I’ve been waiting for ESPN’s new streamer for a long time
I’ve been waiting for ESPN’s new streamer for a long time
Ever since starting college, I’ve been waiting for a way to watch ESPN without cable. But its arrival comes at a time when the innocence of life is slipping away.
I’ve been a football fan since I was seven, but in the years following my adolescence, something unfortunate happened to my NFL watching experience: cable. When “Monday Night Football” stopped being simulcast on ABC in 2005, I lost access to any games from my beloved Denver Broncos that were fated for that time slot, as my family cut the cord when I was six. From then until the 2016 season, “MNF” was an ESPN exclusive, and I had no way to watch until I trundled off to college in 2007.
Upon moving into a dorm, I finally got access to basic cable, which gloriously brought ESPN into my life for the first time in years. It was a glorious and carefree time — until I flunked out, but that’s another story for another day. These events all took place as Hulu and Netflix were taking the first steps toward making streaming the dominant force in entertainment that it is today, but in those days, they were little more than a fun novelty for most.
While I was grateful for ESPN access, I also realized, even then, that the cable bundle is tragically overstuffed. For every channel you actually watch, there are at least two (or three or four) that you skip past in the programming guide 99 times out of 100; and even then, I yearned for a way to access ESPN by itself, without having to pay the full price of cable to get it.
Fast-forwarding 18 years (yeesh), and the moment has finally arrived. As of Thursday, Aug. 21, sports fans in the United States can sign up for the new ESPN direct-to-consumer (DTC) service, which allows all viewers with an internet connection to watch ESPN channels without having to pay for other networks involved in the standard cable package. At last, ESPN is available to watch without cable.
The amount of change, both in myself and in the world, since 2007 is difficult to put into words. While there have been many gains, there have also been losses, and in one aspect, I think that both myself and the world have lost a great deal of innocence in the years between. Certainly, this is the case in the streaming industry, which has undergone a dramatic evolution in the past 18 years.
Just think back to how things were in 2007. Netflix and Hulu were the only two video-on-demand services at the time, and would be for several years to come. Prices were low, and the novelty was high. Watching movies on your computer without feeling like you were doing something illegal was something totally new in those days, and there was no discussion of binge-watching versus weekly releases yet. TV shows like “The Office” weren’t available on-demand at all, by and large; you simply had to watch them when it was on, or wait for a rerun.
To be sure, the amount of access to content is orders of magnitude greater than it was in 2007 — but that lowering of barriers has come at a great price in more ways than one. Obviously, the financial cost is high; a recent survey found that viewers who stack three or more streaming services are now paying $72 per month for those streamers, and content is so well scattered across platforms. that it is increasingly difficult to cancel services that don’t have a compelling title or two every month.
Low-price, ad-free streaming was never going to last forever, to be sure. But seeing something that had once been so revolutionarily customer-friendly streaming become almost identical to the thing it was designed to replace is another example of that loss of innocence; a removal of the naiveté that entertainment giants think of consumers as more than just a financial resource to be cultivated. Being a loyal customer seems less important to companies than ever these days, and over the past five years, the problem has become acute at streaming services, which suddenly faced the need to show investors a profit or face the oblivion of being gutted for assets. That has led to higher prices, more ads, and the elimination of the feeling that streaming services are there to provide a unique customer experience.
In some ways, that’s just the way of the world for every business. But streaming customers who have gotten more and more access to content have had to pay more to get it, and the launch of the new ESPN streaming service is just another example. By itself, streaming ESPN without cable will cost you $30 per month or $300 per year. Obviously, Disney wants to profit off ESPN’s DTC platform, but the high price tag is also a way to ensure that customers who are getting ESPN through a pay-TV plan don’t cancel that plan in favor of it, jeopardizing Disney’s relationship with cable distributors. If you are getting a package of 80 or 90 other channels, including ESPN, for $75 or $80 per month, it’s at least a somewhat difficult decision to abandon those channels for just a net gain of $45.
And yet, when it comes right down to it, the college kid in me is going to win. I already pay for the Disney Trio Premium bundle, which, at $27 per month, gives me Disney+ and Hulu without ads, and ESPN+ as well. It’s another $18 per month to upgrade my bundle at launch to include the ESPN Unlimited streaming plan, and I’ve been waiting too long to let this opportunity pass me by.
Perhaps the most tragic loss of innocence comes just in knowing that you’ve lost it. There’s no denying that $45 per month is a lot to pay for those services, but that’s the way things go; no matter the promise of the early days of streaming, prices are never going to recede, at least not in the long run. If you want to get the channels that you grew up with a la carte instead of in a bundle, you’re going to have to pay for the privilege. It’s a brutal fact of the streaming industry (and all industries), and a remorseful reminder that some things in life simply will never be the same again.
ESPN Unlimited
ESPN launched its highly anticipated direct-to-consumer streaming service on August 21, 2025. For the first time, this service gives sports fans access to its full lineup of linear channels without a traditional cable or satellite subscription.