Like with many carriage disputes, though, there’s plenty of he-said-she-said squabbling where both sides portray the other as the villain. YES Network was “not optimistic” it would reach a deal by a February 28th cutoff despite “efforts to negotiate,” and characterized this as a loss that would deprive fans of the Brooklyn Nets’ remaining season and the start of the Yankees’ season. It pointed subscribers to AT&T TV Now and Hulu With Live TV as alternatives if they couldn’t bear to be without in-depth NYC sports coverage.

This kind of fight is all too common in the conventional TV space, but it’s still relatively rare in the streaming-only world. Typically, services like YouTube TV and others have been willing to raise rates rather than risk losing important channels. Clearly, YouTube has had enough — while it probably can’t stop the price creep that’s all too common with TV, it appears uncomfortable with hiking prices much further.

“Our goal with YouTube TV is to offer you the content you love, delivered the way you want. Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to reach an agreement with Sinclair, the content provider that offers the FOX Regional Sports Networks and YES Network. Starting February 29, 2020, users will no longer be able to watch live, on demand, or recorded content from these networks. We don’t take this decision lightly, and will continue to do our best to make YouTube TV a best-in-class experience.”

The company has grown to 29.1 million active users, who in the last three months collectively streamed 8.9 billion hours of content. Between device sales and platform fees, Roku pulled in a gross profit of $100.9 million, although that wasn’t enough to cover its operating expenses. Consequently, the company wound up making a loss of $10.7 million, topping the $6.9 million it lost in the same period in 2018.

Roku feels that it’s perfectly placed to be the most trusted name in streaming, free from the conflicts that often trouble other platforms. The fact that it doesn’t produce content of its own, and has no ambitions to do so, means that it has earned trust from both the other platforms, but consumers as well. And this sort of performative neutrality is likely to continue as more and more TV switches from broadcast to on-demand.

The red ink in the ledger isn’t bothering Roku’s accountants, either, who have said that 2019 will be a banner year for sales of its streaming gear and co-branded TVs. Roku claims that one in every smart TVs sold in the US is one of theirs, making it the largest smart TV platform in the country. Given the forthcoming streaming services from Disney and Apple, having a box that’ll run every service without exception is going to become essential.