Disney-YouTube TV carriage dispute hits sport

Having started life as obscure data sites for political nerds, US prediction markets became booming hubs for sports betting. More than $1bn a week is placed on sport on Kalshi, according to recent FT analysis. Others are looking to muscle in.

So far, there isn’t a market for predicting (or betting on) who might win the Fifa Peace Prize — a new award announced by football’s global governing body this week. Prediction markets, after all, tend to prosper when the outcome is uncertain.

Fifa has not explained yet why it is dabbling so brazenly in geopolitics, nor why it is seeking to create an alternative to the Nobel Committee’s annual accolade for peace. Who will pick the winner, and how, is also a mystery, although educated guesses can be made.

The new gong may have something to do with the blossoming friendship between Fifa president Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump. The prize will be presented next month at the John F Kennedy Center in Washington. Trump, who unsuccessfully lobbied for the Nobel Peace Prize, appointed himself chair of the performing arts body in February.

This week we’re looking at a spat between Disney and YouTube, and what it tells us about the media market in 2025. Plus, our Due Diligence colleague James Fontanella-Khan caught up with RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale to discuss a historic moment for Italian football. Do read on — Josh Noble, sports editor

A very modern carriage dispute highlights shifting sands

For sports fans, the streaming era has brought increased costs and confusion as we toggle through various platforms to watch the games. But at least we had the games.

A protracted carriage dispute between Disney and YouTube TV has largely prevented about 10mn households in the US from partaking in this most fundamental act of fandom. On October 31, Disney-owned channels, including ESPN and ABC, went dark on the streamer.

YouTube TV subscribers were deprived last weekend of a full slate of college football games across Disney’s networks before missing the Dallas Cowboys — a ratings juggernaut even with a putrid defence — lose to the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night Football. Fortunately last Saturday’s World Series Game 7, an instant classic, was on Fox.

With Disney and Google-owned YouTube TV both dug in, it looks set to be another light weekend of sports on America’s fastest-growing TV provider.

Carriage battles have been around since the early days of cable, primarily fought over the fees that TV providers pay to networks for the right to carry their content. YouTube TV has become increasingly embroiled in these disputes. Since August, the streamer has engaged in stand-offs with Fox and NBCUniversal, among others, only to reach a resolution in time for weekend football games.

But the prolonged Disney-YouTube TV dispute highlights how Big Tech companies have reshaped the power dynamics in the TV landscape as their sporting ambitions grow.

YouTube TV has more leverage than ever. Unlike most traditional TV providers, the platform is growing and on pace to become the largest TV provider in the US. Yet it represents a small part of $3.35tn parent company Alphabet’s business. It can afford to dig in.

This comes at a time when traditional media companies like Disney are suffering from cord-cutting. The company needs more money from providers like YouTube TV to justify its investment in live sports.Disney has always sold its networks as a bundle, but YouTube TV would reportedly like to pick and choose which ones it carries (ie pay for sports broadcasters ESPN and ABC but not for less-watched networks).

However, Disney has leverage of its own. ESPN is a live sports behemoth, holding rights to a wide variety of sports, from the NFL and college football to NBA/WNBA, NHL and WWE. It also owns Hulu and its Live TV platform, a potential alternative for YouTube TV subscribers.

ESPN also launched a sports streaming service in August, for the first time giving customers access to games it previously only made available on pay TV. That has sparked speculation among sports fans that Disney is attempting to lure disaffected YouTube TV subscribers on to ESPN’s new platform.

While Disney would welcome YouTubers with open arms, its business plan is still reliant on the bundle model with TV providers. The loss of distribution revenue from YouTube TV would deal a blow to its bottom line. ESPN’s carriage fees are the most expensive of any basic cable network, according to S&P Global, with an average cost of $10.79 per subscriber a month.

YouTube TV, for its part, can only hold out for so much longer. Sports are a major selling point for the streamer. Three years ago it sealed a seven-year, $14bn deal to acquire exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, a service that allows subscribers to watch out-of-market games that are not shown on local TV. The streamer must also justify the $82.99 monthly fee it charges subscribers — a far cry from the $35 per month price when it launched in 2017.

