Claim forms in a $50 million antitrust settlement with The Walt Disney Company must be submitted online or postmarked by September 8, 2026. The same date closes the window for anyone who would rather step out of the settlement and pursue Disney separately. Two later dates govern when money actually moves: written objections are due December 1, 2026, and a federal judge in San Jose is scheduled to decide on January 14, 2027 whether the deal is fair enough to approve.
September 8 closes both the claim window and the opt-out window
The settlement resolves claims brought on behalf of people who bought YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream subscriptions, who alleged that Disney violated federal antitrust law and various state antitrust and consumer-protection statutes through conduct that raised the price of streaming live pay television. Disney denies the legal claims and denies any wrongdoing or liability. No court or other judicial entity has made any judgment or determination that Disney did anything wrong or that any law was broken. The company agreed to pay rather than take the case to trial, and the settlement documents say so in plain terms.
The case is Heather Biddle, et al. v. The Walt Disney Company, No. 5:22-cv-07317-EJD, before Judge Edward J. Davila in the Northern District of California. The settlement website operated by the court-appointed administrator, Epiq, lists September 8, 2026 as the deadline both to submit a claim form and to exclude oneself from the classes, December 1, 2026 as the objection deadline, and January 14, 2027 at 9:00 a.m. as the final approval hearing. The administrator’s page was last updated July 31, 2026 and still shows those dates as live.
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The class period runs from April 1, 2019 through March 31, 2026
There are two settlement classes. The YouTube TV class covers everyone who purchased a YouTube TV subscription at any point from April 1, 2019 through March 31, 2026. The DirecTV Stream class covers anyone who purchased a DirecTV streaming live pay television subscription in the same period, and the administrator states that this includes the service as branded at various times as DirecTV Stream, DirecTV Now, and AT&T TV Now. A household that held both services does not file twice; it files one claim form carrying the information for both subscriptions.
One large group is outside the deal. The lawsuit was brought by YouTube TV, DirecTV Stream and FuboTV plaintiffs, but the administrator’s answers to frequently asked questions state that the FuboTV plaintiffs have not settled with Disney, so the notice applies only to the first two groups. Also excluded are Disney itself and its employees, officers, directors, legal representatives, heirs, successors and subsidiaries, along with counsel for the parties and the court staff assigned to the case.
The claim form asks for a subscription length, not a billing record
The official claim form sets out three requirements to qualify for a payment: fill the form out in its entirety, sign the verification statement, and get it in by the September 8 deadline. It does not ask for invoices, bank statements, cancellation emails or screenshots. It asks the claimant to check a box for how long the subscription ran, in one-year bands from less than one year up to six years or more, and to check a separate box if the claimant lived in one of 39 listed jurisdictions during the class period.
Those 39 are 36 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico, and the box matters because of how the money is divided later. The verification a claimant signs is a declaration under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the United States, that the information given is true and correct and that the claimant received notice of the settlement. The administrator adds that it may contact a claimant for more information and may use data supplied by YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream to validate what a form says.
Filing online takes a 10-character unique ID and a four-digit PIN
The online route is not open to anyone who simply arrives at the website. The administrator’s filing instructions state that a claimant needs the 10-character alphanumeric unique ID and the four-digit PIN printed on the email or postcard notice. Anyone who never received a notice, or who has lost it, is told to email [email protected] for assistance rather than give up on the claim. On the printed mail-in version of the form, by contrast, the unique ID field is marked optional.
Mailed forms go to the Biddle v. Disney Settlement Administrator, P.O. Box 4720, Portland, OR 97208-4720, and must be postmarked by September 8, 2026. The administrator’s toll-free line, 1-877-704-2517, carries recorded information only. A claim filed online generates a confirmation email with a code, which the administrator advises keeping for any later questions about the submission.
No per-person amount exists, and nothing is paid before the January hearing
There is no published figure for what an individual claim is worth, and none can honestly be worked out in advance. Payments are pro rata, proportional to the length of the subscription, and drawn from what remains after notice and administration costs, attorney’s fees and certain other costs come out of the $50 million. Class counsel intends to ask the court to award fees of up to 30 percent of the gross fund, or $15,000,000, plus costs, along with service awards of up to $5,000 for each class representative. The court may award less than any of those amounts.
What is left is then split by geography. The settlement allocates 90 percent of the net fund to class members who lived in one of the listed repealer jurisdictions at any time during the class period and 10 percent to class members everywhere else. On timing, the administrator’s own answer is blunt: a valid claim is paid after the court approves the settlement and that approval becomes final, a sequence that cannot begin before the January 14, 2027 hearing and may run past it.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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