Dish and Sling TV have reached an agreement with Disney to return the latter’s suite of channels back to their lineups, including ESPN and ABC affiliates in eight markets. (The loss of ABC did not affect Sling TV which has not carried the network’s affiliates.)
“We have reached a handshake agreement with Dish/Sling TV, which properly reflects fair market value and terms for The Walt Disney Company,” Disney said in a statement. “As a result, we are pleased to restore our portfolio of networks on a temporary basis while both parties work to finalize a new deal.”
“We are pleased to announce that all your Disney and ESPN channels have been restored. Thank you for your patience and support,” Dish tweeted at 12:02 a.m. ET today.
Dish and Sling lost the channels early Saturday morning when the previous agreement between the companies expired. The sides issued statements blaming the other for the dispute which appeared to be over how much the two TV services should pay to carry the channels.
Besides ESPN and ABC, the list of affected channels also included:
Disney Channel, Disney Jr, Disney XD, ESPN 2, ESPN 3, ESPN OnDemand, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, ACC Network, ACC Network Extra, Longhorn Network, SEC Network, SEC+, Freeform, FX, FXM, FXX, Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo, ABC News Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live, BabyTV, BabyTV Arabic, BabyTV French, BabyTV Latino, BabyTV Mandarin, BabyTV, Polish, and BabyTV Portuguese.
The fee fight came on Saturday just hours before a full slate of college football games, which triggered strong negative reactions from Dish and Sling customers on social media. The agreement comes before ESPN’s Monday Night Football game.
Terms of the new ‘handshake deal’ were not disclosed.
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Hopefully this new agreement includes Dish being able to broadcast ESPN 4K games that are available.
Did dish just cave? That’s not like them. They still don’t have bally sports.
They still don’t have any of the other regional sports networks either (such as NBC Sports, MSG, NESN, Altitude, etc.)
Wasn’t the dispute over whether Dish would pay Disney for ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC affils, whether subs have those channels or not?