Buckle up, college football fans, because your weekends just got darker. If YouTube TV and Disney do not reach a deal within the next 48 hours, ESPN and ABC will go offline again, just before another packed Saturday slate. Word on the street: millions of fans could lose the two most prominent college football broadcast pillars over a rapacious money fight they unfortunately cannot control. According to College Football Insider, this blackout already approaches record territory and continues to climb.

On November 10, LightShed’s partner and spokesman, Rich Greenfield, hopped onto X and poured gasoline on the panic with some brutal context for college football fans. He pointed out how the feud is heading into historic territory. “Still two days to go for ESPN / ABC / Disney to tie the longest blackout ever – @DIRECTV was 13 days in September 2024 and missed one MNF game and one Saturday of College Football Current YouTubeTV blackout is 11 days, including two Saturdays of College Football and tonight would mark second MNF game.”

In other words, if a deal isn’t finalized within the next few seconds, this could become the most prolonged major sports blackout we’ve ever seen. It’s right in the midst of the peak college football chaos season. The entire Disney Channel issue on YouTube TV remains unresolved due to a dispute over financial terms between Google and Disney. The blackout started on Halloween, and with tonight’s Monday Night Football game, we’re looking at 12 days without those channels.

This isn’t a new thing, though; DirecTV had a similar spat back in September 2024 that lasted 13 days. That blackout missed one MNF game and a Saturday of college football. This current YouTube TV outage is now just one day away from tying that record, meaning fans are really feeling the pain.

These things boil down to “carriage fees.” Basically, the cash YouTube TV pays Disney to show its channels. Disney wants more money, and Google is saying, ‘No way, that’ll mean higher prices for our subscribers.’ Google is hinting that Disney is just being greedy and trying to push people over to their own service, Hulu + Live TV, while Disney is firing back, saying Google isn’t playing fair with their valuable content. It’s a classic corporate standoff, and the football fans are just collateral damage in the war.

We have seen these two companies compete before, back in 2021, but that issue was resolved in under two days. This time around? Not so fast. They remain miles apart in their talks, so this blackout could easily continue. The longer it drags on, the more annoyed subscribers become, and some are even considering ditching YouTube TV altogether. To try to butter things over, YouTube TV has offered subscribers a $20 credit. Well, that didn’t quite work out for them. Instead, it completely backfired.

YouTube TV’s collateral fees for the inconvenience caused to college football fans

The timing couldn’t be worse, especially with the blackout stretching deep into another weekend of huge matchups on ESPN and ABC. On Sunday night, YouTube TV notified its customers via email that they would receive a $20 credit because of the ongoing dispute with Disney. Obviously, it comes with a catch and a lack of respect.

YouTube TV stated that users will receive another email within the next few days with instructions on how to claim and redeem the $20 credit manually. This alone triggered another wave of backlash, as many fans felt that YouTube TV was requiring subscribers to jump through extra hoops instead of simply applying the refund to everyone.

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At this point, most fans feel that $20 just isn’t enough to make up for missing massive live sports broadcasts during peak college football season. With two weekends already impacted and MNF games now also gone, fans grew increasingly frustrated with this feud. If Disney and YouTube TV don’t reach a deal quickly, many subscribers may end up canceling or finding an alternative way to watch ESPN.