Disney bet on Pat McAfee during YouTube TV dispute. The result: 1.1 million live viewers.

What do you do when you have a whole weekend of football to broadcast, but YouTube TV is playing hardball with your carriage rights? If you’re Disney, the parent company of ESPN, you bring out the punter.

In this case, the punter in question is Pat McAfee, the longtime Indianapolis Colts special teamer who has since become a football pundit, a podcaster, and a popular creator on social media. After Disney and YouTube failed to reach an agreement on new carriage terms, the Mouse House brought the weekly pregame show College Gameday to McAfee’s X account, and the results were more extraordinary than a perfectly executed coffin corner kick.

According to Awful Announcing, McAfee’s Gameday stream drew 1.18 million unique viewers while tallying 1.37 million aggregate views and generating over 1.3 million minutes of watch time. McAfee, who joined the Gameday crew as part of a 2023 deal with ESPN, took a moment on his eponymous show to thank ESPN for the opportunity to stream such a notable program on his X account.

ESPN higher-ups have described McAfee as a “weapon” who can add a new dimension to the Gameday crew, and his X stream of the program explains why he’s such an X-factor for his employer. He doesn’t just reach Gen Z viewers with his youthful antics and his outsized presence on platforms like YouTube

— he also opens the door to new distribution strategies and out-of-the-box ideas that give Disney leverage amid disputes like the YouTube TV feud.

McAfee’s strong showing on X isn’t just a boon for ESPN. He also provided a compelling case study that X can point to as the-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter looks to level up its live streaming capabilities.

Disney might have more opportunities to try out offbeat strategies like this one, because the YouTube TV carriage dispute doesn’t seem as if it will be settled anytime soon. Disney thinks that YouTube is out to “eliminate competition,” while the latter tech giant claims that it only wants a “fair deal.”

If you want McAfee’s take on the whole situation, well, you should know that his opinions have gotten him into trouble in the past. In this case, however, his opinion is a simple one: He just wants everyone to kiss and make up.