The Disney Streaming Settlement Closes September 8. If You Spent the Whole Class Period in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio or Georgia, Your Payment Comes Out of a 10% Slice of the Fund.

The court-authorised settlement website is OnlineTVSettlement.com, run by Epiq. It describes a $50 million partial settlement in an antitrust class action against The Walt Disney Company. “Partial” is doing real work in that sentence: the lawsuit was brought by three groups of plaintiffs — YouTube TV, DirecTV Stream and FuboTV subscribers — and the notice states plainly that it “only applies to YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream Plaintiffs. FuboTV Plaintiffs have not settled with Defendant.”

The underlying allegation, as our tracker page summarises the complaint, is that Disney leveraged ESPN to require large channel bundles on streaming live-TV services and so raised what subscribers paid. The notice itself puts it more drily: the plaintiffs allege Disney “violated federal antitrust law and various state antitrust and consumer-protection laws by engaging in various forms of conduct to raise the prices of Streaming Live Pay Television.” Disney “denies any wrongdoing but has agreed to settle the lawsuit,” and the court has not decided who is right.

Two classes are covered. The YouTube TV Settlement Class is everyone who bought a YouTube TV subscription from April 1, 2019 through March 31, 2026. The DirecTV Stream Settlement Class is everyone who bought a DirecTV streaming live pay-TV subscription in the same window — “branded at various times as, at least, DirecTV Stream, DirecTV Now, and AT&T TV Now.” If you had both, you file one claim form covering both subscriptions.

The search phrase that spiked this week — “Biddle v. The Walt Disney Company – Reminder Notice of Class Action Settlement” — reads like the subject line of a reminder email; we have not seen the email itself. The settlement is real and the notice was authorised by a federal judge. The only administrator website is OnlineTVSettlement.com; the toll-free number, 1-877-704-2517, gives recorded information only. Filing is free.

Every summary says the payment is “pro rata by subscription length.” That is true, but it is the second step. The first step is in Question 5 of the long form notice: “The Settlement requires the Net Settlement Fund (i.e., the Gross Settlement Fund less notice and claims administration costs, attorney's fees, and certain other costs and fees) be allocated between Settlement Class Members in ‘Repealer Jurisdictions’ and Settlement Class Members in ‘Non-Repealer Jurisdictions.’”

Question 8 gives the split: “90% of the Net Settlement Fund will be allocated for payments to Settlement Class Members who resided in a Repealer Jurisdiction at any time during the class period. 10% of the Net Settlement Fund will be allocated for payments to the remaining Settlement Class Members located in the Non-Repealer Jurisdictions.”

The notice lists the 39 Repealer Jurisdictions: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. It does not list the other side. Subtracting that list from the fifty states leaves fourteen Non-Repealer states: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming. Five of those — Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and Georgia — are among the ten most populous states in the country. Together the fourteen share one-tenth of the money.

The word comes from Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, the 1977 Supreme Court decision that limited federal antitrust damages to direct purchasers. A streaming subscriber is an indirect purchaser of Disney's channels. States that passed their own laws letting indirect purchasers recover are called “repealer” states, and their residents' claims are worth more in a settlement like this one. That is why the fund is carved before it is shared.

What the split means in dollars depends on numbers the notice does not publish. Class counsel will ask for fees of up to 30% of the gross fund, which is $15,000,000. If the court awarded all of it, and before costs and administration are taken out, $35,000,000 would remain: about $31,500,000 for the repealer pool and $3,500,000 for the fourteen-state pool. Within each pool, payments run pro rata by subscription length. The notice gives no class size and no estimated payment, so we are not going to invent one. One detail does work in a mover's favour: the test is whether you “resided in a Repealer Jurisdiction at any time during the class period.” Someone who lived in New York for a single year between 2019 and 2026 and now lives in Texas is in the 90% pool.

September 8, 2026 is two deadlines at once. The claim form must be submitted online at OnlineTVSettlement.com by that date, or mailed to the administrator and postmarked by it. The request for exclusion — opting out — must also be postmarked by September 8, and it can only be done by mail: “You cannot opt out (exclude yourself) by telephone or by email.” Group opt-outs are not accepted; each person signs their own.

December 1, 2026 is the objection deadline, and it works differently: an objection is filed with the Court, not mailed to the administrator, addressed to the Class Action Clerk of the U.S. District Court in San Jose. Class counsel's application for fees, costs and service awards “will be made available on the Settlement Website … before the deadline for you to object.” The request will be for up to 30% of the gross fund plus reasonable costs, and service awards of up to $5,000 for each class representative. The court “may award less than these amounts.”

January 14, 2027 at 9:00 a.m. is the Final Approval Hearing before the Honorable Edward J. Davila at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in San Jose, Courtroom 4 on the 5th floor. The date is subject to change without further notice to the class. Question 13 of the notice sets expectations on money: payment comes “after the Settlement is approved by the Court and becomes final,” and “it may take time for the Settlement to be approved and become final.” With a hearing four months after the claim window shuts, and appeals possible after that, no payment is arriving in 2026.

File online at OnlineTVSettlement.com, or by mail to Biddle v. Disney, Settlement Administrator, PO Box 4720, Portland, OR 97208-4720, postmarked by September 8, 2026. If you had both YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, put both subscriptions on one form. If you move after filing, Question 12 makes it your job to tell the administrator at the same address.

If you would rather keep your own right to sue Disney over these claims, the exclusion request has to be in the mail with a September 8 postmark, signed by you, naming the class you are leaving. Miss that and you are bound by the release whether or not you file a claim.

FuboTV subscribers are in a different position: their part of the case is still being litigated and no claim form exists for them. And for anyone deciding whether the filing is worth ten minutes — the notice explains the mechanics, not the amount, and a small pro rata share of a fund that is still to be cut for fees and split 90/10 is the honest expectation. Our Disney streaming settlement tracker will carry the fee application, the hearing outcome and any payment date as they appear on the docket.