New YouTube TV Deal Will Make WWE on ESPN Free for Millions of Fans

After two weeks of angering YouTube TV subscribers, which caused Disney to lose millions of dollars a day, and a large percentage of subscribers threatening to leave for another service, the two media giants came to an agreement on a new deal on November 14, which resulted in all Disney channels immediately returning to air. A YouTube statement read:

“We’re happy to share that we’ve reached an agreement with Disney that preserves the value of our service for our subscribers and future flexibility in our offers. Subscribers should see channels including ABC, ESPN and FX returning to their service over the course of the day, as well as any recordings that were previously in their Library. We apologize for the disruption and appreciate our subscribers’ patience as we negotiated on their behalf. ”

The ESPN Unlimited App Is Coming to YouTube TV in 2026

That's not all though. A report from The Athletic's Andrew Marchand said that the new deal “will give YouTube TV subscribers access to ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer app as part of its service.” This was also confirmed by CNBC's Alex Sherman, who wrote that ESPN Unlimited “will be made available on YouTube TV to base plan subscribers at no additional cost by the end of 2026.”

As it turns out, this was a huge reason for the holdout, because while the new ESPN Unlimited app was going to be available for free on other cable companies and streamers like Spectrum and DirecTV, no deal had been worked out with YouTube. This was important for WWE fans in the United States who would have to pay $29.99 per month just to watch wrestling PLEs, when the price had been around $10 per month on Peacock.

YouTube TV subscribers will have to wait until the end of 2026 for this deal to take effect, but it's big news not only for cash-strapped wrestling fans, but also for WWE, who just added 10 million subscribers to ESPN for free.