Published
March 9, 2026
Updated
August 31, 2026
People who paid for a YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream subscription since April 2019 may qualify to claim a pro rata cash share of Disney's $50 million antitrust class action settlement, with no receipts required. Claims close September 8, 2026, and payments follow the January 14, 2027 final approval hearing.
Status
Claims Open
file at OnlineTVSettlement.com by September 8, 2026 · payments only after final approval (hearing January 14, 2027)
Claim Deadline
September 8, 2026
opt-out deadline same date (postmark)
Settlement Fund
$50,000,000
non-reversionary, distributed pro rata by subscription length
Proof Required
No Receipts
you self-certify your subscription length under penalty of perjury — no documentation needed. Filing online requires the Unique ID + PIN from your mailed or emailed notice to log in; if you did not receive a notice, you can file by mail without an ID.
Latest Update — June 23, 2026
Claims are now open. The official settlement website is live at OnlineTVSettlement.com, operated by the court-appointed administrator, Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions, Inc. Eligible YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream subscribers can submit a claim online or by mail. The claim and opt-out deadline is September 8, 2026.No receipts or documentation are required: you qualify by entering your information and self-certifying how long you subscribed, under penalty of perjury. To file online, you log in with the 10-character Unique ID and 4-digit PIN from your email or postcard notice; if you did not receive a notice, you can still file by mail without an ID. Cash payments are sent only after the court grants final approval at the January 14, 2027 hearing, so filing now secures your claim but does not trigger an immediate payment.
The case is Biddle et al. v. The Walt Disney Company, Case No. 5:22-cv-07317-EJD, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, before Judge Edward J. Davila. The remaining schedule runs from the September 8, 2026 claim and opt-out deadline to the December 1, 2026 objection deadline and the final approval hearing on January 14, 2027.
Where to File: OnlineTVSettlement.com
File at the official settlement website, OnlineTVSettlement.com, which Epiq operates for this settlement. The site hosts the online claim form, the class notice, the settlement agreement, opt-out and objection instructions, and a FAQ. The fastest route is the online claim form, where you log in with the Unique ID and PIN from your notice; class members who did not receive a notice can print and mail a paper claim form without an ID. All claims must be submitted online or postmarked by September 8, 2026.Important: use only OnlineTVSettlement.com. Do not enter personal information on unofficial third-party claim links. Any site other than the official Epiq-administered settlement website is not the settlement administrator.
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Schedule At a Glance
Key dates set by the preliminary approval order (Dkt. 236):• March 31, 2026 — Preliminary approval order entered. Court preliminarily certified the YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream Settlement Classes for purposes of settlement only.
• Notice Date — July 7, 2026. Class notice issues by email and postcard. The official Epiq settlement website and online claim form are already live at OnlineTVSettlement.com, so eligible class members can file now.
• September 8, 2026 — Claim & Opt-Out Deadline. Last day to file a claim or to request exclusion from the settlement (postmark date).
• October 27, 2026 — Motion for Final Approval Filed. Class counsel files motion for final approval of the settlement plus any motion for attorneys' fees and costs.
• December 1, 2026 — Objection Deadline. Last day to file or postmark objections to the settlement or to the fee request.
• December 29, 2026 — Reply Deadline. Class counsel's replies in support of final approval and the fee motion.
• January 14, 2027 at 9:00 a.m. PT — Final Approval (Fairness) Hearing. Judge Davila will consider final approval of the settlement, the plan of distribution, service awards to Settling Plaintiffs, and the attorneys' fees and costs motion. Held in Courtroom 4 of the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building, San Jose, CA. The court can adjust the hearing date without further individual notice.
• After Final Approval (timing varies). If the court grants final approval and no appeals are filed, payments are distributed by Epiq under the court-approved distribution plan.
Can I File a Claim Right Now?
Yes. The official settlement website is live at OnlineTVSettlement.com, operated by the court-appointed administrator, Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions, Inc. No receipts are required — you self-certify your subscription length. To file online, you log in with the Unique ID and PIN from your notice; you can also mail a paper claim form without an ID. The claim and opt-out deadline is September 8, 2026 (online submission or postmark). Cash payments follow final approval at the January 14, 2027 hearing.Do I Qualify?
