If you are confused about what to make of Tuesday’s news that ESPN, Fox Sports and TNT Sports are combining to create a sports streaming bundle, don’t feel bad.
The entire sports media industry is uncertain how exactly this historic, complex undertaking will look come autumn, when the service is supposed to launch.
For now, it has no CEO, no name and, most importantly, no announced price.
But we do know this: It was yet another milestone in the rapid move away from the traditional pay TV bundle and toward streaming.
This is big news involving big media players, as the parent companies of the three sports units, Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, made clear simply with the executives they chose to quote in the news release: Disney CEO Bob Iger (who is from Oceanside), Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch (who is not from Oceanside) and WBD CEO David Zaslav.
The three companies each will own a third of the new operation, even though presumably ESPN will get the largest share of revenue given that it has the largest share of programming.
But you might have noticed this plan does not include everything you might want as a sports fan, including streaming content from NBC, CBS and Amazon Prime Video.
So think of it more as evolution than revolution. In the short term, many folks who still are happy with their cable bundles will keep them.
This is more aimed at current cord-cutters or those contemplating that move to keep them within the live sports ecosystem.
But that itself is another dagger to the heart of the cable bundle, which for years has been held together largely by sports that one cannot get anywhere else.
That is rapidly changing. Soon, instead of subscribing to ESPN+ for some sports programming, you will be able to get all of ESPN’s stuff through streaming.
What will this new bundle cost? Let’s say it will be in the $40-50 range. For an avid sports fan with no other interests, that could well be worth it.
But until streaming fully recreates the programming bundles…
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