Breaking: Disney to Launch Standalone ESPN Streamer in Fall 2025; More Features Than Joint Venture With Fox, WBD
The solely ESPN streamer will be equipped with far more features than what will be available on the joint venture with Fox and WBD.
There can be no doubt that Disney is going all in on making ESPN a streaming-focused property. On Tuesday, the company announced that this fall, it would be launching a joint venture with the Fox Corporation and Warner Bros. Discovery that will bring together all three companies' sports programming in a single streaming service. Then, on Wednesday, in conjunction with the release of Disney's first quarter 2024 fiscal year earnings report, CEO Bob Iger announced that a standalone ESPN direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service will be available in the fall of 2025, perhaps as early as August.
Key Points:
- Disney CEO Bob Iger announced on Wednesday that the standalone ESPN streaming service will launch as early as August 2025.
- He noted that it would have significantly more features and integrations than the recently announced joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.
- The executive noted that from a financial standpoint the joint venture is very low-risk in regards to potentially accelerating cord-cutting.
Iger noted that not one would the yet-to-be-named ESPN platform serve as the streaming home of all of the brand’s live games and studio shows, but there will also be meaningful digital integrations that will not be available in the joint venture with Fox and WBD. This platform will include features, with ESPN Bet, ESPN fantasy sports, e-commerce features, and a wide array of stats-focused features. Iger also confirmed that the platform would have “very robust personalization features.” Later in the call, Iger reiterated that these features will not be available on the joint venture platform.
While Iger did not confirm what the price for the forthcoming service will be, he did indicate that it would be available to bundle with the company’s entertainment-focused streaming services. When it was initially announced, The Streamable's expert prediction was that the cost of the service would be between $29.99 and $44.99 per month, most likely on the higher end of the range. With the announcement of the joint venture with Fox and WBD, we predicted that the cost would be between $40 and $50.
“We’re excited to offer a more unified streaming experience which we expect will deliver strong benefits in terms of higher engagement, lower churn, and greater advertising potential,” Iger said on Disney’s earnings call. “When we launch our stand-alone ESPN service, we’ll also make it available on Disney+ for bundle subscribers, just as we’ve done for Hulu.”
In December 2023, Disney brought Hulu’s original content, as well as portions of its on-demand library, into the Disney+ app for the first time as part of a one-app beta test. This is anticipated to be the first step to completely merge the two platforms, once Disney officially acquires the outstanding 33% of the streamer from Comcast.
In order to make the transition to the standalone ESPN app smoother and more profitable, Disney has been in conversations with both major sports leagues and other tech and media companies about partnering and investing in the ESPN brand.
“As you know, we’ve also engaged in productive conversations with potential content and marketing partners for ESPN,” Iger said. “We’ve made progress towards securing deals and we expect to have more to share with you in the near future.”
The timing of these two sports-focused streaming projects is notable. With the continued erosion of the traditional pay-TV model, there is little doubt in the industry that the future is in streaming, but how quickly customers leave cable and satellite behind completely is still up for debate. With media companies still generating a substantial amount of money from cable and retransmission fees from pay-TV distributors, media companies have to walk a tightrope between planning for where revenue will come from in the future without disrupting where the money is coming from currently.
On Wednesday, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch discussed the forthcoming sports streaming joint venture, saying that his company “would not be launching this product if we thought it was going to significantly affect” the company’s pay-TV business. Iger took a slightly different approach later in the day. He indicated that whatever cord-cutting the joint venture — and presumably the standalone ESPN — eventually generates will effectively be balanced by the new streaming revenue.
“Understand that we are going to get paid in this new joint venture for our channels at a level that’s commensurate with a level that we get paid for those channels in the multi-channel ecosystem,” Iger said. “So if a consumer moves out of that and then into this, then what we get paid for … the channels that are in it, is equal to what we get paid [from the pay-TV bundle] … So for us, it’s very low risk and actually, as I talked earlier, potentially quite accretive to us in terms of signing up sports fans that have never signed up for the bundle or that might no longer want it.”
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