You likely qualify if you paid for a YouTube TV subscription or a DirecTV streaming subscription at any point between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2026 — the class period set by the court's preliminary approval order. It does not matter if you canceled. It does not matter how long you were subscribed. If you paid for even one month of either service during that window, you are a potential class member. The DirecTV streaming class includes subscriptions sold under any of the service's names over the years: DirecTV Stream, DirecTV Now, or AT&T TV Now. You may qualify for one or both classes if you subscribed to both services at different times.How Much Money Will I Get?
We do not know the exact payout per person yet. Disney is putting $50 million into the settlement fund. After attorney fees and administration costs are deducted, the remaining money will be divided among everyone who files a valid claim. Your share will be based on how long you were subscribed — people who were subscribed for more months will receive more money. The more people who file claims, the smaller each individual payment will be. YouTube TV alone has over 8 million current subscribers, and the class goes back to 2019, so the eligible pool is very large. Individual payments will likely be modest, but the settlement is non-reversionary, meaning Disney does not get any unclaimed money back.What Do I Need to Do Right Now?
File your claim at OnlineTVSettlement.com before the September 8, 2026 deadline. No documentation is required — you enter your information and self-certify how long you subscribed, under penalty of perjury. To file online, log in with the 10-character Unique ID and 4-digit PIN from your email or postcard notice; if you did not receive a notice, you can file by mail without an ID.It still helps to recall when you subscribed to YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream / DirecTV Now / AT&T TV Now and for how long. Payouts are pro rata by subscription length, so accurate subscription dates make for a cleaner claim, and the administrator may use YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream records to verify it. Filing now secures your claim; cash payments are sent only after the court grants final approval at the January 14, 2027 hearing.
What Is This Settlement About?
The Walt Disney Company has agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it violated federal and state antitrust and consumer protection laws by inflating the prices of streaming live pay television services. The settlement covers subscribers to YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream (including the service's earlier names, DirecTV Now and AT&T TV Now) who paid for subscriptions between April 1, 2019 and the date the court grants preliminary approval.Class counsel filed a motion for preliminary approval of the settlement on March 6, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California before Judge Edward J. Davila. The $50 million fund is non-reversionary, meaning any unclaimed money does not go back to Disney. The settlement also includes injunctive relief designed to address the alleged harm to competition in the streaming live TV market.
Disney denies all allegations and any wrongdoing but agreed to settle to avoid the costs and risks of continued litigation.
YouTube TV Class vs. DirecTV Stream Class
There are two separate settlement classes. The YouTube TV Settlement Class covers anyone who purchased a YouTube TV subscription between April 1, 2019 and the date the court grants preliminary approval. The DirecTV Stream Settlement Class covers anyone who purchased a DirecTV streaming live pay TV subscription during the same period, including subscriptions sold under the names DirecTV Stream, DirecTV Now, and AT&T TV Now. You do not need to be a current subscriber — if you subscribed at any point during the class period and later canceled, you are still a potential class member.What Was the Lawsuit About?
The lawsuit alleged that Disney used its ownership of ESPN — the most expensive channel on any streaming or cable TV platform — and its control of Hulu + Live TV to force anticompetitive agreements on every major streaming live TV provider in the United States. These agreements, known as "carriage agreements," allegedly contained two key provisions that allowed Disney to inflate prices across the entire market.First, the agreements allegedly required that ESPN be included in the base (cheapest) package offered by every streaming live TV provider. This meant that no provider could offer a cheaper package without ESPN, even though surveys showed that more than half of subscribers would have preferred to drop ESPN if it meant saving money.
Second, the agreements allegedly contained "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) clauses that prevented any provider from getting a better deal on ESPN than what Disney gave to others. Because Disney also owned Hulu + Live TV — a direct competitor to YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream — Disney could effectively set a price floor for the entire market simply by raising the price of its own product. Competitors had no way to undercut Disney on price because their single largest cost input (ESPN) was controlled by Disney.
The result, according to the lawsuit, was that streaming live TV prices nearly doubled since Disney took control of Hulu in May 2019. YouTube TV's base package went from $35 to $65 per month. DirecTV Stream's base package went from $35 to $70. And during the brief December 2021 dispute when YouTube TV temporarily dropped Disney channels, YouTube TV publicly stated it would offer an ESPN-less package at $15 less per month — direct evidence of how much ESPN was adding to every subscriber's bill.
Why Did YouTube TV Prices Go Up So Much?
