Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey has a message for Disney in the companies’ $2.2 billion dispute over cable television. With an estimated 15 million missing out on ESPN and live sports since the country’s largest cable carrier was unable to agree on terms with one of the dominant content providers, Winfrey was asked at a Goldman Sachs event on Thursday about a sportsless future. He called the possibility “more and more of a potential reality.”
As of September 1, Charter took the unprecedented step of blacking out all Disney-owned channels on its cable boxes. Charter wants Disney to grant its customers free access to the Magic Kingdom’s various streaming services, such as Disney+ and ESPN+, arguing that the current financial model of cable television, where programmers receive a fee from cable companies who then pass the cost on to their consumers, no longer works in the days of a dying cable business.
