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While much of the media industry continues to splinter and shrink, ESPN is getting a major boost in the streaming realm.
Beginning Wednesday, content from the sports media giant will have its own featured tile on sister corporate entity Disney+. Long planned by the company, ESPN+ programming will be featured alongside other core Disney general entertainment properties including Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars.
The move also puts ESPN content in front of tens of millions of additional subscribers on one of the world’s largest streaming services. While not at the scale of Netflix, Disney+ held 122.7 million global subscribers as of Sept. 28—the end of Disney’s fiscal fourth quarter—nearly five times the 25.6 million for ESPN+. That larger group within Disney+ also likely includes many non-avid sports fans, and in turn a growth opportunity for ESPN and Disney.
“This launch is really going to reshape what Disney+ is, who it’s for, and what we have to offer. But it also marks the next step in streaming for the future of ESPN,” said Disney+ president Alisa Bowen.
Always Be Closing
There’s also a clear upsell motive in the ESPN tile strategy, as subscribers to the Disney streaming bundle of Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu will have a deep breadth of ESPN+ content available from Disney+. Subscribers to Disney+ alone, however, will only receive a small portion of ESPN+ material, and the rest will redirect toward pages for package upgrades.
Those limited offerings for non-bundle subscribers, however, lean in part toward sports-related animated programming such as the Dec. 9 Monday Night Football integration with The Simpsons and the Mickey Mouse–themed “Dunk the Halls” effort for an NBA game on Christmas Day.
“Part of the design is to try to stimulate engagement and interest in sports to a casual fan that might not otherwise come to ESPN in their normal media behaviors,” said John Lasker, ESPN+ SVP. “So it’s not creating an alternative to ESPN or ESPN+, but more of an extended reach opportunity.”
Disney+ implemented a similar tile for Hulu back in March.
Flagship Learnings
The ESPN tile on Disney+, meanwhile, precedes by roughly eight months the anticipated debut of the direct-to-consumer version of ESPN, widely termed as Flagship. There’s been no shortage of hype surrounding that project, with Disney CEO Bob Iger recently saying it will be “the best product the consumer has ever seen in sports,” and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro describing it as a distillation of all the network’s various offerings and capabilities.
The heightened integration with Disney+ will likely aid in that development effort by supplying additional data about user consumption patterns, particularly those who are not ardent sports fans.
“We’re very excited to figure out what the increased audience opportunity is here, which we believe is pretty great,” Lasker said. “This will teach us a lot.”
