How to watch Penn State’s bowl game as Disney cuts off ESPN programming from YouTube TV
Millions of college football fans woke up on the Saturday morning before Christmas knowing that they have just lost access to ESPN programming on YouTube TV. Google’s cord-cutting streaming alternative to traditional cable is now heading into the thick of the college football bowl season without access to the vast majority of the college football bowl programming provided by ESPN. This is a result of a current standoff between giants Disney, the parent company of ESPN, and Google, which owns and operates YouTube TV.
Among the game snow in jeopardy for consumers of YouTube TV is Penn State’s matchup with the Arkansas Razorbacks in the Outback Bowl. The Outback Bowl is scheduled to appear on ESPN2, which means Youtube TV customers will either be crossing their fingers and hoping Santa delivered a contract resolution between Google and Disney or scrambling for an alternative to ringing in the new year with another way to watch the Nittany Lions take on the Razorbacks in Tampa.
The good news is there are alternatives to this solution, and you have time to find the right one for you. One possible alternative may be a fubo TV, which you can get with a free trial right here. That’s right, we here are looking out for you to make sure you don’t miss Penn State in the Outback Bowl.
It is worth noting that contract disputes between mega-corporations like this are nothing new, and at some point down the line, there will more than likely be an agreement as the two sides come together and realize that more money is a good thing for each. With the programming available from the Disney family of networks, it just makes too much sense not to find some middle ground at some point. But billion-dollar companies going head-to-head over pennies is nothing new and odds are we will see this again in the future.
On a related note, this is interesting to watch from a standpoint of the future of the Big Ten. Discussions about the Big Ten potentially being able to pull its conference’s offerings away entirely from ESPN have been floated, although how legitimate that scenario remains to be seen. If the Big Ten were to pull out of a future with ESPN, and Disney and Google never play nice again, then cord-cutters could still have access to Big Ten football and basketball through another partnership.
But having witnessed these types of stories for years, I feel confident in suggesting there will be peace at some point in time. After all, Disney is always about working things out, as proven by Disney and Sony working out a way to combine forces over the Spider-Man property. When dollars are there to be made, big companies will find a way to earn it.
But, in the meantime, make sure you are covered for the Outback Bowl and we’ll see where things go from here.
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