蘑菇AV

It had been in contact with several media companies, including Amazon, Apple, and ESPN. Apple looked likely to be the winner, but talks stalled recently. Why it matters: YouTube TV winning Sunday Ticket over Apple is a major coup for Google. The service, which surpassed five million users in July, could see a rapid increase in demand.

Disney and Spectrum reach a new deal that includes Disney+ and ESPN subscriptions. Methodology: Data is from the September 2023 Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP+) and Luminate report titled "The Show Must Go Off" as cited in Variety. This study was conducted by analyzing the TV content released by the eight largest U.S.

These include ongoing negotiations with Comcast to broadcast games for 12 teams through Diamond Sports and the looming decision by ESPN on whether to continue its $550 million annual contract for key MLB broadcasts.

Ally signed a single-year, multimillion-dollar advertising deal with ESPN in 2022, 90% of which will be spent on women鈥檚 sports broadcasts. For Coca-Cola and others, the Women鈥檚 Sports Club represents a chance to get in on the ground floor of a growing market and become known as a supporter of women鈥檚 sports leagues.

As part of Disney鈥檚 100th anniversary, TikTok will create a Disney page that will run for four weeks featuring content from 48 Disney media properties including Pixar, ESPN, and Marvel. Additionally, Disney has signed on as a partner for Pulse Premiere, a premium ad placement that TikTok launched in May.

In 2021 and 2022, Chapek initiated multiple failed attempts to buy out Hulu before the deal鈥檚 expiry date, which reportedly involved Comcast CEO Brian Roberts asking for Disney to hand over ESPN in exchange鈥攕omething Disney wasn鈥檛 willing to give up. But Iger and Roberts have a better working relationship, according to CNBC, which could lead to less-combative negotiations around Hulu鈥檚 ownership.

With Hulu and ESPN under its umbrella, Disney+ will be able to follow the exact same playbook. So even though Disney+ accounts for about 5% of time spent with streaming video, its ad business is primed and ready, while Netflix faces growing pains. Peacock鈥檚 flock: 鈥淧eacock is going to be a pretty significant player in streaming advertising,鈥� said Benes.

They'd already pretty much ruled out selling ESPN after the activist investor, Dan Loeb, lobbied for that sometime late last year. That would be one argument toward selling Hulu. Marcus Johnson:. And why shouldn't Disney sell Hulu? Paul Verna:.

The new sports bundle from ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox exemplifies this trend. It also shows that streamers see Amazon鈥檚 Prime Video and its new ads as a threat. 鈥淐ompetitors are becoming collaborators,鈥� in order to get leverage over Amazon and its sports content, Zucker said. 5. There鈥檚 no 鈥榥ew normal鈥� for advertising.

And Jeremy notes that Disney's ABC and ESPN will continue to host the NBA finals and Christmas Day games. NBCU gets opening night games and a new Sunday night primetime slot, and also the all-star game. And Amazon gets the play-in tournament and will help with the NBA League Pass, and then there's a bunch of games divvied up amongst them.

Personally, I still think that ESPN and the NBA should just form a strategic partnership. Bob Iger was out there saying that the ESPN is becoming untenable. It's still a cash cow, but it's declining rapidly and that they need partnerships in order to continue. I think it would actually be better for the NBA to have a solid partner all in one place like ESPN. It would solve both of their problems.

And you wrote a piece noting that ESPN taking a shot at creating a sports streaming hub. So our streaming hub specifically for sports, CNBC explaining that the platform would direct users to the services where games are being broadcast. And you write that, "One proposed model would grant ESPN a cut of revenue for every user that signs up for a competing service via its hub."

And there have been reports that Disney is working on making its ESPN linear channels available as a standalone streaming service. Warner Bros. Discovery: Because HBO Max was one of the most popular subscription streaming services, and its reach should only increase with Discovery鈥檚 offerings, Max has the potential to become a large ad business.

And then you've also got ESPN Bet. You had casino company, Penn Entertainment, just inked a $2 billion deal with Disney owned ESPN to rebrand its sports betting app to ESPN Bet. So lots of players, Paul. Who are the largest players? Paul Verna (08:58):. FanDuel has 46% of the US market and DraftKings has about 25%, so they are by far the biggest two.

It's interesting that they've been talking so publicly about this idea and about plans with ESPN that makes it seem like it's a little bit more of a real thing than just some frivolous statement. It clearly got a lot of attention and I think the success of Disney+ on a pretty quick turnaround shows that viewers will follow and advertisers will follow.

With most of the US already watching, growth in overall OTT viewership has slowed to a crawl. But some platforms, formats, and service tiers are still booming, and digital pay TV is complicating the linear TV narrative.

This is how YouTube and Apple TV and all the others, peacock, Disney, paramount, they all started maybe not Disney, they'd already had ESPN. But a lot of these companies start by licensing a couple of games or franchises and then they go deeper into it as Amazon has done as YouTube has done. So I think this is a first step for Netflix.

Netflix and YouTube are siphoning subscription revenues from pay TV鈥檚 losses. By the end of 2025, more than half of US video subscription revenues will go to streaming services.

If they're going to compete with the ESPN and Fox sports joint venture, they'd need something a little more substantial. And this partnership would not give them any regional sports network coverage, which I think is the biggest part missing from the ESPN/Fox deal.

In terms of Disney, just wait until ESPN has its standalone broadcasting channel that can go out to everyone in the US. It's going to have huge audience numbers when it does come out. Marcus Johnson:. Negative points for Ethan. You went horribly long and not just because you came after me for not using our numbers. That was actually a good point.

And the fact that you don't know that yet and you don't know how it's going to differentiate between the upcoming app ESPN is going to have, there's a lot of question marks for a service that's supposed to be launching within the next 60 to 90 days. Wouldn't be surprised if it gets pushed out to launch somewhere six months from now. Marcus Johnson (13:50):. I Nike's generous too.

But in reality, one of the things that makes this a big milestone is that this would be the first time that a major US league sports package is essentially a streaming deal because we're talking about ESPN, peacock and Amazon as the leading players here. I think this is also milestone because it's going to open the way for more of the kind of digital bundling we've seen.