This is a brazen awakening. Earlier today (October 1), Sling TV subscribers woke up to discover they don’t have ESPN. Discover this Tom guide when trying to find ESPN’s live streams of the F1 Singapore Grand Prix online, only to watch ESPN (plus FX and others) missing from Sling TV channels. Sling’s parent company Dish is also affected, losing those channels, as well as ABC.
The full list of channels removed from Sling are: ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN 3, ESPN OnDemand, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, Disney Channel, Disney Jr, Disney XD, 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.
Why did this happen? Disney and Sling TV failed to renew their contractual agreement — and it’s all about the money. Sling blames Disney, saying that “Disney, like many other channel owners, is using this contract renewal period to try to increase the amount of money companies pay for their software.”
sling (Opens in a new tab) It claims that it “offered Disney to extend the contract to continue working towards an agreement and avoid any interruption in your service”, and that it was Disney’s fault because they “refused this offer”.
Sling also coined this as a way to keep Sling affordable, stating that he wants to “come to an agreement with Disney that will ensure you get the best possible value out of Sling.”
Disney hopes that by doing so, it will get upset and eventually reach out to Sling to pressure us into accepting its higher prices.
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter (Opens in a new tab)a Disney The spokesperson responded, “The rates and terms we are pursuing reflect the market and have been the basis for many successful deals with pay-TV providers of all types and sizes across the country. We are committed to finding a fair solution, and we urge Dish to work with us to minimize disruption. that could infect its customers.
Analysis: what can you do?
Sling is our top pick for the best cable TV alternative and also one of the best streaming services, but moments like this unfortunately seem normal in the industry. Disney and YouTube TV quarreled in December 2021, resulting in the loss of 48 hours of those channels on YouTube TV.
Currently, Sling does not offer any discounts to compensate for this channel outage, so the two options you have are changing your channel package (for example to remove Sling Orange, which should have ESPN) or If you need ESPN now, We recommend canceling and switching to another popular competitor, such as YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, or fubo TV.
This is an evolving story, which will keep our eyes on updates.
