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Posted in: Disney+, Sports, TV | Tagged: bob iger, disney, espn, hulu
ESPN Sports Programming Coming to Disney+ Later This Year: Bob Iger
Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that select ESPN programming & games will be making their way to Disney+ by the end of this year.
Article Summary
- Disney+ to feature select ESPN live games and studio shows by end of 2024.
- Bob Iger notes a modest but strategic ESPN content shift to Disney+ platform.
- ESPN to collaborate on new streaming service with Fox Sports and Warner Bros.
- ESPN is set to be its own standalone streaming service in 2025.
It seems like Disney has moved more from just allowing customers to bundle their streaming services with Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ to bundling the entire experience all to Disney+ – as CEO Bob Iger announced that Disney will add select live games and studio shows from ESPN to Disney+ by the end of 2024. In Disney's fiscal second-quarter earnings call, Iger said the company's been "encouraged" by early results of adding Hulu programming to their flagship platform.
Disney's Plan to Integrate ESPN into Disney+
"We see this as a first step to bring to ESPN-Disney+ viewers as we ready the enhanced stand-alone ESPN streaming service in the fall of 2025," Iger said as ESPN is working to partner with Fox Sports and Warner Bros Discovery on another sports streaming service due to launch later in 2024. The unnamed joint venture differs from stand-alone ESPN or the bulked-up Disney+ service in that it aggregates 14 linear feeds from sports-heavy networks. The proposed integration doesn't include any major sports offerings from NBCUniversal or Paramount Global.
The sports network locked up new deals in its offerings of NCAA sports, the expanded College Football playoff, and the NBA, but Iger remained mum about which games would be available on Disney+ and only admitted that a "modest" amount of programming from the cable platform would make its way to the platform. "It's a start in terms of conditioning viewers that sports is going to be there," he said. ESPN, he clarified, is making "a pivot toward digital without abandoning linear." Disney has been known to expand the sports brand over to ABC on occasion and, over the years, expanded to seven other channels, including ESPN2 & 3, ESPN+, ESPNews, ESPNU, ESPNW, and ESPN Deportes. The once fictional ESPN8: The Ocho was created as a parody of the network's more obscure sports offerings and became a (partial) reality in 2017.
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