When Disney-owned networks, including ABC and ESPN, went dark on YouTube TV from October 30 to November 14, it wasn’t just a story about two major industry players negotiating carriage agreements. It became a real-time experiment in how sports fans react when their access to live sports streaming suddenly disappears midseason.
Disney has long emphasized the value of ESPN and its broader sports portfolio to distributors. And fans continue to validate that position: Through Q4 so far, ratings on ESPN networks are up about 25%, and Monday Night Football is up roughly 10% year over year, averaging 15.6 million viewers. Increasingly, more viewers are opting to stream live sports rather than tune in to the traditional broadcast.
To understand how viewers responded during the blackout, we looked at traffic on our exchange during two major live sports events available on Disney-owned networks, NCAA college football on Saturdays and NFL Monday Night Football.
A clear trend emerged: Viewers do not sit on the sidelines. They move to wherever the game is streaming.
In this case, when viewers lost access through YouTube TV, they shifted to streaming platforms outside of Google’s walled garden, creating new opportunities for media buyers to reach these highly engaged sports fans programmatically.
The numbers: how live sports streaming traffic shifted on Index
We analyzed ad requests during NCAA football programming on Saturdays and Monday Night Football, comparing traffic trends before and during the YouTube TV outage.
During the blackout, available podded requests across other streaming TV distributors rose sharply compared to October averages:
- 127% Increase for Monday Night Football
- 58% Increase for NCAA football
Those surges translate into meaningful inventory opportunities for media buyers. The total available pod duration—or ad time—can reach:
- Over 1 billion seconds during a single Monday Night Football game
- Over 600 million seconds during a Saturday of NCAA football programming
To be clear, these are ad requests, not subscriber numbers—but the signal is the same. When one major distributor loses access to Disney’s live sports content, others see immediate and material gains in viewership and available inventory.
The demand doesn’t disappear; it redistributes.
Sports fans follow the content—not the app
For viewers, carriage rights are background noise. What matters is simple: Can I watch the game I care about? If it disappears, where can I get it back with the least friction?
Our data shows loyalty sits with the content, such as Monday Night Football, not with a single streaming service or virtual MVPD. When access shifts, sports fans will download a new app, sign up for a trial, or switch providers entirely to keep watching their team.
What should media buyers do next?
The streaming wars are heating up, and carriage disputes are a regular feature of today’s landscape. That makes flexibility essential for media plans, especially those centered on live sports in streaming.
Programmatic can’t resolve negotiations, but it can make your campaigns more resilient. Here’s how to evaluate your strategy:
- Anchor on content, not a single bundle. Use programmatic access across multiple virtual MVPDs and apps so your live sports streaming strategy isn’t tied to one distributor.
- Design deals that travel. Structure deals so they can be activated across several partners that carry premium sports, rather than locked to a single supply path.
- Respond to real-time signals. Surges—like the increases we saw on platforms outside Google’s walled garden—highlight where fans are watching. Programmatic buying lets you respond to those shifts quickly, without rebuilding your plan from scratch.
When one screen goes dark, viewers don’t disappear, they move. Programmatic lets you adapt in real time to ensure your brand moves with them.
See how you can make the most of the programmatic opportunity in live streaming TV.
