J.J. Watt Just Said What We’re All Thinking About Streaming Services (And Disney Isn’t Going to Like It)
Remember when watching football just meant turning on your TV? Yeah, those were simpler times. Now we’re living in a world where even NFL legend J.J. Watt can’t figure out how to watch Monday Night Football—and honestly, his frustration is the most relatable thing you’ll hear all week.
When Even J.J. Watt Can’t Watch Monday Night Football
Here’s the situation: Watt, who currently works as a game analyst for CBS when he’s not busy being a minority investor in English club Burnley and La Liga side Espanyol, took to social media to voice what millions of fans were thinking. The Dallas Cowboys were hosting the Arizona Cardinals in Arlington for Monday Night Football, and thanks to a corporate standoff between YouTube TV and Disney, countless viewers were left staring at blank screens.
“So we’re just not watching Monday Night Football huh? I’m not buying another streaming subscription,” Watt tweeted, capturing the collective exhaustion of sports fans everywhere who are drowning in monthly subscription fees.
But here’s where it gets even more ridiculous. Watt actually pays for ESPN+ so he can watch Espanyol matches (you know, the team he’s invested in). You’d think that would cover MNF, right? Wrong. Dead wrong.
“The crazy part is, I have some sort of subscription because I watch Espanyol matches on ESPN+ But I can’t watch MNF. I don’t understand it and quite frankly just don’t really care to figure it out right now. Just frustrating. All of it,” he added.
And honestly? That’s the mood. When someone who literally works in sports broadcasting and owns stakes in professional football clubs can’t navigate the streaming maze, what hope do the rest of us have?
The Real Problem: Streaming Has Become a Full-Time Job
Let’s be real for a second. The streaming wars have turned watching sports into a part-time job that requires a spreadsheet, a calculator, and probably a degree in corporate negotiation. You need one service for this league, another for that conference, a third for playoff games, and apparently a fourth just to watch Monday Night Football—unless that service suddenly drops the channel because of a contract dispute.
The YouTube TV and Disney standoff is just the latest example of how fans are getting caught in the crossfire of corporate greed. YouTube TV’s content agreement with Disney expired, which meant ESPN and other Disney-owned channels got yanked from the platform faster than you can say “just let me watch the game.”
Fans weren’t having it. One frustrated viewer blamed “the greed of @Disney trying to get people to pay for their $30/mo ESPN ULTRA” for the entire mess. Another complained that Disney has “taken these channels off of our espn subscription that was part of the disney+ bundle…we now have a stripped down espn that’s a shell of its former self and still paying the same price. total BS. fix it @disney.”
The Corporate Back-and-Forth Nobody Asked For
Behind the scenes, the finger-pointing got even more ridiculous. Disney reportedly asked Google to offer ABC to YouTube TV subscribers for Election Night coverage (because apparently that was more important than sports fans getting their Monday Night Football fix). Google declined, countering with their own proposal to immediately restore ABC and ESPN while negotiations continued.
In a note to Disney, YouTube leadership wrote: “We agree that the right priority here is to give customers what they want…But unfortunately, your proposal would permit us to return Disney’s ABC stations only for a day and will cause customer confusion among those who may briefly see ABC on YouTube TV only to lose it again shortly after…To truly achieve what is best for our mutual customers, we propose immediately restoring the Disney channels that our customers watch: ABC and the ESPN networks, while we continue to negotiate.”
Translation? Two massive companies playing chicken while fans like Watt are left unable to watch the games they’re literally paying to access.
Why Watt’s Frustration Matters
Here’s the thing about Watt calling out this nonsense: he’s not just some random fan complaining on the internet. This is a three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, a guy who knows the sports industry inside and out, someone with actual skin in the game as both an analyst and team investor. When he says he doesn’t understand it and doesn’t care to figure it out, that’s not laziness—that’s a guy who’s fed up with an unnecessarily complicated system that benefits nobody except corporate bottom lines.
And he’s right to be frustrated. Sports are supposed to bring people together, not turn into a scavenger hunt for which streaming service currently has the rights to broadcast which games. The fact that you can pay for ESPN+ but still not watch Monday Night Football on ESPN is the kind of logic that makes your brain hurt.
The Bigger Picture: Streaming Has Lost the Plot
Watt’s tweets highlight a problem that’s been building for years: streaming services promised to be the answer to expensive cable packages, but somewhere along the way, they became exactly what they were supposed to replace. We’re now paying for multiple subscriptions, dealing with content getting pulled at random, and somehow ending up more confused and frustrated than we were before.
The beautiful game (and the beautiful sport of football, for that matter) shouldn’t require a master’s degree in corporate dealmaking to watch. Fans like Watt just want to support their teams and enjoy the games without feeling like they need to hire a consultant to figure out which platform to use.
So yeah, Watt’s frustration? It’s valid. It’s relatable. And it’s a wake-up call that the current streaming model isn’t working for anyone except the companies collecting multiple subscription fees from the same exhausted viewers.
