How Joint Venture Sports Streamer From Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery Points to Streaming’s Possible Future
Small channel bundles offered directly to the consumer like the new sports streaming joint venture would be of great help to audiences who want a true cable alternative.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told us this was coming. In May 2023, Zaslav predicted that more streaming services and content providers would be aggregating their offerings in the not so distant future. There are simply too many choices for how to consume entertainment, sports, and news nowadays, and there are only so many subscribers to go around. Zaslav helped his own prediction come true by contributing the sports rights that WBD currently holds to a new joint venture streaming service with Disney and Fox, which was announced on Tuesday evening. It’s a move that will have undeniable benefits for cord-cutting sports fans, and it points to a future that all content providers might want to consider pursuing.
- Disney, Fox and WBD are combining to sell their own content directly to consumers, instead of relying on pay-TV providers as middlemen.
- Bundling is already increasing across the streaming marketplace.
- There is a large appetite for cable programming from sources outside of cable channels, especially among younger viewers.
Are Streaming Providers Recreating the Cable Bundle?
It certainly appears that the same media companies that pulled apart the traditional cable bundle in order to chase Netflix and the allure of streaming profits are now trying to reassemble the old model. The joint-venture streaming service between Fox, Disney, and WBD will offer the full complement of live sporting events from each company’s channels, including ABC, ESPN, Fox, FS1, TBS, TNT, and more. The channels themselves will be available through the new streaming app, which won’t require a pay-TV subscription to access and will be offered directly to customers.
This method doesn’t bring customers toward the goal of true a la carte streaming, where viewers can pick and choose individual channels to create their own bundle, but it does move audiences closer to that goal by splitting the cable package into smaller pieces, and offering customers who primarily watch cable for live sports a new way to get exactly what they want and avoid paying for news and entertainment channels they don’t regularly watch.
Until now, bundling has been slow to come for the streaming industry. Providers have been wary of helping the competition too much, and only limited efforts like Netflix's combination with Max for select Verizon Wireless customers have come to market so far. That’s part of the reason the news of the Disney/Fox/WBD joint venture was so shocking to industry analysts; it represents a huge leap forward for bundling of content.
What Other Slimmed-Down Streaming Channel Bundles Could Become Available?
There are essentially unlimited bundling options available for channel owners, so long as they don’t run afoul of government regulators by refusing to offer their content through any source but their new bundle. With the hundreds of cable channels available in the United States, there are myriad opportunities to create small, cross-company channel bundles that network owners can sell directly to consumers.
Take entertainment, for example. If Disney could get AMC and Hallmark to come aboard a new bundle with WBD, the companies could create a streaming service offering AMC, FX, Hallmark Channel, TNT, and even Lifetime (Disney has an ownership stake in Lifetime through A&E Networks, a JV with Hearst Television), giving entertainment lovers a bundle of beloved networks presumably for much less than buying a cable subscription would cost.
Cable news channels, on the other hand, are not likely to be bundled in a similar fashion. Ideologically speaking, most cable news sources lean either to the right (like Fox News) or left (like MSNBC), and because audiences are more likely to seek their news from the political perspective they agree with, there would be little reason for cable news networks to offer their content on the same service. Such a platform would likely attract few viewers.
Will Audiences Respond to Streaming Bundles?
There is little doubt that a certain portion of customers will be interested in these bundles as they become available. The sports streaming joint venture coming from Disney, Fox, and WBD will be hard for subscribers to overlook, considering that it will offer content from all the major sports leagues in the U.S., and thousands of college sports events from major conferences as well. Data released by Antenna in November shows that customers who sign up for a streaming service to watch sports stay subscribed to that service longer than the average viewer, and the JV sports platform will offer content year-round, making it indispensable for fans.
Younger viewers are likely to be enthusiastic about streaming bundles like this joint venture, as well. When WBD launched a CNN hub on Max dubbed “CNN Max,” it found the audience for that content was 20 years younger than linear CNN viewers. Zaslav also pointed out that many who came to the streamer for CNN Max were people who did not have pay-TV subscriptions, suggesting that the demand for cable content is as strong as ever among cord-cutters and cord-nevers (a term for TV watchers who have never had pay TV).
Streaming bundles of cable channels are clearly a more efficient way to deliver content from a cost perspective. Cable subscriptions frequently cost $80 per month or considerably more, and though the coming JV sports streaming service will almost certainly retail for at least $40 per month, it still gives viewers more options for watching only the content they want and skipping what they don’t. Bundling with Hulu, Disney+, and Max will be possible with this service, allowing viewers to get entertainment and sports together just like with a cable subscription, but without having to worry about paying for channels they don’t watch.
In brief, every cable network owner and streaming content provider should look closely at what Disney, Fox, and WBD are doing to see if a similar bundle could work for their company. The platform is likely to be a big hit with sports fans, and there are plenty of opportunities to create other bundles around a central genre that cost significantly less than a cable plan.
Max
Max is a subscription video streaming service that gives access to the full HBO library, along with exclusive Max Originals. There are hubs for content from TLC, HGTV, Food Network, Discovery, TCM, Cartoon Network, Travel Channel, ID, and more. Watch hit series like “The Last of Us,” “House of the Dragon,” “Succession,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and more. Thanks to the B/R Sports add-on, users can watch NBA, MLB, NHL, March Madness, and NASCAR events.