I'll bet it is about packages, and AT&T probably wanting to create better packages without sports and Disney holding firm and only allowing such a package on the lower end.
Problem is that both have good reasons to be firm in their position. Most cord cutting is happening over price, and prices are so high because of sports and ESPN is the by far the biggest factor in sports cost (well other than local channels but that's a different fight) so AT&T wants to offer better ways for customers drop sports so they'll have lower bills and lower yearly increases.
ESPN would lose well over half of its revenue if non sports fans were allowed to drop it from their package, they rely on that fact, so they will do everything in their power to maintain the current bundling strategy that forces non sports fans to pay for ESPN if they want higher level packages from cable/satellite providers - they don't want a way to get a "premiere" or "ultimate" type package that doesn't include ESPN.
When it gets down to it though AT&T can't afford to lose ESPN even for a few days. They pretty much own the commercial market for bars/restaurants thanks to NFLST, losing ESPN would cause them too many problems in that segment alone even ignoring residential customers.
I still think the strategy for AT&T (across the new AT&T TV as well as DirecTV) will be to have a 3-tier channel package line-up:
Starter: contains no locals or all-sports channels because it basically only offers channels owned by AT&T, Discovery, Viacom, A+E, AMC and Hallmark. (In other words, the stuff currently in AT&T Watch TV.) Want your local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW, PBS, etc? Use an OTA antenna and integrate the free signals into your AT&T TV or DirecTV service using a cheap/free tuner device offered by AT&T.
Plus: contains all your locals plus the most popular entertainment, news and sports channels from across all network groups. No second-tier/niche sports channels and no RSNs helps keep the cost down. But ESPN, ESPN 2, FS1 and NBCSN are all there.
Max: everything in Plus, plus your RSNs and many of the less-popular sports channels (including regional college conference channels) and entertainment channels owned by the major network groups.
Extra Packs: optional add-ons to any of the 3 base packages above. Leftover niche/super-fan channels that didn't make it into Max. (And maybe even some non-Plus channels appear in Max *and* in an Extra Pack too.)
The ESPN channels would never make their way into my hypothetical Starter package because it doesn't contain *anything* owned by Disney. But the majority of channels that Disney owns would qualify for the Plus package (and are, in fact, already there on the AT&T TV Now service).
AT&T clearly sees Plus as being the mainstream "sweet spot" package for most cable TV subscribers. Max will really just be for big sports fans, who will bear the brunt of paying another $20 per month for it versus Plus.
I agree that a protracted blackout of ESPN plus ABC would be a real nightmare for AT&T. OTOH, AT&T seems quite serious about driving hard bargains lately to bend their cost curve down for the next few years. They want to make AT&T TV as attractive as possible price-wise while still retaining an acceptable profit margin on it.
