DIRECTV Is Losing Customers Due to Disney’s ‘Shortsighted’ Demands
DIRECTV Is Losing Customers Due to Disney’s ‘Shortsighted’ Demands
The ability to sell slimmed-down channel packages in the future is worth some temporary subscriber defections, according to DIRECTV.
There’s still no end in sight in Disney’s carriage dispute with DIRECTV. The two sides are at odds over DIRECTV’s desire to sell slimmed-down channel packages based on genres like sports, movies, and news, and their battle has left DIRECTV customers without access to Disney-owned channels like ABC and ESPN since Sept. 1. DIRECTV chief marketing officer Vince Torres spoke to analysts and investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference on Thursday about the dispute, confirming that DIRECTV had lost customers because of the channel absences, but laid out the company’s vision on how it can get them to come back while improving DIRECTV’s financial position.
Key Details:
- Torres said DIRECTV’s ability to win back customers will hinge on Disney giving it permission to sell slimmed-down channel packages.
- He confirmed that all of DIRECTV’s multiple services are profitable.
- DIRECTV is offering customers a $20 credit off their bill due to the lack of availability of Disney’s channels.
Torres opened the Goldman Sachs discussion by calling Disney “shortsighted” for continuing to insist on minimum penetration requirements for the “skinny” channel bundles that DIRECTV has proposed as part of its ongoing carriage negotiations. During the event, the DIRECTV executive repeated many of the arguments that the company has been making throughout the process, saying that DIRECTV doesn’t want to force customers who don’t watch Disney-owned channels regularly to “subsidize” viewers who do and sees smaller channel packages as a way to offer customers better choices.
Torres also revealed that DIRECTV had seen a churn reaction from its fight with Disney, and described the losses as “not immaterial.” He did note, however, that the money the company is saving in carriage fees it is not paying to Disney are being invested in bill credits that DIRECTV is offering affected customers; presumably the same is true for the credits that DIRECTV is giving customers to sign up for Sling TV or Fubo if they want to watch live sports. However, he also said that he understands why this measure may not be enough for fans who are missing Saturday college football on ESPN.
“Over the long-term, the bet is, yes, customers are annoyed, and with that comes churn,” Torres said. “The choice and flexibility that we’re fighting for opens the market much more significantly. I fundamentally believe we’re making progress on getting that choice and flexibility, and over the long-term, we’ll be able to claw back these short-term losses and grow to a significant degree.”
He also called Disney “the biggest gorilla in the zoo” as far as doing deals with programmers, and reiterated that DIRECTV and Disney have essentially agreed to the carriage rates for Disney’s channels going forward. However, the biggest roadblocks continue to be the channels included in DIRECTV’s proposed skinny bundles, minimum penetration rates, and the provision that Disney is asking for which prevents DIRECTV from pursuing legal remedies for future antitrust or anti-competitive business practices. DIRECTV filed a complaint with the FCC over this provision, calling it a bad-faith negotiating tactic and referencing the Fubo antitrust lawsuit against Disney over the attempt to bypass distributors and sell Venu Sports directly to consumers.
“There are multiple instances where these negotiations have treaded well outside of what we consider to be good-faith discussions,” Torres explained. “Think of the Fubo litigation that they’re in right now. They’re trying to avoid that in the future. It’s unbelievable. It’s an unbelievable request.”
Has DIRECTV Stayed Strong Financially Through the Dispute?
One of the reasons DIRECTV is able to offer customers credits while it wades through the Disney dispute is that it’s saving quite a bit of money by not paying Disney to distribute the channels. Torres revealed that all of DIRECTV’s individual offerings, including its satellite and DIRECTV STREAM services, are profitable.
“We don’t believe you need to have a loss leader in one service, and as a result of that, we are profitable across all of our services,” Torres said proudly. “That’s hard. I don’t think many streaming companies out there can say that.”
Torres certainly has a point in that most on-demand streaming services are still striving for profitability. Fubo forecasts that it is on track to become profitable in the near future, but hasn’t hit that mark yet. Sling TV’s parent company DISH is seeing continued declines in revenue thanks to losses from its satellite service, so DIRECTV’s ability to remain in the black is impressive.
There’s clearly blame to go around on both sides in the carriage dispute, but DIRECTV has done a good job of communicating why it has held its ground on the ability to offer smaller channel packages and prevent customers from having to pay for content they don’t watch.
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DIRECTV is one of The Streamable’s top choices for the best live TV streaming service overall in 2026, especially for users who want the most channels or want to watch the most live sports. With an unbeatable lineup of local, news, sports, and entertainment channels, three main signature packages, an unlimited DVR, and 20 simultaneous streams at home, DIRECTV remains a premier choice for any cord-cutter.