Speaker 1 You were having conference calls about how to deal with that ogre. Yes.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Wow. You know that.
Like, it's just

Speaker 2 the way he pretends with you, Pablo, just makes me laugh. Oh, it's the first time hearing that I was an important part of the negotiation.

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Speaker 1 What do you think we're about to learn here? Like let's look ahead. Like this will have taught the industry, both Silicon Valley as well as those that remain in traditional media and,

Speaker 1 you know, the traditional media companies, what will we all have learned from this?

Speaker 2 I'll start and I will say that we will learn that Google doesn't lose.

Speaker 2 And if I had to pick, choose a winner between Google and Disney, I would choose Google. I think that they've got the capacity to handle this dispute for much longer, much deeper.

Speaker 2 And they have no concern on their share price. They have no concern on their earnings.
And while for Disney, it is a blip, it is a more meaningful blip than it is for Google.

Speaker 1 I think that there will be a resolution to this in the not too distant future because both parties actually want to come to some resolution.

Speaker 1 I don't think there's any reason that Google will want to embarrass Disney by

Speaker 1 saying we won, we won. They'll come out with a statement that says we both won.
We figured out something to do. We're happy to get our game, our service back in front of fans, and they move on.

Speaker 2 I'll go on record.

Speaker 2 I'll say there will not be a resolution prior to the earnings call because I don't believe that Disney in any way would want to indicate to Google that, wow, this is our pressure point, the earnings call.

Speaker 2 I don't view it.

Speaker 1 And I don't actually think it is.

Speaker 1 I don't think it'd be that big a deal. And by the way, they're busy preparing for the earnings call.
And at some point, you would actually tell

Speaker 1 Bob, you should concentrate on the earnings call. He's not.

Speaker 1 My guess is that's the top priority for him as he gets through this, and you'll see a resolution either before Monday, the next Monday night game. I don't know what the game is,

Speaker 1 or you'll see it in front of

Speaker 1 the, right after the Monday night football game, before the next weekend of college.

Speaker 1 It's a Cowboys game, though, John.

Speaker 1 Cowboys Raiders on Monday night. Cowboys Raiders on Monday night's a good game.

Speaker 1 Neither one of them are very good, I don't think.

Speaker 2 Remember, the government shutdown had to be solved by Thanksgiving, by holiday travel. I don't find a moment.
The next Monday night game is not Thanksgiving travel.

Speaker 2 The earnings call is not Thanksgiving travel. I don't think we have come to the edge of the cliff yet.

Speaker 1 Though I think it's possible they'll get it done before the next Monday night game or before the weekend of the next.

Speaker 1 You don't want to go into the Thanksgiving Day weekend, which is a wash with football, college, and professional without the service. I think they'll get it done before Thanksgiving weekend.

Speaker 1 I do think that, you know, to answer the question I posed before at the end here, like, what do you think if you're not one of these two behemoths arguing over, you know, dollars per month?

Speaker 1 You're thinking to yourself, if you had been under the boot of Disney before,

Speaker 1 there's always a bigger ogre.

Speaker 1 Good job, Pablo.

Speaker 1 Well, again, I'm not. That's how we're supposed to end.
Oh, that's how it's supposed to end. I think that's it.

Speaker 2 I think that's what I think you let him say.

Speaker 1 We'll cut it off after that.

Speaker 2 That's a big moment.

Speaker 1 I was an ogre.

Speaker 2 Trying to have a through line through the whole show.

Speaker 1 Is that what time we're scheduled to close?

Speaker 1 Is he that good? I love and hate both of you so much.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.

Speaker 1 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark Media production.

Speaker 1 And I'll talk to you next time.

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