Streaming Lawsuits Last Month: Disney, Amazon, Spotify, Roku

Several major streaming lawsuits are active right now, and a few are already paying out. Disney has agreed to a $50 million settlement with YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream subscribers over ESPN bundling practices that allegedly drove up live TV prices. Tubi is sending checks under a nearly $20 million privacy settlement. Amazon reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over Prime sign-ups and cancellations. And a new class action accuses Spotify of letting billions of bot-generated streams siphon royalties from legitimate artists. Here is where each case stands and what it means if you were a customer.

Disney’s $50 Million Live TV Streaming Settlement

In March 2026, Disney agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class action brought by YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream subscribers who alleged the company used ESPN’s dominance in live sports to inflate streaming prices across the market.¹ The case, Biddle v. The Walt Disney Company, was filed in late 2022 in the Northern District of California.

Plaintiffs alleged Disney required streaming platforms to include ESPN in their base channel packages and contractually prohibited them from offering cheaper bundles without the sports network, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.² YouTube TV’s price climbed from $35 per month in 2017 to $83 per month in January 2025, and DirecTV Stream followed a similar path.³ Judge Edward J. Davila partially denied Disney’s motion to dismiss in 2024, allowing the core antitrust claims to proceed.

Who Qualifies

Two groups of subscribers are covered by the settlement:

Anyone who purchased a YouTube TV subscription between April 1, 2019, and the date of preliminary approval.
Anyone who purchased a DirecTV Stream subscription during the same period, including under its earlier names DirecTV Now and AT&T TV Now.⁴

Plaintiffs’ attorney Yavar Bathaee estimated that 11 million to 17 million people could be eligible, with an expected claim rate of 3% to 5%.¹ Individual payouts will vary based on where you live and how long you subscribed. Ninety percent of the net fund goes to residents of states that permit indirect purchaser antitrust claims; the remaining 10% is distributed to subscribers in other states.⁵ The fund is non-reversionary, so unclaimed money will not revert to Disney.⁶

How to File and When

Payments are not automatic. Class members must submit a claim form, which will be available online and by mail once the official settlement website launches. Payment options include check, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, and direct deposit.⁵ Judge Davila granted preliminary approval on March 31, 2026, and set a final fairness hearing for January 14, 2027.⁷ Payments will only go out after that hearing. Plaintiffs’ counsel has requested up to $15.11 million in attorneys’ fees and costs, roughly 30% of the fund.¹

What Changes Besides the Money

The deal also requires Disney, for three years, to consider proposals from streaming providers who want to offer packages that exclude ESPN channels, and to implement internal “information walls” preventing its linear networks like ESPN from sharing confidential negotiation details with its own Hulu + Live TV streaming arm.⁴

Fubo subscribers are not covered. Disney acquired a 70% stake in Fubo in January 2025,⁸ and Judge Davila is still considering whether two Fubo subscribers who filed a separate case can be compelled into arbitration.¹

Tubi’s $20 Million Privacy Settlement Is Paying Out

Tubi, the free ad-supported streaming service owned by Fox Corp., agreed to pay nearly $20 million to settle allegations that it shared users’ viewing information with advertisers without consent, violating the federal Video Privacy Protection Act.⁹ The case, Gregory v. Tubi, Inc., was filed in Illinois state court. Tubi denied wrongdoing.

The settlement covers anyone who used Tubi between June 23, 2021, and August 26, 2024. The total fund is $19.99 million. The claims deadline passed on November 28, 2024, and the final approval hearing was held on December 4, 2024.¹⁰ An appeal challenging the approval was dismissed on September 26, 2025, and the settlement administrator began issuing payments on October 17, 2025.¹¹ Each eligible claimant receives an equal share of the fund after deductions for administration, attorneys’ fees, and the class representative’s service award. If you did not file a claim by November 2024, you are not eligible.

Amazon’s $2.5 Billion Prime Settlement With the FTC

The largest streaming-adjacent action of the past year was not about content but about the subscribe button. In September 2025, the Federal Trade Commission secured a $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon over allegations that it enrolled millions of consumers in Prime without consent and made cancellation unreasonably difficult.¹²

The deal includes a $1 billion civil penalty, the largest the FTC has ever imposed for a rule violation, plus $1.5 billion in refunds for approximately 35 million affected consumers. The FTC alleged violations of both the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. Two Amazon executives, Senior Vice President Neil Lindsay and Vice President Jamil Ghani, were named as individual defendants, and the Commission approved the order unanimously, 3-0.

Going forward, Amazon must display a clear button to decline Prime during checkout, give upfront disclosures about auto-renewal and billing terms, and ensure that canceling is no harder than signing up. An independent third-party monitor will oversee compliance.¹² Refunds are being distributed by the FTC; eligible consumers do not need to file suit.

