In August, Disney announced that their sports direct-to-consumer offering ESPN+ had surpassed 2.4 million paid subscribers. Today, the company shared that the service has reached 3.5 million paid subscribers at the end fourth quarter. The service more than tripled in the last year when the company announced that their OTT had reached 1 million subscribers last September.
On today’s Q4 Earnings Call, Bob Iger said that last Saturday’s UFC244 was the largest live audience to date on the platform.
Fans can subscribe to ESPN+ for $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year and includes live and on demand sports programming. The company is now bundling the service with Disney+ and Hulu for just $12.99, when Disney’s streaming service launches in November.
Much of the growth seems attributed to the addition of UFC to ESPN+ which premiered in January. After 7 years with Fox, UFC signed a $150 million per year rights deal with ESPN to air events on their linear channel and streaming service.
In addition to UFC, ESPN’s direct-to-consumer OTT streaming service includes access to daily out-of-market NHL, MLB, MLS games, international soccer coverage, college sports, original shows, and the entire library of 30 for 30 content. You can read our full review of the service here.
The service is compatible with most major streaming players including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, Android TV, gaming devices like PS4 and Xbox One, mobile devices on iOS, Android, and most major browsers.