Disney's villain era: The YouTube TV dispute highlights the challenge to maintain a good-guy image

Disney and ESPN have drawn frustration from sports fans as its carriage dispute with YouTube TV drags on.Pascak Della Zuana/Sygma via Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/BIDisney has taken heat this year, most recently drawing the ire of sports fans.Culture wars, price hikes, and now a sports blackout have drawn backlash.Disney faces the challenge of maintaining its good-guy image and broad appeal.The pitchforks are out for one of the world's most beloved companies.Sports fans are growing frustrated with Disney after its dispute with YouTube TV has left roughly 10 million subscribers without channels like ESPN and ABC since Thursday. That includes a "Monday Night Football" matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals.It's one of several high-profile dustups involving Disney in recent months. The Mouse House walks a fine line in a sharp-elbowed TV market and a politically polarized US, trying to please shareholders with its streaming business' progress while avoiding cultural land mines.Fans online called this latest move "tone deaf" and "greedy as fudge," but beyond social media chatter, these missteps can threaten Disney's bottom line. A high-profile boycott around Jimmy Kimmel's temporary suspension coincided with millions of streaming cancellations. News that the company was raising prices again didn't help.After Disney-owned ESPN went dark on YouTube TV, some sports fans started to push back.Inside Business is today's must-read story on what the forces shaping business, tech, and innovation mean for you. Each piece delivers insights to help you make smarter career, money, and life decisions.Top ESPN personalities pointed followers to a Disney site with details about the YouTube TV blackout, trying to stir up outrage against the Google-owned TV service. Instead, the messages fell on deaf ears — and arguably backfired."It's pretty tone-deaf to tell paying customers to 'go fix' something that's entirely between two billion-dollar corporations," said one of the top replies to an X post from ESPN's Scott Van Pelt about the YouTube TV blackout. "Viewers have zero responsibility here."A Disney spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment for this story.A minefield of price hikesDisney may be becoming a victim of its own success.The Mouse House has raised prices in response to robust demand for its services and experiences. Case in point: Disney World prices are going up after a record quarter, though some Disney supporters don't even mind if higher prices help combat crowds and long lines.Similarly, Disney's ESPN is pushing for higher prices because it has an unrivaled portfolio of sports rights that millions of fans want to see, and a popular new app on which to watch them.Still, some sports fans are heated and took to social media to lament that they already pay too much to watch sports. They seem sympathetic to YouTube TV's argument that Disney and ESPN are pushing for rate increases that will drive up prices again for the live TV service. YouTube TV hiked prices last December to $83 a month from $73.

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