Does the ESPN, Fox, WBD Streaming Service Eliminate the Need for Sports Fans to Subscribe Linear TV Providers?

For nearly the entirety of the streaming era, live sports have been the one constant that has kept people tethered to their traditional pay-TV subscriptions, whether they be cable, satellite, or even live TV streaming. However, Tuesday’s announcement that ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery were forming a joint venture to launch a streaming platform that would pull together all three of the media companies’ sports offerings from broadcast, cable, and streaming, beginning this fall, raises the question of whether or not it is in sports fans’ best interest to even have a live TV subscription anymore.

• The Streamable estimates that the new sports streaming service from Disney, Fox, and WBD will cost between $40 and $50 per month.
• When stacked with Paramount+ and Peacock, cord-cutters will be able to access nearly all of the sports content available on linear channels.
• Cable and live TV streamers still have news and entertainment options to offer viewers, but will the extra expense be enough for sports fans to give up on pay TV?

This new streaming venture from the three media giants will pull together all of the sports offerings that each one offers into a single platform set to launch in the fall of this year. That means that this yet-to-be-named service will be the home of TNT and TBS’s coverage of Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL, as well as the United States Men’s and Women’s Soccer Teams and more. It will also have Fox’s coverage of the NFL, college football, college basketball, the World Cup, international soccer, and others. The platform would also pull in all of the sports programming from ESPN, including MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, college sports, and a wide variety of more niche offerings. This new service will also bring in a large portion of the NASCAR season starting in February 2025.

In The Streamable’s expert opinion, this new sports service is likely to have a price point in the $40 to $50 range, after any introductory pricing offers expire. That would keep it modestly below the starting point for all live TV streaming services and significantly under the cost of the average cable or satellite plan.

But those traditional pay-TV providers carry more than just the sports rights owned by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery; and even for sports fans, there is still important programming that must be accounted for elsewhere. Fortunately, the two major sports-rights holders in the United States that are not party to this joint venture have standalone direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming services that provide full access to their respective complements of sports offerings.

The Paramount Global-owned Paramount+ offers two subscription tiers, both of which come with extensive sports content. The cheaper Essential tier costs $5.99 per month and has access to the NFL on CBS and the streamer’s complete coverage of the UEFA Champions League. The more pricey Paramount+ With Showtime option not only provides access to the entire TV and movie library of the recently renamed Showtime premium cable channel and ad-free on-demand streaming, but it also comes with a live stream of your local CBS station.

This means that in addition to your local NFL on CBS games, you also get access to all of the college football, college basketball, international soccer, PGA golf, and more on the network as well. This subscription tier runs $11.99 per month, so, when combined with the new Disney, Fox, and WBD joint venture, your price would be at least $52 per month, if The Streamable’s price prediction proves to be accurate.

The other outlet with substantial sports offerings that is not part of this new, one-of-a-kind joint venture is NBCUniversal. The cheapest and easiest way to watch all of the company’s NFL, golf, college football and basketball, the Olympics, English Premier League, and WWE coverage is via its DTC platform Peacock. Not only does the service provide access to the sports offerings found on NBC, The Golf Channel, and the USA Network, but it also is the home to dozens of exclusive games and coverage, including the first-ever streaming-exclusive NFL Playoff game, and football and basketball games from Notre Dame and the Big Ten.

Like Paramount+, Peacock has two subscription tiers, one with access to much of the sports coverage — along with ad-supported on-demand streaming — for $5.99 (the Peacock Premium plan), and one for $11.99 monthly (Peacock Premium Plus) that also includes a live stream of your local NBC affiliate. Therefore, if you opted to stack the more complete plan on top of the new joint venture and Paramount+, you would likely be in the neighborhood of $64 per month.

If that total proves to be fairly close to the all-in price to get access to all of that sports programming, that would still be cheaper than any live TV streaming service that provides access to all of the same sports programming. But, is it cheap enough to make a subscription to YouTube TV, DIRECTV STREAM, or Fubo unnecessary? It likely depends on what you value.

Only YouTube TV and Hulu + live TV include all of those channels in their base subscription package; the former is $9 more than our projected total, and the latter is $13. However, both come with general entertainment options that the new Disney/Fox/WBD service has no interest in providing. When you consider that Hulu + Live TV also grants subscribers a free Disney Bundle for Disney+ and ESPN+, the value of that specific live streamer also starts to come more into focus.

But, keep in mind that the live streamers will not provide broadcasts of the streaming exclusive events found on ESPN+ or Max’s Bleacher Report Sports Add-On, so from a sports perspective, the Disney/Fox/WBD service still comes out ahead. And, if Disney and/or WBD offer bundles for Disney+, Hulu, and Max, then the balance begins to tip back in their favor.

The other major live streamers either don’t carry all of the channels covered in the Disney, Fox, and WBD joint venture, or a significant portion of them are on higher-priced tiers. So when comparing options from a sports-specific standpoint, YouTube TV and Hulu + Live Sports are really the only options.

For the first time since the advent of cable television, with this fall’s launch of the ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery sports streaming service, if customers want to remain completely disconnected from the traditional pay-TV model, they can do so. By stacking this new joint venture with Paramount+, Peacock, and Amazon’s Prime Video, fans will be able to stream every nationally broadcast and in-market NFL game, along with practically every other nationally and locally available sports broadcast from college and pro sports.

The one exception is those airing on regional sports networks that would be available on many live TV streaming services, but aren’t on these streamers. However, given Amazon's investment in Diamond Sports Group, it is possible that Prime Video users will soon be able to access Bally Sports+ in some form or fashion as part of their subscriptions before the end of the year. This would essentially make all sports content available for $72 per month. While not cheap, it is still less expensive than a pay-TV subscription.

Whether that savings is enough to encourage sports fans to abandon the cable or live TV streaming bundle will depend on their affinity for the news and entertainment channels that come with a pay-TV subscription. If that is not much of a draw for them, then these collective streamers might begin to put yet another nail in the coffin of traditional television.