When YouTube TV launched in 2017, it cost $35 per month. By 2022, it cost $65. The lawsuit argued this was not the result of normal market forces but of Disney's deliberate strategy to maintain the "ESPN tax" — the mandatory monthly fee every live TV subscriber pays for ESPN whether they watch sports or not.ESPN has historically been the most expensive channel on any TV platform, costing providers $9 or more per subscriber per month as of 2017. For decades, Disney required that ESPN be included in every basic cable package in America, meaning tens of millions of people who never watched ESPN were subsidizing those who did. When cord-cutting caused millions of Americans to cancel cable and satellite TV, Disney lost subscribers and revenue. Rather than compete on price or launch a standalone ESPN streaming product, Disney allegedly used its new ownership of Hulu to recreate the same mandatory ESPN bundling structure on streaming platforms.
The lawsuit documented how Disney negotiated new carriage agreements with each major streaming live TV provider one by one — first DirecTV in 2019, then YouTube TV in 2021, then Sling TV in 2022 — and after each deal, prices went up industry-wide with no meaningful price competition.
What About fuboTV Subscribers?
The $50 million Disney settlement does not include fuboTV claims. Those claims are separate and should not be presented as part of this settlement. The two Settlement Classes covered by this deal are the YouTube TV Settlement Class and the DirecTV Stream Settlement Class (which includes the service’s earlier names, DirecTV Now and AT&T TV Now). Disney’s Q2 fiscal 2026 10-Q also separately confirms that the fuboTV-related claims remain pending and are not part of the preliminarily approved $50 million resolution. For a separate consumer privacy case involving Fubo, see OCA’s coverage of the fuboTV VPPA video privacy settlement.Does This Include Hulu + Live TV Subscribers?
No. Hulu + Live TV is owned and operated by Disney. Because Disney is the defendant in this case, Hulu + Live TV subscribers are not part of the settlement class. The settlement covers subscribers to Disney's competitors — YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream — whose prices were allegedly inflated by Disney's anticompetitive conduct.What Is the Injunctive Relief?
In addition to the $50 million cash fund, Disney has agreed to injunctive relief designed to address the alleged harm to competition in the streaming live TV market. The specific terms of the injunctive relief have not been fully disclosed publicly yet. The motion for preliminary approval indicates the relief is intended to change Disney's practices going forward in the streaming live TV market. More details will be available when the court reviews and rules on the preliminary approval motion.How Did the Case Get Here?
The lawsuit was filed on November 18, 2022 by four YouTube TV subscribers — Heather Biddle of California, Jeffrey Kaplan of Arizona, Zachary Roberts of Indiana, and Joel Wilson of Kentucky — through the law firm Bathaee Dunne LLP. The plaintiffs alleged Disney violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and sought treble damages, attorney fees, and an injunction preventing Disney from enforcing its anticompetitive carriage agreements.Disney moved to dismiss. In 2023, the court dismissed several claims but allowed others to proceed, finding that consumers had adequately alleged Disney's actions could have hobbled competition. Disney continued to fight the case, and the plaintiffs amended their complaint to expand the class to include DirecTV Stream subscribers. (Fubo-related claims were pursued separately and are not part of this $50 million settlement.) The case went through extensive litigation before the parties reached the settlement now before the court.
On June 6, 2025, a notice of settlement was filed. On March 6, 2026, class counsel filed the motion for preliminary approval with the $50 million non-reversionary fund. On March 31, 2026 the court adopted the proposed preliminary approval order (Dkt. 236), preliminarily certifying the YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream Settlement Classes for purposes of settlement only, appointing Bathaee Dunne LLP as Interim Lead Counsel, appointing Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions as Settlement Administrator, and scheduling the final approval hearing for January 14, 2027.
The October-November 2025 YouTube TV Blackout
While the settlement was being negotiated, Disney and YouTube TV had yet another carriage dispute. On October 30, 2025, Disney channels went dark on YouTube TV after the two sides could not agree on a new carriage deal. The blackout lasted approximately two weeks and cost Disney an estimated $110 million in lost operating profit. YouTube TV offered subscribers a $20 credit during the outage.The companies reached a new multi-year deal on November 15, 2025 that includes access to ESPN Unlimited (Disney's upcoming direct-to-consumer sports product) at no additional cost to YouTube TV base plan subscribers by the end of 2026. The new deal also allows YouTube TV to place selected Disney networks into genre-specific add-on tiers — a significant departure from Disney's historical insistence that all channels be in the base package.
