BOCA RATON, FLA. — It was a typical Sunday evening inside a popular restaurant in Town Center, with a handful of patrons at the bar and across the restaurant eager to watch ESPN’s coverage of the Atlanta Braves’ match-up against the Philadelphia Phillies. Suddenly, just as the clock struck 7pm, the channel disappeared from the screen.
Instead of an exciting Major League Baseball game, viewers were greeted with a DirecTV message that simply read, “Our contract with Disney, the owner of this channel, has expired.”
Thus commenced one of the fiercest carriage agreement battles in recent memory, one that pits the direct broadcast satellite-based MVPD against The Walt Disney Company. It’s a war that could go on for weeks, or months, as the battleground has evolved significantly since their last retransmission consent agreement was finalized five years ago.
