YouTube TV Restores ABC, ESPN & Other Channels as Disney and Google Reach Deal

After a contract dispute that saw YouTube TV remove ESPN, ABC, and other channels from its service, Disney and Google have reached a new deal to restore the networks to the streamer.

As reported by Variety, the new agreement with Disney will see the price for YouTube TV remain at $64.99/month. However, Google will still offer the $15 credit to users that it promised on Decemberber 17 when the Disney-backed channels went dark.

“We have already started to restore access to Disney networks like ESPN and FX, including their live and on-demand content, as well as any recordings that were previously in your [DVR] Library,” YouTube said Sunday (via Variety). “We will also be turning on the local ABC stations over the course of the day.”

YouTube TV, which is estimated to have more than 4 million subscribers in the United States, faced potential subscriber losses while the Disney channels were unavailable. Disney, meanwhile, was set to lose out on advertising and carriage-fee revenue until the networks were restored.

“We are pleased to announce that after a brief disruption, we have reached a new distribution agreement with Google’s YouTube TV for continued carriage of our portfolio of networks,” said a statement from Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution.

The statement continued: “We appreciate Google’s collaboration to reach fair terms that are consistent with the market, and we’re thrilled that our robust lineup of live sports and news plus kids, family and general entertainment programming is in the process of being restored to YouTube TV subscribers across the country.”

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Disney and Google’s previous deal expired on Friday while the companies were still at odds over carriage fees. This stalemate saw YouTube TV remove over a dozen Disney-owned cable networks and ABC-owned local stations from its streaming service. All DVR recordings of Disney programming were also blocked during the dark period.