• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, 5 hours ago

In my house, we watch a lot of ESPN. We were a YouTube TV family for the last four to five years, and when the carriage dispute began between Disney and YouTube TV, we stayed on for the first few days in the assumption (or hope) everybody would figure it out.  They didn’t, and after missing that first week of NFL, NBA and college football, I decided it was time to make a change. 

I tried to sign up for Hulu+ Live TV because I perceived it to be the other market-leading option. I tried five times, using three different email accounts.  I’d been a loyal Disney+  subscriber since launch, but regardless of what I tried and where I tried to sign up (mobile, desktop, CTV), I kept hitting a wall. Hulu could not take my money.

I posted a quick recap to LinkedIn, and received many responses of folks who tried and ran into the same issue.  Hulu was not technologically ready for this dispute and as a result, it lost a lot of potential business.  I spoke to 15 people who all tried to switch, and only one was able to do so.  Meanwhile, 14 were unable to make the change, running into error messages and down chat bots.

Approaching the second full week without sports programming, I once again attempted to flip to Hulu, and was still unable to make the switch.

So what did I do?

I switched to Fubo.

To be honest, even though I knew some people who worked there, and I knew Disney had bought a controlling interest in Fubo, I had never thought to switch there.  Hulu was the brand awareness leader.   Fubo wasn’t top of mind, but was in the right place when I was in the right mind.

I simply wanted to maintain access to ESPN and local TV.  I could have paid for the ESPN app, but I wanted those local stations. Fubo offered it all, and only had one version, and not the five or six different ones I was seeing for various versions of Hulu depending on what path led me there (those multiple choices created price confusion).  Hulu made it complicated to understand, and Hulu missed the multiple chances where I tried to switch because it simply wasn't prepared. 

It was Fubo for the win.  You saw an opportunity, you were consistent, and you made it simple.  I installed the app and was up and running in minutes.  The interface was simple. Fubo offered more than YouTubeTV, so the decision made sense.  Even the price was about the same, maybe a couple of bucks here or there. 

This is not an indictment of YouTube TV or Disney.  They were in a battle based on business decisions.  I get that.  This is a criticism of Hulu, which should have known a carriage dispute was coming and prepared accordingly. 

As the saying goes in sports, “the best ability is availability."  If your team is not available to welcome and accept those migrating customers, you have to revisit your planning. 

Kudos to Fubo.  You were clearly prepared.