As YouTube TV-Disney fight lingers, ESPN makes College GameDay free for second week

ESPN’s College GameDay is in Lubbock, Texas. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes will be the guest picker. And YouTube TV customers will continue to not be able to watch.

For the second straight weekend, ESPN is making the three-hour pregame show available at no charge on the ESPN App. The show is also streaming on Pat McAfee’s Twitter page.

“As we continue to work on reaching a fair resolution with YouTube TV so they can restore our networks, this week College GameDay will be available, once again, to all fans on the ESPN App with no subscription or authentication needed,” ESPN P.R. said on Twitter. (No community notes have been added to the message. Yet.)

“Fair resolution” is subjective. Maybe Disney isn’t being “fair.” After all, Fox and Comcast have both worked out deals with YouTube TV since late August. Why hasn’t Disney?

Disney’s decision to make College GameDay available for free is hardly altruistic. The goal is to get people to buy the ESPN App or otherwise dump YouTube TV for a service that will allow them to watch the college football games that GameDay will spend three hours hyping. (To his credit, McAfee knows that giving free stuff to fans is a far better business strategy than sending them to a propaganda website.)

There could be more Saturdays of free GameDay, because this fight could keep on going. Via TheAthletic.com, three high-level Disney execs sent a memo to employees on Friday regarding the impasse.

“We realize this has been a challenging week, with everyone asking the same question as millions of YouTube TV subscribers during the busiest time of the year in sports: When will ESPN and ABC be back on the service?” the memo obtained by TheAthletic.com said. “We wish we could give you that answer today, but unfortunately, we are headed into another sports-packed weekend without a deal in place.”

The fight is careening toward a Week 10 Monday night showdown between the 6-2 Eagles and 5-2-1 Packers. Last week, the year-over-year audience for MNF fell by 21.4 percent, due surely to the YouTube TV blackout.

This week, the audience will be greater — because last year’s Week 10 game between the Dolphins and Rams was available only on ESPN, not as a multi-network simulcast including the massive ABC footprint.

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