Spotify Class Action Over Billions of Fake Streams

A different kind of streaming lawsuit targets royalties rather than subscribers. In November 2025, rapper RBX, whose legal name is Eric Dwayne Collins, filed a proposed class action in the Central District of California accusing Spotify of knowingly allowing billions of fraudulent, bot-generated streams on its platform.¹³

The complaint uses Drake as a case study. It alleges that between January 2022 and September 2025, a “substantial, non-trivial percentage” of Drake’s roughly 37 billion Spotify streams were generated by automated bot accounts.¹⁴ Drake himself is not a defendant and is not accused of orchestrating the alleged fraud. The complaint flags accounts that listened exclusively to Drake for 23 hours a day, heavy VPN usage disguising stream origins, and listening so concentrated that under 2% of user accounts produced roughly 15% of Drake’s total plays.¹³ One example in the complaint alleged that 250,000 streams of the song “No Face” over four days in 2024 were geomapped to the United Kingdom but actually originated in Turkey.¹⁵

The financial theory is straightforward. Spotify pays royalties out of a shared pool, so every fake stream credited to one artist takes money from everyone else. The complaint estimates the cost to legitimate rights holders, from Drake’s music alone, at hundreds of millions of dollars.¹⁴ The proposed class includes all U.S. residents who held royalty rights for content on Spotify between January 1, 2018, and the present.¹⁶

Spotify denies the allegations. A spokesperson said the company “in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming” and pointed to investments in detection, royalty withholding, and penalties. The company cited a past case in which a fraudulent actor extracted $10 million from various services but only $60,000 from Spotify as evidence its systems work.¹³

The case is at a decision point. Two of the three original defendants, Spotify AB and Spotify Technology S.A., were terminated in February 2026, leaving Spotify USA, Inc. as the sole defendant.¹⁷ On May 29, 2026, Judge Josephine L. Staton heard Spotify’s motion to dismiss and a separate motion to strike the nationwide class allegations. Spotify argued it lacked the “special relationship” with RBX needed to support a negligence claim.¹⁸ Both motions are under submission, and a written ruling is pending.

Roku Children’s Privacy Suits by State Attorneys General

Roku is defending children’s privacy suits from multiple state attorneys general. In April 2025, Michigan sued Roku for allegedly collecting children’s personal information, including precise location data, IP addresses, and viewing histories, and sharing it with advertisers and data brokers without parental notice or verifiable consent, in violation of the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.¹⁹ In October 2025, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a separate complaint alleging Roku “illegally mined children’s sensitive data and sold it to third parties” through its Kids and Family channels. It is the first enforcement action under the Florida Digital Bill of Rights, and legal commentators have said the case could reshape children’s privacy enforcement against large tech companies.²⁰ Both cases are pending.

1
Courthouse News Service. Disney Settles Livestream Subscriber Class Action for $50 Million
2
Bloomberg Law. Disney, Consumers Ink $50 Million Settlement in Streaming Case
3
Sportico. YouTube TV Price Hike Subscription
4
ClassAction.org. $50M Disney Settlement to End Litigation Over Alleged Antitrust Violations Linked to Live Streaming Prices
5
Claim Depot. YouTube TV DirecTV $50M Price-Fixing Settlement Coming Soon
6
NBC New York. Disney YouTube TV DirecTV Class Action Lawsuit $50 Million
7
PACER Monitor. Biddle et al v. The Walt Disney Company
8
American Antitrust Institute. AAI Asks DOJ to Scrutinize Anticompetitive Litigation Settlement in FuboTV v. Disney
9
Video Streaming Settlement. Gregory v. Tubi, Inc. Settlement
10
Top Class Actions. $19.99M Tubi VPPA Class Action Settlement
11
Claim Depot. Tubi Privacy Settlement
12
Federal Trade Commission. FTC Secures Historic $2.5 Billion Settlement Against Amazon
13
Hollywood Reporter. Spotify Streaming Fraud Lawsuit Drake Streams
14
Pitchfork. Spotify Accused of Permitting Fake Drake Streams in New Class Action Lawsuit
15
Los Angeles Times. Rapper RBX Spotify Lawsuit Drake AI Bots
16
ClassAction.org. Spotify Lawsuit Alleges Billions of Streams Including Some of Drake’s Are Fraudulent
17
PACER Monitor. Eric Dwayne Collins v. Spotify USA, Inc. et al
18
Law360. Spotify Says Class Suit Over Bots Lacks Special Relationship
19
Silver Golub & Teitell LLP. Roku Children’s Privacy Litigation
20
Daily Business Review. Experts Say Florida AG’s Roku Lawsuit Could Reshape Children’s Privacy Litigation Against Big Tech