The two sides will come to a resolution at some point, and normal service will resume. But when it comes to live sport, the balance of power is shifting rapidly.

US investors finally get control of the San Siro

For anyone who grew up in Italy in the 1990s, the San Siro — la Scala del Calcio — isn’t just a stadium. It’s a shrine where fans have through the years come to worship the likes of Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Paolo Maldini as they did battle with Diego Maradona’s Napoli and the Brazilian fenômeno Ronaldo under the foggy Lombard skies.

Now, nearly a century after it first opened, San Siro is about to enter a new era. The city of Milan this week agreed to hand control of the site to its two historic tenants, AC Milan and Inter Milan, allowing them to redevelop the sacred ground and its surroundings rather than build elsewhere.

“We started the stadium project three years ago when we purchased the team,” said Gerry Cardinale, the RedBird Capital founder who bought Milan in 2022. “San Siro is iconic across all of European football, and the historic possibility of bringing a new San Siro for the fans is not lost on us.”

This is an important moment for Italian football more broadly. Serie A was once the envy of the global game, but has fallen well behind the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga in part due to its ageing infrastructure. Few new stadiums have been built since Italy hosted the World Cup in 1990, although Roma and Napoli are among those hoping changes to the law under the Meloni government will help get their own projects off the ground.

In Milan, Cardinale has spent three years navigating Italy’s maze of politics, zoning laws and green party opposition. At one point RedBird even bought land outside the city, in San Donato near Milan’s Linate airport, to show it was serious about moving away.

“When the mayor saw that, he brought us back to the table,” said Cardinale. The land acquired near the airport could now be used to develop training facilities or an arena — maybe for a European NBA team.

Milan chair Paolo Scaroni, a veteran of Italy’s banking and energy sectors, was key in helping bridge the city’s political establishment with the club’s private backers.

Now the plan is to construct a new, modern stadium alongside the existing San Siro, a move inspired by the way Yankee Stadium was rebuilt in New York. “We can’t compete with the Premier League if we’re playing in a decrepit stadium,” Cardinale said, promising that the new venue will preserve San Siro’s aura while generating the revenues needed to keep Serie A clubs competitive on the world stage.

Cardinale and RedBird will be working closely with fellow American investor Oaktree Capital Management, which took control of Inter last year after its previous Chinese owner Suning Holdings defaulted on debt repayments.The partnership of two “like-minded, financially oriented groups” will help modernise Italian football, he says.

Cardinale — who recently obtained Italian citizenship — isn’t a novice to the stadium business. Before buying Milan, he helped create Legends Hospitality, the concessions and stadium-management company that operates at venues including Yankee Stadium and the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium — both case studies in how to turn sports infrastructure into a profit engine.

RedBird is also exploring a partnership with Live Nation Entertainment to turn the future venue into a year-round hub for sport, music and hospitality.

For fans who grew up on Maldini, Gullit and the roar of San Siro, it’s a bittersweet moment — saying goodbye to an old friend while hoping the next act can match the glory of Berlusconi’s Milan.

Highlights

• Why have football kits become so expensive? We’ve been asking industry executives to explain the advent of the £200 shirt. Here’s what we found out.

• The world’s biggest private equity sports business, CVC-backed Global Sport Group, is searching for new investments after launching last month with a valuation of about €9bn. Find out more in our interview with GSG chief Marc Allera.

• ESPN is ending its sports betting partnership with Penn Entertainment years earlier than planned, as it simultaneously announced a new agreement with DraftKings. ESPN Bet, the sportsbook operated by Penn, will shift to a “sports betting content brand” integrated with DraftKings.

• Premier Tech has ended its sponsorship of the Israeli elite cycling team, saying its commercial partnership had been “overshadowed” to the point of becoming “untenable”. In September, the final stage of La Vuelta cycling race in Spain was abandoned due to pro-Palestinian protests targeting the Israeli team.

Final Whistle

To some, New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is a radical leftist, to others he’s the future saviour of the Democrats.

Now we know he holds one particular view likely to prove divisive in north London. Mamdani announced this week that he’s a devoted Gooner and one apparently hooked on Sky’s coverage of transfer deadline day.