ESPN has finalized its plans for its highly anticipated, direct-to-consumer streaming service, simply calling it “ESPN,” while the Disney-owned company says the project will “redefine our business.”

After considering a variety of other names for the long-planned offering that previously carried a working title of “Flagship,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said, “There’s real power in our four letters.” The service will involve a rebuilt ESPN app, with users then able to buy into the broader video packages. 

An unlimited package, carrying all of ESPN’s networks, will cost $29.99 per month on an unbundled basis, and $35.99 per month when bundled with ad-based versions of sister properties Disney+ and Hulu. An initial promotion, however, will bring that latter cost down to $29.99 per month for the first 12 months. With the new service, ESPN is leaning in to a mantra of “all of ESPN, all in one place” and touting a live portfolio with more than 47,000 annual events. 

“This is going to redefine our business, and it’s going to reflect the innovation that’s been a hallmark of ESPN since its earliest days,” Pitaro said in a press event Tuesday morning.

A specific debut date is still being developed and will be disclosed this summer, but it will be around the start of the 2025 pro and college football seasons. 

The DTC effort, a major priority across ESPN’s corporate parent Disney, is happening as the company is looking to fight an industry-wide decline in linear television subscribers as cord-cutting and cord-nevering accelerate. 

“We’re really looking at the 60 million–plus households [in the U.S.] that are on the sidelines,” Pitaro said, referring to those consumers without any sort of tie to ESPN. “We are platform-agnostic.” 

The ESPN streaming service will include a range of enhanced features, including integration with ESPN Bet, personalization with favorite teams, customized versions of SportsCenter, merchandise sales, and live statistics. 

Streaming Matters

ESPN, meanwhile, will continue to market and sell ESPN+ as a separate offering with that name, in part due to contractual rights commitments with several leagues, both domestically and internationally. The content there will be very similar to what will be available in a select version of the ESPN DTC service costing $11.99 per month.

Going forward, however, the two levels of the new DTC service will be the “priority” for ESPN. To that end, existing ESPN+ subscribers will automatically become subscribers to the more limited version of the new service. Traditional linear subscribers of ESPN will also be able to access all the DTC features through authentication. 

“We are ultimately going to judge ourselves based on the totality of people subscribing to ESPN,” Pitaro said. “We are not going to look at one specific platform. We want to be available across platforms, across price points.”

In the aftermath of the Mavericks’ draft lottery win Monday, the NBA world called foul.

Dallas, coming off months of turmoil from February’s stunning Luka Dončić trade, wound up with the right to select Cooper Flagg, its new franchise cornerstone, despite just a 1.8% chance at the No. 1 pick.

This is on top of several examples of coincidental lottery winners in the past, including the Pelicans in 2012, soon after they were briefly owned by the league, then again in 2019 after Anthony Davis asked for a trade. (Davis was traded to the Lakers after New Orleans won the lottery.) 

The idea that the NBA draft lottery can be rigged would involve enough trickery, subterfuge, and complicity to be implausible, considering how transparent the league has been with its selection process. Several outlets have chronicled the league’s selection setup, which involves cameras and media members in the room when the Ping-Pong balls shoot out of the lottery machine.

Assessing the Rules

Assuming fair play, Monday’s results still highlight a lottery rules issue. 

In 2019, the league instituted “flattened” lottery odds, which lowered the likelihood for teams with the worst records to secure the top picks. Previously, the odds for the three worst teams to win the lottery were 25%, 19.9%, and 15.6%, respectively. The current rules have all three tied at 14%. 

Before the change, the team with the worst record had won four straight lotteries. That has not happened since. (Teams tied for the best odds have won the lottery between 2020 and 2023, while the Hawks won last year with 3% odds.)

However, the objective of the rule change was to discourage teams from tanking or deliberately losing to get better draft odds. Teams have continued to tank, particularly during seasons with blue-chip prospects at the top of the class.

The change also extended how far teams could fall down the order. Because the top four are determined by lottery odds, the team with the worst record still has a 47.9% chance to fall to fifth, exactly what’s happened for three straight years.

This creates a nightmare scenario for several franchises stuck in the cellar, forced to wait another year to luck out for a young franchise savior. This will likely be the case again for the Hornets, Jazz, Wizards, and Nets—and maybe even Raptors and Pelicans—who all fell in Monday’s lottery.

Defending the Rules

The counterargument is this may be exactly what the league intended. Teams may need to feel the inconsistency of betting on the lottery and instead look for another avenue toward contention. 

The Pistons are the example for this counterpoint. They fell out of the top four for three consecutive drafts despite finishing with a bottom-two record every season. This year, the team ditched tanking, bet on its young core, added veterans, and made the playoffs for the first time since 2019.

“This rebuild that we’re on, we’re still in the beginning phases of it. There will be more and more rewards at the end of the tunnel, but six is the reward for where we’re at right now,” Wizards GM Will Dawkins said Monday.

CHARLOTTE — The leaders of the PGA Championship are content with LIV Golf’s unsettled place in the professional game, which has forced organizers of the four major championships to pivot from their traditional operations.

LIV, in its fourth season, still does not award Official World Golf Ranking points at its events, leading to formerly top-ranked players and some young rising stars losing their easiest pathways into the majors.

While the U.S. Open and Open Championship (also known as the British Open) created special exemption categories for a LIV member to qualify, The Masters and PGA Championship have relied on special invites. Four LIV members who did not qualify for the PGA Championship received those this week: Dustin Johnson, Joaquin Niemann, Tom McKibbin, and David Puig. There are 16 LIV players in the field. Last year, seven LIV players received special invites.

“We look at every tour that’s playing worldwide golf and try and identify the best players from those respective tours,” PGA of America chief championship officer Kerry Haigh said Tuesday at Quail Hollow Club.

There are 99 out of the top 100 players in the world at the PGA Championship. “It’s a worldwide field,” Haigh said. “That’s why we feel it’s the strongest field.”

PGA of America CEO Derek Sprague, who is one of seven members of the OWGR board, said he has spoken briefly with LIV CEO Scott O’Neil, but didn’t have an update on the league’s efforts to gain world ranking points.

“He’s encouraged to submit an application for the board to review,” Sprague said. “Other than that, I have nothing else to report.”