When Will Payments Be Sent?
Payments come after final approval. The court adopted a schedule that puts the final approval (fairness) hearing on January 14, 2027 at 9:00 a.m. PT before Judge Davila in Courtroom 4 of the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in San Jose, California. If the court grants final approval at that hearing and no objector files an appeal, Epiq will distribute the Settlement Fund to class members who filed valid claims under the court-approved distribution plan. Typical timing in a clean case is roughly 30 to 90 days after final approval becomes final, but an appeal can push the actual distribution date out substantially. OCA will update this page each time a docket milestone moves the payment date.Related Disney, ESPN, Hulu & Streaming Class Actions
The Disney ESPN antitrust settlement isn’t the only Disney-adjacent case consumers are tracking. Other open or recently-resolved class actions and government enforcement matters involving Disney, its streaming services, or the same streaming live TV ecosystem include:• Disneyland Facial Recognition Class Action (Duffield v. Disney, S.D.N.Y., May 2026). A newly filed private class action complaint alleging Disney began collecting facial recognition biometric data from guests at the Disneyland and Disney California Adventure entrances on or around April 28, 2026 without adequate consent. Allegations only; no settlement, no claim form. Read the Disney facial recognition class action complaint page.
• Disney & California AG — $2.75M CCPA Privacy Settlement. The California Attorney General fined Disney $2.75 million — the largest CCPA settlement in California history — for ignoring opt-out requests on Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. Government enforcement, no consumer claim form. Read the Disney CCPA settlement breakdown.
• Disney & FTC COPPA Children’s Privacy Settlement. Separate FTC enforcement action over Disney’s handling of children’s data online. Read the Disney FTC COPPA settlement page.
• FuboTV VPPA Video Privacy Settlement. Consumer privacy case involving FuboTV (now Disney-owned) under the federal Video Privacy Protection Act. See the FuboTV VPPA settlement details.
• NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Class Action. Same streaming live TV distribution model and similar antitrust theories — long-running case over the NFL’s out-of-market Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV and YouTube TV. Read the NFL Sunday Ticket class action coverage.
• Other streaming-service class actions. If you subscribed to Peacock, Tubi, or watched a high-profile event on Netflix (Tyson vs. Paul streaming-issues case), those streaming services have their own separate class action and settlement pages.
Settlement Amount
$50,000,000 (non-reversionary)
Case Title
Biddle, et al. v. The Walt Disney Company
Case Number
5:22-cv-07317-EJD
Court
U.S. District Court, N.D. California (San Jose Division)
Claim & Opt-Out Deadline
September 8, 2026
Final Approval Hearing
January 14, 2027 at 9:00 a.m. PT
Hon. Edward J. Davila · Courtroom 4, Robert F. Peckham Federal Building, San Jose, CA
Administrator
Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions, Inc.
Official Website
Online TV Settlement.com
Official Settlement Notice (PDF)
The court-authorized long-form notice for the YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream settlement explains who is covered, how to file, and the deadlines.Official Court Filing (PDF)
Sources
• Biddle et al. v. The Walt Disney Company, Case No. 5:22-cv-07317-EJD, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Hon. Edward J. Davila presiding — Document 236, [Proposed] Order Preliminarily Approving Class Action Settlement and Issuance of Notice (filed March 31, 2026)• Preliminary Approval Order (govinfo.gov, USCOURTS-cand-5_22-cv-07317)
• The Walt Disney Company Q2 fiscal 2026 Form 10-Q (preliminary approval of $50M settlement; separate fuboTV claims noted)
• Settlement Agreement (Courthouse News mirror)
• Law360 — Disney To Pay $50M To End YouTube, DirecTV Stream Claims (March 6, 2026)
• MLex — Plaintiffs Seek Preliminary Approval for Antitrust Settlement With Disney (March 6, 2026)
• Variety — YouTube TV and Disney Reach Deal Ending Two-Week Blackout (Nov 2025)
• The Wrap — Disney Sports Division Took $110M Hit From YouTube TV Dispute (Feb 2026)
• Deadline — Disney Hit With Antitrust Suit (Nov 2022)
• Court-authorized complaint, Biddle v. Walt Disney Co., No. 5:22-cv-07317-EJD (N.D. Cal.)
For more class actions keep scrolling below.
