Why isn't the game on? Disney's squeeze play on YouTube TV

On November 4, the biggest televised event of the evening was unavailable to millions of viewers. As the Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys kicked off Monday Night Football, over nine million Americans subscribed to Google's YouTube TV were met with a notification of a programming dispute instead of the game. This wasn't a technical glitch. It was a tactical, well-executed move in competitive strategy. For the consumer paying $82.99 a month, the experience was ruined. For close industry observers, this was another example of Disney's decades-long plan to dismantle the distributor business model and seize control of its replacement. This blackout is not a result of a negotiation failure. It is a deliberate, precisely timed churn event orchestrated by Disney. The timing is the entire story. The contract expired and channels vanished on October 30. This was just one day after Disney closed its acquisition of a 70 percent controlling stake in Fubo, which it is merging with its existing Hulu + Live TV service. That transaction, which closed on October 29, instantly created a new virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (vMVPD) behemoth with nearly 6 million subscribers, making Disney the undisputed #2 virtual distributor in the country. This blackout, therefore, is the first major shot fired in a vMVPD-versus-vMVPD war.