The carriage agreement — which covers Altice’s 2.6 million customer homes in the New York City suburbs — expires Saturday night. In 2010, ESPN was available in nearly 100 million homes in the U.S. but it is now in about 87 million homes, according to Nielsen data. Those ESPN subscriber losses have led to a drop in profit at Disney’s important media networks division, which also includes ABC, the Disney Channel and Freeform. More than a decade ago, Disney mandated that ESPN be available in 90% of the subscriber base of any individual pay-TV operator. Disney agreed to lower the penetration of ESPN to about 80% of subscriber homes for individual distributors, according to industry sources.

Source: Los Angeles Times September 28, 2017 12:02 UTC